Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

FCE Launches Event and Publication Series with Suhrkamp Verlag

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Stanford University and German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag are pleased to jointly sponsor the international lecture and publication series devoted to new work by Stanford faculty on contemporary and historical subjects.  Hosted at Stanford by the Forum on Contemporary Europe at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and in Berlin by Suhrkamp, this series responds to the need for insight and trans-Atlantic dialogue on today's most pressing issues. Senior scholars whose work has earned influence on discussion and policy are selected to bring their voice to this prominent public forum.  Each lecture addresses issues affecting today's wide range of critical areas including international relations, politics, history, science, and culture.

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The Europe Center Announces New Multi-Year Collaborative Project with Research Partners in Europe and the Greater Middle East

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The Europe Center (TEC) at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) has launched a multi-year collaborative project with research institutes in Europe and the Greater Middle East.  First partners include the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.  The multi-year collaborative project is titled “Debating History, Democracy, Development, and Education in Conflicted Societies" within The Europe Center's long-term program on the theme of Reconciliation. 

The aim of this collaboration is to study how divided societies—viewed in international context, with a focus on the Middle East, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority—reconcile diverging notions of the past, and of democracy, development, and education. Participants are investigating how societies debate internally and attempt to reconcile differences of opinion and political positions regarding these issues.  International workshops, along with seminars, and visits by exchange scholars and policy experts,  are planned to  address such issues as historical conflict and its impact on contemporary politics, as well as democratic reform, the establishment of the rule of law, majority-minority relations, the role of religion and ethnicity, educational institutions, and the position of civil society, scientific cooperation, and culture in efforts towards the promotion of peaceful coexistence.

The international collaborative program has begun with planning for two international workshops on aspects of democracy, and on memory, history, and reconciliation.  A joint publication series is also being planned.

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Studying International Organizations: Milestones for a Transnational History of the International Labour Office (1919-1942)

Studying International Organizations: Milestones for a Transnational History of the International Labour Office (1919-1942)

Globalization, Citizenship, Human Rights and Education

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Since World War II, a major element of globalization has involved the expansion of human rights norms, rules, and institutions.  This broad movement represents a dramatic shift from earlier emphases on the rights and duties of citizens of national states.  The human rights movement stresses universal and global rights, and the general responsibility to support these rights anywhere in the world, independent of national sovereignty boundaries.  This research project focuses both on the expansion of the human rights movement at the global level and the impact of the movement on national states and societies around the world. 
 
Research studies in the program track, and attempt to account for, the rapid expansion of human rights treaties, inter-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and popular and professional discourse advocating human rights.  The studies also track the rapid expansion of the substantive rights involved, from simple principles of protection and due process to greatly expanded human rights to active cultural and political participation and self-expression.  And the studies track the expansion, over the whole post-War period, of the groups particularly emphasized in the human rights movement women, children, older people, indigenous people, poor people, handicapped people, gay and lesbian people, and members of all sorts of religious and ethnic minorities. 
 
Since 1970, the world human rights movement has expanded its earlier focus on the legal protections of the individual person, to a more empowered and empowering focus on human rights education.  And studies in the program now focus heavily on the expansion worldwide of human rights education.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

John Meyer

Department of Sociology
Stanford University
Bldg. 120, room 248
Stanford, CA 94305-2047

(650) 723-1868 (650) 725-6471
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Professor of Sociology, Emeritus
Professor of Education
meyer.jpg PhD

John Meyer is a professor of sociology (and by courtesy, education) emeritus, at Stanford; a faculty member at CDDRL; and a senior fellow, by courtesy, at FSI. He received his PhD from Columbia University, and taught there for several years before coming to Stanford. His research has focused on the spread of modern institutions around the world, and their impact on national states and societies. He is particularly interested in the spread and impact of scientific activity, and in the expansion and standardization of educational models. He has made many contributions to organizational theory (e.g., Organizational Environments, with W. R. Scott, Sage 1983), and to the sociology of education, developing lines of thought now called neoinstitutional theory. Since the late 1970s, he has worked on issues related to the impact of global society on national states and societies (e.g., Institutional Structure, co-authored with others, Sage 1987). Currently, he is completing a collaborative study of worldwide science and its impact on national societies (Drori, et al., Science in the Modern World Polity, Stanford, 2003), and is working on a study of the rise and impact of the worldwide human rights regime.

FSI Senior Fellow, by courtesy
CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
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John Meyer Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, Professor of Education Panelist

Francisco Ramirez

School of Education, Room 335
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-3096

(650) 723-8421
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Professor of Education
Ramirez_website.jpg MA, PhD

Francisco O. Ramirez is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University where he is also the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Graduate School of Education. His current research interests focus on the rise and institutionalization of human rights and human rights education, on the worldwide rationalization of university structures and processes, on terms of inclusion issues as regards gender and education, and on the scope and intensity of the authority of science in society. His comparative studies contribute to sociology of education, political sociology, sociology of gender, and sociology of development. His work has contributed to the development of the world society perspective in the social sciences. Ramirez received his BA in social sciences from De La Salle University in the Philippines and his MA and PhD in sociology from Stanford University.

His recent publications include “Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions” (with W. Cole) American Sociological Review 702-25 2013; “National Incorporation of Global Human Rights: Worldwide Expansion of National Human Rights Organizations, 1966-2004” (with Jeong-Woo Koo). Social Forces. 87:1321-1354. 2009; “Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-national Analyses, 1975-2008” (with J. Meyer and P. Bromley). Sociology of Education 83: 111-134. 2010; “The Worldwide Spread of Environmental Discourse in Social Science Textbooks, 1970-2010 (with P. Bromley and J. Meyer) Comparative Education Review 55, 4; 517-545. 2011; ‘The Formalization of the University: Rules, Roots, and Routes” (With T. Christensen) Higher Education 65: 695-708 2013; and “The World Society Perspective: Concepts, Assumptions, and Strategies” Comparative Education 423-39 2012.

CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
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Francisco Ramirez Professor of Education Panelist
Seminars
Program on Human Rights

Legalizing Human Rights in Africa : Workshop #4

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This 2009-10 interdisciplinary research workshop examines the trajectory of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa by means of regional and international comparisons. Africa is the third, and most recent, region to establish a regional human rights court, the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights (ACPHR). At this critical juncture in African human rights, there is an urgent need for deeper understandings and applications of the law of human rights.

This workshop will be of interest and benefit to faculty and graduate students conducting research in the following areas: African studies; human rights; law; anthropology; cultural studies; history; political science and international relations; philosophy; and sociology.

The workshop, coordinated by Helen Stacy (Law School, FSI), met once during Fall quarter and will meet three times during the Winter and Spring quarters of the 2009-2010 academic year.

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Encina West, Rm 208

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow, CDDRL, Senior Lecturer, Stanford School of Law Moderator
Steven Robins Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Stellenbosch Speaker
Workshops
Program on Human Rights

Legalizing Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #3

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This 2009-10 interdisciplinary research workshop examines the trajectory of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa by means of regional and international comparisons. Africa is the third, and most recent, region to establish a regional human rights court, the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights (ACPHR). At this critical juncture in African human rights, there is an urgent need for deeper understandings and applications of the law of human rights.

This workshop will be of interest and benefit to faculty and graduate students conducting research in the following areas: African studies; human rights; law; anthropology; cultural studies; history; political science and international relations; philosophy; and sociology.

The workshop, coordinated by Helen Stacy (Law School, FSI), met once during Fall quarter and will meet three times during the Winter and Spring quarters of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Download pdf
Download pdf

Encina West
Rm. 208

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow, CDDRL, Senior Lecturer, Stanford Law School Moderator
Workshops
Program on Human Rights

Legalizing Human Rights in Africa Workshop #6

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At this workshop, Mark Goodale will be delivering a talk entitled "Human Rights in an Anthropological Key." Mark is an anthropologist who specializes in legal anthropology, human rights and culture, comparative ethical practice and epistemology, the anthropology of morality, and conflict studies. He has been conducting research in Bolivia since 1996 and during 2003-2004 (as a Fulbright scholar) he studied Romania’s efforts to reform its political and legal institutions in preparation for accession to the European Union in 2007. He came to George Mason's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in the fall of 2003 after serving as the first Marjorie Shostak Distinguished Lecturer in Anthropology at Emory University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001).

He is the author of two recent books: Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford University Press, 2009) and Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (Stanford University Press, 2008). He is currently at work on two new books: the first is an ethnographic analysis of sociopolitical change and the moral imagination in Bolivia based on three years of research funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation; the second is a volume of essays on human rights and moral creativity.

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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Mark Goodale Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Anthropology Speaker George Mason University
Seminars
Program on Human Rights
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