Abstract:
Kristen Looney will be discussing her forthcoming work, Mobilizing for Development: The Modernization of Rural East Asia (Cornell U. Press 2020). This book tackles the question of how countries achieve rural development and offers a new way of thinking about East Asia’s political economy that challenges the developmental state paradigm. Through a comparison of Taiwan (1950s–1970s), South Korea (1950s–1970s), and China (1980s–2000s), the research shows that different types of development outcomes—improvements in agricultural production, rural living standards, and the village environment—were realized to different degrees, at different times, and in different ways. Looney argues that rural modernization campaigns played a central role in the region and that divergent development outcomes can be attributed to the interplay between campaigns and institutions. Relevant to political science, economic history, rural sociology, and Asian studies, the book enriches our understanding of state-led development and agrarian change.

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Abstract:

In the face of mounting challenges from criminal activity and citizen demands for improved public safety, Mexico has undertaken significant efforts at police reform. Those efforts would presumably enhance the capacity of police forces to fight and deter crime. This paper explores the quantity and quality of police in Mexico, a federation where multi-tier government makes incentives for police professionalization more challenging than in unitary systems. The paper calculates, the true size of police forces, comparing them to all legal specialists in the use of violence, including private security guards at homes and businesses. It then estimates the implicit wage incentives given to experience and human capital formation in the different types of police corporations during the Calderón and Peña Nieto presidential administrations. Finally, we use a municipal cross section to gain further insight into the effects of police professionalization on interpersonal violence, as measured by homicide rates. The overall findings suggest that improving policing in Mexico is not merely a question of adding manpower or spending more budgetary resources, but of changing career incentives for greater professionalization.

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CISAC will be canceling all public events and seminars until at least April 5th due to the ongoing developments associated with COVID-19.

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Abstract: Since the opening of their first facilities, French nuclear companies chose to entrust some (or all, since the 1980s) of their maintenance procedures –the work presenting the greatest work-related hazards –to subcontractors. Starting to the 1970's, a controversy arose about working conditions and the using of employees of subcontracting companies for the operations that were most exposed to radioactive hazards. While subcontracting became endemic to the nuclear industry in France and around the world, there are still few social science studies based on direct research with nuclear maintenance employees, and fewer still addressing workplace health issues.This intervention will describe the processes of problematization of labour and recourse to subcontractors in nuclear industry. It will help understanding why the issue in occupational health do not gain more social visibility. Historical ethnography is the chosen approach. It combines observations, interviews and work in the archives.

Speaker's Biography: Marie Ghis Malfilatre has been a postdoctoral fellow at INSERM, in Paris since January 2019. She is also lecturer in sociology at Sciences Po Grenoble. Defendedat the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, her thesis focuseson labor, health, and precarity in the French nuclear industry. Itoffersan interdisciplinary examination of occupational health controversies among both salariedand subcontracted workers at two of France’s principalnuclear facilities: the fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague, and the pressurizedwater reactors at Chinon. Hercurrent researchaims at understanding the interactions between law, medical expertise,and political power when it comes to recognizing radiation-induced occupational diseases. It unveilsdynamics amongknowledge, recognition,and ignorance of occupational health issues, and shows how the nuclear industry exemplifieslogics and issues at stake in many other professional domains.

This event is co-sponsored by the Program in History and Philosophy of Science; Program in Science, Technology, and Society; and Stanford Center for Law and History.

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded

Abstract: How have national practices of nuclear security produced local conditions of insecurity? After World War II, the United States’ nuclear testing program transformed the Marshall Islands into an experimental site for testing both new weapons and forms of territorial governance. During the same period, the Hunters Point Shipyard in southeast San Francisco became the launching point and return site for ships, scientists, and military personnel circulating between the mainland and the Pacific tests. These activities not only incorporated the Marshall Islands and Hunters Point into networks of militarization and scientific knowledge production, but also resulted in widespread radiological contamination. Professors Mary Mitchell and Helen Kang will discuss the entangled legal, environmental, and social legacies of radiological contamination at these two sites, shedding light on the consequential damages of the Cold War and ongoing efforts to demand accountability from the United States government.

Helen Kang Biography: Helen H. Kang is Professor of Law at Golden Gate University School of Law and Director of the school’s Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, which has received recognition for its work from the American Bar Association and the Clinical Legal Education Association, among others. She has devoted most of her legal career to environmental protection, first as Trial Attorney with the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. Since joining the clinic in 2000, she and her students have successfully represented community and environmental groups, prevailing against agencies such as U.S. EPA and large sources of pollution, including power plants. The clinic’s work has contributed to developments in environmental law, reducing pollution in communities most affected by pollution in California and beyond, and improving public participation and regulatory accountability. Helen’s achievements include successfully arguing in the California Supreme Court to defend the California Environmental Quality Act from federal preemption and compelling California, after decades of abdication, to meaningfully regulate agricultural pollution. She graduated from Berkeley Law, University of California at Berkeley, and Yale University.

Mary Mitchell Biography: Mary X. Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University where she works on issues at the intersection of environmental inequality and law. During the spring of 2020, Mitchell will be a faculty fellow at Princeton University's Shelby Cullom Davis Center. She earned her PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and was an Atkinson Fellow in Sustainability at Cornell University from 2016-2018. Previously, she practiced law in Pennsylvania and served as a law clerk to Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

This event is cosponsored with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yMVJu1gmRFk

Abstract: Joshua Busby, University of Texas-Austin, will present the main argument and empirical work from his draft book manuscript. Over the past decade, a rich literature on the connections between climate change and security emerged, much of it quantitative on the links between climate change and violent internal conflict. In this book manuscript, Busby seeks to widen the aperture of security concerns to include major humanitarian emergencies. Through the study of paired cases, he explores why countries that face similar physical exposure to climate hazards experience different outcomes. His argument combines state capacity, the degree of political inclusion, and the role of international assistance to explain differences between countries as well as within countries over time. Countries with low state capacity, high political exclusion, and where assistance is denied or delivered in a one-sided manner are expected to have the worst security outcomes in the wake of exposure to climate hazards. While assistance can sometimes compensate for weak state capacity, improvements in capacity and inclusion can diminish the risks of climate-related emergencies and conflict. In this talk, Busby will compare the experience of Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar to cyclones.

Speaker's Biography:

Joshua Busby is an Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security. He has been part of two U.S. Department of Defense-funded research projects on climate and security and his work on the topic has been published in Foreign Affairs, World Development, Climatic Change, Political Geography, International Security, Security Studies, among other publications.

...water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink...

Join Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment for a lecture and reception with Dr. Junaid Ahmad, the World Bank Country Director for India.

Dr. Ahmad will look at the political economy of managing service delivery in India through the prism of water. The presentation will look at the water supply and sanitation sector and water resource management in the context of India’s federalism and urban and food policies. Ahmad argues that India’s transition to middle income will depend significantly on how water will be valued in India’s political economy.  

Junaid Ahmad, from Bangladesh, is currently the World Bank Country Director for India. Over the years, Mr. Ahmad has brought an exceptional track record of management and leadership in the areas of policy reform, service delivery and international partnerships, combining intellectual and analytical rigor with strategic operational focus. Mr. Ahmad’s work has covered urban finance and city management, infrastructure finance, water, service delivery in federal systems, and local government reform. Currently, he is responsible for managing the World Bank’s India portfolio.