Dissertation Workshop, Call for Papers
Globalizing Class: Spaces, Places, and Networks of Power

Institute for Public Knowledge
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
8-9 June 2012

Deadline for Applications: 15 April 2012

This interdisciplinary dissertation workshop is concerned with class identities, formations, genealogies, cultures, and power relations in processes of globalization, past and present. It seeks to globalize class in three distinct, connected ways.

1) We seek to open up spatial frames for the study of class, as widely as possible, using the term “globalize” to signal immeasurable spatial possibilities and also to evoke the many contested meanings of the term “global” that are in circulation today.

2) We seek to complicate and specify the spatial framing of class, so as to move beyond assumptions of methodological nationalism, which (mostly invisibly) identify class status and power with national culture, society, and political economy. How this might work in practice appears when we consider the spatial framing of E.P.Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class (Vintage, 1963), which covers a period in history when English class formations were travelling the seas and extending their reach among continents. In a mobile spatial framing of class, we may also find that cultural meanings of “class,” in the sense of ”classiness,” may require access to transnational commodity chains and participation in extensive class relations, informed by cultural capital on the move, in the guise of Orientalism, nationalism, or neo-liberalism.

3) We want to analyze the practical work of globalizing classes in expanding capitalism, from early days of mercantilism to the present. Trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, and Indian Ocean migrations and transplantations of capital and labor move along specific networks, from place to place, forming distinctive sites of class relations, inter-connected and inter-dependent, but also imbued with their own cultural character. We can use mobile spatial lens to follow interlaced migrations of capital and labor, the trans-national formation of middle classes, and the productivity of consumer-class cultures amidst the flow of values and commodities, such as those that define the iconic character portrayed in The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Duke, 2008).

The workshop brings together eight students and four faculty members, who meet from 9 to 5 for two days at IPK. We consider two student projects in the morning and two in the afternoon, on Friday and Saturday. Lunch is provided on Friday and Saturday, and dinner, on Thursday and Friday. Students from outside the United States can be offered three days’ residence in a local hotel, two students to a room. We are unable to cover travel expenses.

Students in later stages of dissertation writing are invited to submit proposals for this workshop. Please send (1) a current CV, (2) a short account of your dissertation, and (3) one draft chapter, as email attachments, to David Ludden (del5@nyu.edu) and Ravinder Kaur (rkaur@hum.ku.dk), by 15 April 2012. We will select participants by 1 May 2012.

Students need to provide written material for the workshop by 25 May 2012: this will consist of a short overview of the dissertation and one draft chapter. All students and faculty read all workshop material in advance of our meetings. Students are each assigned to provide detailed comments on each other’s papers. Authors then respond briefly, opening general discussion, which includes faculty input.

Professor of Sociology and IPK Senior Fellow Eric Klinenberg speaks with Brian Lehrer on WNYC today about his new book Going Solo based on interviews with 300 people who live alone.

Living alone is a rising trend in America and abroad, but common conceptions of single dwellers as lonely or socially isolated are inaccurate. Klinenberg's research reveals that singletons are more likely to get out of their homes and participate in the social scene at restaurants and neighborhood groups than are their counterparts who live with others.

Klinenberg has also been interviewed by Smithsonian magazine, written an article for the New York Times, and another article for Fortune about the social context surrounding the rise of living alone.

** Update: Going Solo was reviewed in The New Yorker's 16 April 2012 issue by Nathan Heller. **

Critical Social Studies of International Health
June 7-8, 2010
Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU

Issues of international health regularly command enormous attention in academia, government, and indeed on the world stage.  The increasing centrality of international health, as evidenced by the recent panic around the H1N1 epidemic, invites critical reflection from the social sciences. However, no one academic discipline within the social sciences provides all the theoretical and methodological tools to study the multifaceted features of international health.  
 
On June 7 and 8, 2010, the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU will host an intensive two-day dissertation workshop to help Ph.D. students who are working on local, national, and global aspects of health from various theoretical and methodological perspectives. It will offer the students an opportunity to share their material with instructors and other participants  from different disciplinary backgrounds.  The workshop will be chaired by Dr. Manjari Mahajan, Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge and Program Officer at the Social Science Research Council.
 
Students from all fields of the social sciences and humanities who have started writing their dissertation are encouraged to apply.  While students in any Ph.D. program at any university are able to participate, please note that the program is organized for NYU students, and we are unable to provide funds for travel and lodging.  Each student will be expected to share a chapter or an article, and will receive detailed feedback from the instructors and other participants on methodological, theoretical, and substantive issues.  The workshop will additionally facilitate building a network among students who are in the writing phase of their dissertation, a period that can often be isolating.
 
To apply, please submit a one-page statement of your research project and your C.V. to Esther Castillo, htc226@nyu.edu by March 26, 2010.

 
Manjari Mahajan’s research interests include science and technology studies, public health, law and science, and humanitarian emergencies. Her work focuses on the politics and sociology of the AIDS epidemics in India and South Africa. She earned her doctorate from the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University in 2008, and holds a BA from Harvard University.

Dissertation Workshop
Jumping Scales: Studying and writing about
transnational processes

The Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU is offering a
three-day dissertation workshop titled "Jumping Scales:
Studying and Writing about Transational Processes." It is open
to students of all disciplines who are writing their Ph.D.
dissertations on transnational issues. The workshop will be
held on May 10-12.

Location: Institute for Public Knowledge, New York, USA
Workshop Date: May 10-12, 2010
Deadline for Application (details below): February 28, 2010

This workshop is organized and directed by Sally Merry and
Nicolas Guilhot (full bios below).

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Some of the most important topics of our time are also the
fuzziest objects when it comes to study them: human rights,
global governance, humanitarianism, development, transnational
networks, processes of global intellectual or institutional
diffusion. If you are currently writing your Ph.D. dissertation
on similar topics, you may have spent a lot of time wondering
about substantial as well as methodological issues, no matter
what your core discipline is. How does one write about a
"global" object? What's the proper way of handling it? From
which side do you hold it – the thick description of the local
or the wide but maybe thin expanse of the global? How should
one relate the description of situated empirical material to
the consideration of international or transnational issues?
How does one track the global diffusion of a set of ideas or
institutions?

Most of the disciplinary toolboxes turn out to be ill-equipped
when the moment comes to "jump scales" from the local to the
global level: sociology, anthropology, law or political science
each provide some insights, but hardly a method. Or maybe they
have developed an international perspective so late in their
historical development and have remained so tethered to a
national framework that they have created an artificial gap
between the so-called local and the so-called global. Maybe
there are no scales to jump, after all.

Jumping scales is an intensive three-day workshop organized by
the Institute for Public Knowledge to help dissertating
students escape their isolation and share both their work and
the problems they encounter. Each student will have the
opportunity to discuss his or her project with the other
students and with two instructors, who will facilitate
discussion and offer comments. The objective of the workshop
is to help students connect their own work to wider debates –
both around their topics and around methodological issues. The
workshop is student-centered and allows for the in-depth
discussion of each project, as well as general discussions.

Sally Engle Merry is Professor of Anthropology and Director of
the Law and Society Program at New York University. Her recent
books include Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law
(Princeton University Press, 2000), Human Rights and Gender
Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice
(University of Chicago Press, 2006), and The Practice of Human
Rights: Tracking Law between the Local and the Global (co-edited
with Mark Goodale; Cambridge University Press, 2007). She is
past president of the Law and Society Association and the
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology and a member
of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological
Association and of the Law and Society Association. The Law and
Society Association awarded her the Hurst Prize for Colonizing
Hawai'i in 2002 and the Kalven Prize for overall scholarly
contributions to sociolegal scholarship in 2007.

Nicolas Guilhot is a senior researcher at the CNRS. His
research focuses on the history of international relations
theory, and on the role of philanthropy in the development of
the social sciences. Guilhot has taught in the department of
sociology and the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the
London School of Economics, and at Columbia University. He
earned his doctorate from the European University Institute in
Florence in 2001. His recent publications include The Democracy
Makers: Human Rights and the Politics of Global Order
(Columbia University Press, 2005) and a forthcoming volume on
international relations theory at Columbia University Press.
He is also executive editor of Humanity: An International
Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, a
new journal published by the University of Pennsylvania press
starting in Fall 2010.

Suggested Readings:
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996,
p. 48-65.
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Social Conditions of the International
Circulation of Ideas," in Richard Shusterman (ed.), Bourdieu:
A Critical Readers, Oxford, Blackwell, 1999, p. 220-228.
Yves Dezalay & Bryan Garth, The internationalization of palace
wars: lawyers, economists, and the contest to transform Latin
American states, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2002,
p. 3-16, 32-58
Margaret Keck & Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond borders:
advocacy networks in international politics, Ithaca, Cornell
University Press, 1998, Introduction, p. 1-39.
Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to
Actor-Network Theory, Oxford University Press, 2005,
Introduction + p. 173-190.
George Marcus, "Ethnography in/of the World System: The
Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography," in Ethnography through
thick and thin, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 79-104.

APPLICATION PROCEDURES
To apply, please provide a brief statement (1 page) of your
proposed research. Please also include a one-paragraph bio
describing your educational background and academic work, your
contact information, and anything you think is relevant about
your research profile.

Workshop participants will be selected on the basis of their
research projects and the possibility for meaningful exchanges
among other participants. Please submit proposals and bios to
Esther Castillo, Research Assistant, at IPK (htc226@nyu.edu) by
February 28, 2010.

On October 22, 2009, the IPK, the SSRC, and Stony Brook University held a public symposium on "Rethinking Secularism: the Power of Religion in the Public Sphere.

The event featured four of the world’s leading public intellectuals: Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West; each gave powerful accounts of religion in the public sphere.

The audio from this event is available at the SSRC blog, The Immanent Frame

The Institute for Public Knowledge has launched the beta version of a Public Sphere Guide, co-sponsored with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The Public Sphere Guide is a research and teaching guide, creating a map of the fragmented interdisciplinary field of study and building a resource for the renewal of the public sphere.

This mapping project is accompanied by an interactive essay forum on Transformations of the Public Sphere. The initial contributions to the essay forum include essays related to a mini-plenary of the recent International Communication Association conference as well as an essay by IPK Director Craig Calhoun on "Remaking America: Public Institutions and the Public Good".

Artist Yegizaw Michael's show of new works on canvas, Crossings: a visual exploration of crisis was on view at the Institute for Public Knowledge from March 24, 2009 through June 26, 2009.

Graduate student Leah T. Abraha collaborated with Muna Mohamed and Dawit Habte to develop an online video piece based on this show which features images from the opening reception, slides of Michael's paintings, and an essay written by Ms. Abraha about the show. View it on YouTube.

On March 6, 2009, nine scholars of South Asia – Amrita Basu, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Nyla Ali Khan, David Ludden, Zia Mian, Senzil Nawid, Sahar Shafqat, Kamala Visweswaran, and Chitralekha Zutshi – met at the Institute for Public Knowledge to discuss the politics of knowledge concerning South Asia as it connects academic and policy work in the US.

The group represents a range of social science, humanities, and scientific disciplines, with research foci in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, although some of brought broader areas of expertise. The discussions focused on these three countries because they are at the center of current U.S. Policy debate.

The group has released a policy report on South Asia, "Reframing a Regional Approach to South Asia: Demilitarization, Development, and Sustainable Peace," available for download here.

On the March 16 episode of the Planet Money podcast, IPK Visiting Scholar Matthew Noah Smith complicates a common notion of "blame" that imbues the public conversation on the ongoing financial crisis.

Matthew Noah Smith is visiting from Yale University. On April 1, 2009, Professor Smith will be leading a discussion with Yale Philosophy colleague Thomas Pogge: Toward Developing Reliable Indices of Poverty and Gender Equity. This presentation is part of the Humanitarian Action Seminar.

New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge hosted a roundtable discussion on the International Criminal Court and Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, on Wednesday, March 4, 4-5 p.m.

A video stream is available here.

Panelists for the roundtable included: Alex de Waal, program director at the Social Science Research Council and Peter Rosenblum, a professor of human rights law at Columbia Law School. The discussion was moderated by IPK Director Craig Calhoun

This event was co-sponsored by the Social Science Research Council.

Visit www.real.com for video software.