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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.

The Outer and the Inner Transformation of the Global Social Sphere through Technology: The State of Two Fields in Transition

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Transitions in technology are shaping, defining and establishing the future of the globalized social sphere with increasing pace and impact. As seen from a systemic viewpoint, the overall process seems to consist of a two-fold movement, in which an outer process of transition is joined by an inner transformational drive. While new social media like Facebook, Twitter, webcams, smartphones and iPads change the outer dimension of how we perceive, interpret and handle our social lives, thus transforming our habits of cultural consumption, contemporary brain and consciousness research are changing the inner dimension of the contemporary social by dramatically re-shaping the self-perception and interpretation of the individual through the findings, cultural distribution and practical applications of neuroscience and neurotechnology, thus questioning the conceptual cornerstones of sociality as conceived by Western modernity. This two-fold argument examines both processes from the inside out and the outside in. As such, the primary task as at now may not be trying to “explain” the meaning(s) of the new developments, but rather to identify an array of crucial questions at the inter- and trans-disciplinary crossroads between the different societal fields, culturo-political trends and scientific disciplines.

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Screening of The Whistleblower

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"The Whistleblower is a grueling exposé of how human trafficking emerged as a lucrative, far-reaching operation involving the police and UN peacekeepers, many of them protected by diplomatic immunity in Bosnia. The Whistleblower is based on the life and experience of Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) when she worked with the the United Nations Gender Affairs Office in Bosnia, working with the police to investigate rape, domestic abuse and sex trafficking. Kathryn discovers a nest of imprisoned young prostitutes who are so frightened that they refuse to talk to her. When she reports back to her bosses, they mock her efforts or offer no help alledging bureaucratic rules to rescue prostitutes whose passports have been confiscated by their kidnappers." (NYT)

Bechtel Conference Center

Helen Stacy Director Moderator Program on Human Rights
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Human Trafficking

Getting to the roots of the tobacco industry

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Tobacco now kills 90 times more people each year than HIV/AIDS in China. China's tobacco industry is closely tied to the global industry, and the Asia Health Policy Program is working to establish a new field of research on its history, beginning with a Mar. 2012 conference at the new Stanford Center at Peking University. Robert Proctor, a Stanford historian and author of a groundbreaking new book on the global tobacco industry, will take part.
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Beauty and smoking are paired in this vintage-style cigarette poster in China, Nov. 2005. | Flickr/Yeap Ku
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Grants support research on health care, violence and technology in poorest areas

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More than 500,000 people live in Mathare, the second-largest collection of slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Crime and disease ravage the population, and shanties have no electricity or running water. But there’s one piece of technology that everyone seems to have, one which promises to bring much-needed improvements: the cell phone.

Cell phones are central to two of the eight most recent Global Underdevelopment Action Fund projects funded by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Both projects will be led by Joshua Cohen, a professor of political science, philosophy and law and the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society.

The first of Cohen’s projects will examine whether texting private and accurate health advice will increase awareness of risky sexual behavior among Mathare’s younger residents who face high rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Cohen's second project involves teaching women to use mobile technology to meet up with larger groups while traveling at night, which Cohen believes can led to a decrease in the number of assaults, muggings and rapes. Eventually, the hope is that the program can be taken over by Kenya’s police and expanded.

 Cell phone charging station in Mathare

Six other projects are receiving support from the third round of Global Underdevelopment Action Fund awards, amounting to a total of $265,000.

The funds will enable multidisciplinary teams led by Stanford faculty from across the university to perform policy-relevant research focused on global underdevelopment challenges.

The funded projects will have real world impact. They will help target tuberculosis, which kills more than 1 million people a year and hinders economic development in the hardest-hit regions, like parts of India. They evaluate the amount of resources necessary to improve test scores and lower anemia rates among China’s rural schoolchildren. They ensure that health care is accessible to people in the Arab world where countries are undergoing political transitions. And they evaluate the challenges and benefits of bringing solar power to areas in Africa where electricity is a rare commodity.

As varied as the eight projects are, each will train Stanford undergraduate or graduate students, stressing the importance that Stanford and FSI place on training the next generation of researchers and policy influencers.

The projects were selected by a faculty committee chaired by Stephen D. Krasner, FSI’s deputy director and the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations.

The Action Fund is supported by FSI donors, matching funds from the Office of the President and FSI. The fund grew out of the institute’s 2010 conference on Technology, Governance, and Global Development. This year’s follow-up conference further showcased FSI’s commitment to challenges posed by global underdevelopment with a focus on food security and health.

The award-winning projects and their principal investigators are:

  • Texting for Sexual Health: Effects of Information Provision and Common Knowledge on Health-Seeking Behavior in Kenya
    Joshua Cohen
    In hopes of increasing awareness that could minimize sexual health risks, the team will promote a mobile health counseling service, which will enable young people in Nairobi’s Mathare slums to receive private and reliable answers from health counselors through text messaging.
  • Can Mobile Phones Coordinate Community Action to Improve Women’s Safety in Slums?
    Joshua Cohen
    The program uses mobile technology to measure whether the number of assaults on women will decrease if they travel in groups. The project will evaluate whether this “safety in numbers” program can be taken over by Kenyan police.
  • Crime, Violence and Governance in Latin America: Sharing Data and Building a Web-Based Research Network to Expand Knowledge
    Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar
    This project will build a systematically organized repository of research on crime, violence and citizen security in Latin America.
  • Tuberculosis Control and its Benefits to the Rural Poor
    Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
    This study will determine the impact of improved TB control effects in India, which accounts for 20 percent of global TB incidence, and project economic outcomes from India’s TB epidemic over the next decade.
  • Paying for Performance to Improve Health in Rural China: Does Resource Scarcity Breed Innovation in Service Delivery?
    Grant Miller
    This study will evaluate whether large subsidies are necessary for improving social situations like lowering anemia rates or improving test scores.
  • Health and Political Reform in the Arab World
    Paul H. Wise
    Partnering with The Lancet journal and the American University of Beirut, the team will produce a series of articles on war, social change and health in the Arab world with a goal of improving health care in countries undergoing political transition.
  • Solar Lighting and Phone Charging in East Africa: Understanding Adoption, Business Models and Development Outcomes
    Frank Wolak
    This project will analyze new solar businesses in East Africa. Electricity is central to industry, health services and education, yet 1.5 billion people worldwide lack access. Recently, low-power solar energy sources in homes have appeared as viable options.
  • Understanding the Current Status of Medical Technology in Rural China
    Paul Yock
    This study will evaluate the use of medical technology in rural China in order to establish a baseline for future work and establish partnerships. The long-term goal is an analytical framework within which to understand the role of medical technology in Chinese health care.
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China's vibrant, changing media landscape

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Newsstands dot the street corners of China’s major cities, and each day the country’s netizens cram into Internet cafés to surf the web and connect with friends online. Last year alone, Chinese readers purchased 50 billion newspapers and the government reported 163 million regular Internet café users—roughly one-third of China’s total Internet population.

According to panelists at the Dec. 7 China's Changing Media Landscape event, organized by Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), now is both an exciting and a challenging time to be a journalist in China.

Changes in China’s media landscape go hand in hand with today’s rapid economic, social, and political reforms, said Shorenstein APARC associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider as he opened the event. He described Caixin Media, recipient of the 2011 Shorenstein Journalism Award, as the “first truly independent media company in China.”

“We need to try harder to get a scoop, but I think it’s a nice problem to have.”
-Hu Shuli, Editor-in-Chief, Caixin Media

Hu Shuli, editor-in-chief of Caixin Media and a former Stanford Knight Journalism Fellow, said that China’s number of quality investigative and independent media outlets keeps growing. “We need to try harder to get a scoop,” she said. “But I think it’s a nice problem to have.”

Hu called technology a “double-edged sword” in that it can be manipulated in order to spread rumors and incite unproductive debates. She said, however, that the popularity of the Internet and mobile devices offers Chinese journalists the opportunity to publish news faster and reach the public through social media platforms like the country’s most popular micro-blog service Sina Weibo, which has approximately 230 million user accounts.

Caixin managing editor Wang Shuo spoke of the efforts by Caixin and other independent Chinese media outlets to gain an international audience. “China presents one of the most exciting stories of our time,” he said.

Caixin and the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal publish one another’s news stories on a monthly basis. Wang said that the modest amount of “bartered” content is not the point. “It means that a major U.S. newspaper recognizes that Caixin is up to international standards,” he said.

Ben Hu, a reporter with Southern Weekend and a current Stanford Knight Fellow, said that China’s tough licensing system makes it difficult for publications to grow. Without a license, he said, online publications cannot attract banner advertising—their real source of income. Hu spoke of a computer-coder-turned-online-news-publisher who draws half-a-million visitors to his website daily, but still cannot make a profit from it.

China’s weak copyright protection system is another major issue facing journalists today, he said. Start-up publications often plunder “real” articles and rehash the content to avoid paying a fee to license it.

Orville Schell, the director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations and the recipient of the 2003 Shorenstein Journalism Award, said that as the traditional U.S. media industry declines, China’s continues to grow more vibrant. On the flip side, however, he said that aggressive industry competition and the state’s system of licensing and censorship challenges journalists.

But China’s system of media control may also have an inadvertent upside, Schell suggested. It may slow the spread of a dumbing down of content in television and other areas of the media, following the commerce-driven model of the U.S. media industry.

The panel discussion concluded with a lively question-and-answer session from the standing-room-only audience of members from the Stanford community and general public. Questions ranged from the role of technology in the media to China’s system of censorship.

Hu Shuli and Wang accepted the Shorenstein Journalism Award on behalf of Caixin Media at a dinner ceremony held later that day at Stanford. The event marked the first time that an Asian media outlet or journalist has won the award.

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A rare lone figure early in the day in an Internet cafe, Turpan, China. Internet- and mobile-based technologies are increasingly relevant to Chinese journalists. | Flickr/Tom Thai
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Population Exchanges in the Modern Era

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This roundtable engages the causes, courses and consequences of the policy of mass population exchanges that have shaped the political and ethnographic boundaries of modern Eurasia.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, Mediterranean Studies Forum, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center.

Levinthal Hall

Matthew Frank Lecturer in International History Speaker University of Leeds, UK
Catherine Gousseff Researcher at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and FSI-Humanities Center international visitor for February 2012 Speaker
Panel Discussions

Gabriela Calderón

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-2996
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CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow 2012-13
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Gabriela Calderon holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. Her research interests include policies that affect gender differences in developing countries, policy evaluation, violence in Latin America and the effect of institutions and governance on the provision of public goods and health/education outcomes. She did her master's degree in economic theory and bachelor's degree in economics at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Currently, in the Program on Poverty and Governance, her research analyzes the way institutions and democracy affect the provision of public goods, and the impact they have on health outcomes like infant mortality trends. She is also studying the effects of government interventions that combat  drug-trafficking organizations over violence in Mexico. 

Her research has focused on the topics of development, public finance, and the evaluation of public policy programs in Mexico. For example, during the summers of 2009/2010, she conducted a field experiment in Zacatecas, Mexico with Giacomo de Giorgi, an assistant professor from Stanford University, and Jesse Cuhna, a former Stanford student. The main task was to evaluate the impact of financial literacy classes on underprivileged women entrepreneurs in the region. To successfully complete an evaluation in an untreated region, they proposed collaborating with the Mexican NGO CREA on a joint project. They contacted local interviewers, trained them, and identified all women entrepreneurs in the 17 communities, in which we conducted the experiment.  Preliminary results suggest that the female entrepreneurs who were randomly assigned to treatment earned higher profits, had larger revenues, and served a greater number of clients. They also found that they were more likely to implement formal accounting techniques.

She has also studied  programs that are not randomly assigned as an experiment. For example, she has analyzed the effects of a national policy in Mexico of child care services, called Estancias Infantiles para apoyar a Madres Trabajadoras (EI), using administrative, census and household data.  Her empirical research strategy identifies the effects of the program on both the men and women who were eligible for the program. She used time, location and eligibility variation, and considered a major threat to identification of the actual effects: for example, a manufacturer who moves into a municipality at approximately the same time as the EI program and who happens to disproportionately demand the skills of women who were eligible to the program happened to have. To ensure that such scenarios do not affect her results, she chose not triple difference strategy, in which all ineligible people are treated as “controls” for the EI-eligible families. Instead, she employs Synthetic Control Methods, using the same methodology as Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) and Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller (2010) to ensure that her control group has the same mix of skills and preferences as the EI-eligible group. She adapted the Synthetic Control Method to analyze repeated cross-sectional household data, which are data that are typically available in developing countries

12th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment: Environment & Security

The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) will present its 12th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment: Environment and Security, January 18-20, 2012 in Washington, DC.  

The Environment and Security Conference will provide a forum to explore the connections between environment and security issues, their common underlying scientific threads, and the policy and governance needed to address security risks posed by a rapidly changing environment.

The conference is expected to bring together over 1,000 attendees from the scientific, business, academic and environmental communities, as well as international, federal, and regional government officials. 

NCSE utilizes a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to covene involved scientists and decision-makers from various sectors of society. The conferences include renowned speakers, topical symposia to explore issues more in depth, and breakout workshops to develop a set of recommendations on how to advance science and connect it to policy and decision-making.

FSE director Roz Naylor will be participating in a plenary session and symposium.

The first, Integrating Climate, Energy, Food, Water, and Health includes:

Moderator: Frank Sesno, Professor and Director, School of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University

  • Jeff Seabright, Vice President for Environment and Water Resources, The Coca-Cola Company

  • Geoff Dabelko, Director, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

  • Rosamond Naylor, Director of the Center on Food Security and Environment, Stanford University

The second plenary session is on Climate Change and Food Security and includes:

Moderator: Jonathan Shrier, Acting Special Representative, Global Food Security, U.S. Department of State

  • Dr. Marc Cohen, Senior Researcher on Humanitarian Policy and Climate Change, Oxfam America
  • Dr. Rosamond "Roz" Naylor, Director of the Center on Food Security and Environment, Stanford University
  • Dr. Mark Rosegrant, Division Director, Environment and Production Technology Division, IFPRI
  • Dr. David Battisti, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Tamaki Endowed Chair, University of Washington

Keynote speakers include Amory Lovins, Cofounder, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute and Thomas Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times.

Washington DC

Rosamond L. Naylor

(650) 723-5697
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Senior Fellow, Emerita, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,
William Wrigely Professor, Emerita, Department of Environmental Social Sciences
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Rosamond (Roz) Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor, Emerita, of Global Environmental Policy in the Doerr School of Sustainability; and founding Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She has been involved in numerous field-level research projects around the world with her students and has published widely on issues related to global food systems, food policy, and aquaculture. She is the co-chair of The Blue Food Assessment, an international initiative aimed at providing a comprehensive scientific evaluation of the sustainability, nutrition, equity, and justice dimensions of aquatic foods cultured and captured in freshwater and marine environments within the global food system. She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a Pew Marine Fellow, and a Leopold Leadership Fellow. She is also the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Aspen Global Change Institute and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana. At Stanford, she teaches courses on The World Food Economy, Human Society and Environmental Change, and Food and Security.
 

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David S. Battisti

Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Washington
Box 351640
Seattle WA 98195-1640

(206) 543-2019 (206) 543-0306
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Tamaki Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington
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David Battisti received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (1988) from the University of Washington. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1990. Since then, he has been on the Faculty in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, and was the Director of JISAO from 1997-2003. Presently, he is the Tamaki Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the University's Earth Initiative.

David Battisti's research is focused on understanding the natural variability of the climate system. He is especially interested in understanding how the interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice lead to variability in climate on time scales from seasonal to decades. His previous research includes coastal oceanography, the physics of the El Nino/Southern Osciallation (ENSO) phenomenon, midlatitude atmosphere/ocean variability and variability in the coupled atmosphere/sea ice system in the Arctic. Battisti is presently working to improve the El Nino models and their forecast skill, and to understand the mechanisms responsible for the drought cycles in the Sahel, and the decade-to-decade changes in the climate of the Pacific Northwest, including how the latter affects the snow pack in the Cascades and coastal ranges from Washington to Alaska. He is also working on the impacts of climate variability and climate change on food production in Mexico and Indonesia.

Battisti's recent interests are in paleoclimate: in particular, the mechanisms responsible for the remarkable "abrupt" global climate changes evident throughout the last glacial period.

Battisti has served on numerous international science panels, on Committees of the National Research Council. He served for five years as co-chair of the Science Steering Committee for the U.S. Program on Climate (US CLIVAR) and is co-author of several international science plans. He has published over 60 papers in peer-review journals in atmospheric sciences and oceanography, and twice been awarded distinguished teaching awards.

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North Korea's new course

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The legacy of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung's decision in the early 1990s to pursue a strategic partnership with the United States has run its course. In its place, the focus of Pyongyang's policies has decisively shifted to Beijing. However wary the North Koreans may be of their neighbor, the fact is that from Pyongyang's viewpoint, the Chinese have delivered and the United States did not.

Any shards remaining from the North's previous, decades-long effort to normalize ties with the U.S. were swept away by current leader Kim Jong Il's trip in May to China, his third in barely a year. Based on our discussions with Chinese officials, we believe that during that visit, Pyongyang and Beijing came to an understanding that, in preparation for planned, major domestic political events in 2012, both sides require sustained political stability, a convergence of interests that provides the opportunity for expanding bilateral relations beyond anything enjoyed in the past. The North is building toward a "prosperous and powerful" nation in celebration of the Kim Il Sung centenary in April; the Chinese are looking toward their 18th Party Congress scheduled for late next year. In both cases, it was apparently decided, stability on the Korean peninsula would serve economic programs and the succession of a new generation of leaders.

In the arrangements — formal and informal — that emerged from Kim Jong Il's discussions with his hosts, Pyongyang agreed not to "make trouble" (as the Chinese described it to us) in the short term, presumably meaning no deliberate military provocations, no third nuclear test and no launch of another ballistic missile. Beyond that, the talks ended in a compromise that neither side found entirely satisfactory. Kim came away with less aid and a smaller Chinese commitment of support than he had sought, though Pyongyang typically asks for more than it can get.

The North did, however, receive increased access to both Chinese capital and technology in spite ofUnited Nations and other foreign sanctions. Kim also obtained, through the establishment of joint economic zones with China along the Yalu River, a locale to test adjustments necessary to economic development, adjustments that would fall short of what Beijing considers genuine economic reform. Chinese President Hu Jintao, we were told, had to settle for Kim's promise to cause less trouble but without a North Korean commitment to serious steps toward denuclearization.

We believe that this pivot toward Beijing is no routine oscillation in North Korean policy. The drive to normalize relations with the U.S. from 1991 to 2009 had been real, sustained and rooted in Kim Il Sung's deep concern about the regime's future in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps there was no better demonstration of the North's approach in those years than the situation on Oct. 25, 2000 — the 50th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into theKorean War. Who was in Pyongyang on that date meeting Kim Jong Il? The Chinese defense minister? No, he was cooling his heels while Kim met with the U.S. secretary of State. That was no accident of scheduling on Pyongyang's part; it would not happen again today.

If the paradigm shift is real, we expect the North in the near to medium term to make far less overt trouble. Less tension on the Korean peninsula? What could be wrong with that? Nothing, as long as it is understood that such tranquillity will also provide a veil for the North's continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated delivery systems. With the onset of stability and growing Chinese-North Korean cooperation, Pyongyang may well calculate that the outside world's focus on the North Korean nuclear program will become diffuse. Indeed, the North Koreans have long assumed that given enough time, the world would resign itself to their nuclear weapons, as happened with India and Pakistan.

To help things along, it isn't out of the question that Pyongyang might even agree to some U.S. efforts to contain the nuclear program through a series of what Washington calls "pre-steps." The North has repeatedly expressed willingness to consider discussion of its uranium enrichment program and moratoriums on missile and nuclear tests. As unilateral actions, these would have short-term benefits by further stabilizing the situation to provide additional room for discussions. But in the absence of long, serious negotiations between the two sides, they will turn out to be no more meaningful than the ill-considered agreements of the now moribund six-party talks.

All of which brings us back to the deepening North Korean-Chinese ties, and the downgrading in Pyongyang's calculations of relations with the United States. There was considerable momentum behind the North's strategy for engaging the U.S. in past negotiations. That is no longer the case, with consequences we have only started to feel.

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