ARTICLES
Select recent articles by Buffett Center affiliates
2012
 "The Global Spread of European Style International Courts." Karen Alter, Political Science. West European Politics 35 (1) 2012: 135-154.
Alter explores how Europe's embedded international courts, especially the European Court of Justice (ECJ), have spread around the world, and how other regions have used the ECJ model as well as how they have differed from it.
"Threats to Property Rights in Russia: From Private Coercion to State Aggression," Jordan Gans-Morse, Political Science. Post-Soviet Affairs 28 (3) 2012: 263-295.
Gans-Morse explores a fundamental shift in threats to property rights in Russia, where state actors (instead of extortion rackets or physical intimidation) are now the primary aggressors. Key threats now include seizing firms' assets, illegal corporate raiding, extortion, and unlawful arrests of businesspeople.
"Almost Saving Whales: The Ambiguity of Success at the International Whaling Commission," Ian Hurd, Political Science. Ethics and International Affairs 26 (1) 2012: 1-10.
Hurd provides a history of the success of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) from the 1960s, but he also shows how the organization's current crisis may put the IWC in danger.
"The Privilege of Revolution: Gender, Class, Space, and Affect in Egypt," Jessica Winegar, Anthropology. American Ethnologist 39 (1) 2012: 67-70.
Winegar challenges assumptions about political transformation by contrasting women's experiences at home during the Egyptian revolution with the image of the iconic male revolutionary in Tahrir Square. She calls attention to the way that revolution is experienced and undertaken in domestic spaces in ways deeply inflected by gender and class.
2011
"'Sacrilege of a Strange, Contemporary Kind': The Unknown Soldier and the Imagined Community after the Vietnam War." Michael Allen, History. History and Memory 23 (2) 2011: 90-131.
Allen explains the exhumation and identification of the Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War. He shows that the grassroots activists who named the Vietnam Unknown opposed his internment and argues that their effort to open the Tomb succeeded because their claims of ongoing veteran victimization resonated strongly with Americans.
"Legal Integration in the Andes: Lawmaking by the Andean Tribunal of Justice." Karen Alter, Political Science, et al. European Law Journal 17 (5) 2011: 701-715.
This article introduces original data on the Andean Tribunal of Justice and the European Court of Justice collected via interviews and through rulings. It uses the data to compare Andean and European jurisprudence in three different areas.
"Domestic Political Survival and International Conflict: Is Democracy Good for Peace?" Sandeep Baliga, Kellogg, David O. Lucca, and Tomas Sjöström. The Review of Economic Studies 78 (2) 2011: 458-486.
Using Polity data and game theoretical models, Baliga and his colleagues classify countries as full democracies, limited democracies, and dictatorships. For the period 1816–2000, data suggest that limited democracies are more aggressive than other regime types, including dictatorships, and not only during periods when the political regime is changing.
"The Effect of Board Structure on Firm Value: A Multiple Identification Strategy Approach Using Korean Data." Bernard Black, Law and Kellogg, et al. Journal of Financial Economics 104 (1) 2012: 203-226.
The article uses a 1999 Korean law as an exogenous shock to assess how board structure affects firm market value. It finds that the legal shock produced large share price increases for large firms, relative to mid-sized firms; share prices jumped in 1999 when the reforms were announced.
"Back to Africa: Second Chances for the Children of West African Immigrants," Caroline Bledsoe, Anthropology and Papa Sow. Journal of Marriage and Family 73 (4) 2011: 747-762.
Bledsoe and Sow examine the phenomenon of West African parents living in Europe and North America who send their older children back home. They conclude that West African immigrants fearing the consequences of their children's indiscipline in the West, where racism and hostility can endanger the entire family, may send unruly children back to the home country.
"Family Reunification Ideals and the Practice of Transnational Reproductive Life among Africans in Europe." Caroline Bledsoe, Anthropology, et al. Reproduction, Globalization, and the State: New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectives (Duke University Press, 2011).
The authors consider the spread of international humanitarian conventions that shape family reunification, focusing on their consequences for African families in Europe. They argue that family reunification doctrine can have counterproductive consequences: rather than bring families together it can divide them along the very fault lines they were intended to safeguard.
"Sociocultural anthropology's encounters with large public data sets: The case of the Spanish Municipal Register." Caroline Bledsoe, Anthropology. Anthropological Theory 10 (1-2) 2010: 103-111.
Bledsoe argues that large demographic data sets can be employed for addressing sociocultural questions. She uses non-Spanish citizen demographic data from the Spanish Municipal Register to show that numbers have something to say about the dynamics of identity and belonging.
"The choice gap: The divergent online news preferences of journalists and consumers." Pablo Boczkowski, Communication Studies, et al. Journal of Communication 61 (5) 2011: 857-876.
This study examines four online news sites to compare stories that journalists display most prominently with stories consumers read most frequently. It finds that journalist chosen stories are "soft" with respect to subject matter but not story format, and that these choices diverge from consumers' choices, resulting in a choice gap.
"Borderlands of Modernity and Abandonment: The Lines within Ambos Nogales and the Tohono O'odham Nation." Geraldo Cadava, History. The Journal of American History 98 (2) 2011: 362-383.
Cadava explains how two closely situated US-Mexico borderlands, Ambos Nogales and the Tohono O'odham reservation, developed into very different border spaces. He finds these contrasts in the perceived modernity of the international gateways in Ambos Nogales with the perceived anti-modernity of abandonment of the Tohono O'odham reservation.
"The Beaux-Arts in Another Register: Governmental Administrative and Civic Centers in City Plans of the Republican Era." Peter Carroll, History. Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts (University of Hawaii Press, 2011).
Carroll examines the Chinese appropriation of Beaux-Arts design principles in the new governmental and civic centers designed and built during the Nanjing decade (1927-1937). He highlights their significance as key components of the ambitious urban-planning agenda of the Guomindang.
"The Place of Prostitution in Early 20th Century Suzhou," Peter Carroll, History. Urban History 38 (3) 2011: 413-436.
Carroll analyzes the social, political, and economic struggles around prostitution in early twentieth-century Suzhou. He shows how the actions of prostitutes and the prerogatives of male desire shaped Suzhou's spatial and economic transformation.
"Money, Liquidity and Price." Bruce Carruthers, Sociology. New Approaches to Monetary Theory: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2011).
Carruthers explores the institutional foundations for liquidity and considers how these have been affected by the current global financial crisis. He finds that the financial crisis is also a cognitive crisis in that collective sense-making about economic value has gone awry.
"The Sociology of Finance." Bruce Carruthers, Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 37 2011: 239-259.
This article highlights the sociological work on finance. Research in the discipline reveals the importance of politics for many financial market developments, various implications for corporate governance, the continuing significance of social factors within finance, and the role of theoretical and material devices in shaping financial practices.
"Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam: Thinking Clearly about Causation." Jonathan Caverley, Political Science. International Security 35 (3) 2011: 124-143.
Cost distribution theory suggests that the costs to the median voter in a democracy of fighting an insurgency with firepower are relatively low compared to a more labor-intensive approach. Caverley uses civil-military disagreements over US military strategy in Vietnam to test cost distribution theory's explanatory power.
"Reconceptualizing NEPA to Avoid the Next Preventable Disaster," David Dana, Law and Michael Barsa. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 38 (2) 2011: 219-246.
Dana and Barsa develop accounts of why the risks of technological failure at the root of the Deepwater Horizon disaster were ignored. They argue, then, for a reformulation of environmental reviews where the industry is held more accountable through certain contractual obligations.
"Villancicos from Mexico City for the Virgin of Guadalupe." Drew Davies, Music. Early Music 39 (2) 2011: 229-244.
Davies considers the dialogue between the local and the transatlantic in Mexico City Cathedral villancicos that include Guadalupan literary tropes. The repertory has yet to be published, recorded, or discussed in print, and so the article also introduces performers and listeners alike to the issues surrounding one aspect of this genre.
"Chiefs, Chieftaincies, Chiefdoms, and Chiefly Confederacies." Timothy Earle, Anthropology. Social Evolution & History 10 2011: 27-54.
Earle reviews concepts of chiefs, chiefdoms, and chiefly confederacies and illustrates how Polynesian chiefdoms operated prior to state formation. He uses the history of Kamehameha, King of the Hawaiian Islands, to demonstrate how chiefs fashioned state superstructures, and finds that chiefs continued to operate as sub-state actors after state formation.
"Household economies under the Aztec and Inka empires: A comparison." Timothy Earle, Anthropology. The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Earle describes patterns of consumption, specialized production, and trade of the pre-Hispanic Inka and Aztec empires to understand how their political economies were linked with underlying household economies. He argues that the imperial political economies were products of a dynamic balance among household, community, and political strategies.
"On the Road to Normal: Negotiating Agency and State Sovereignty in Postsocialist Serbia." Jessica Greenberg, Communication Studies. American Anthropologist 113 (1) 2011: 88-100.
Greenberg examines how perceptions of state crisis and moral decay in Serbia impact people's belief that they are no longer normal agents capable of effective action. She analyzes how young Serbian citizens experience changing configurations of state power as enabling conditions for their own moral and agentive capacities.
"The Displaced and Dispossessed of Darfur: Explaining the Sources of a Continuing State-led Genocide." John Hagan, Law, et al. The British Journal of Sociology 62 (1) 2011: 1-25.
The authors analyze the intentional Sudanese state-led attacks on food and water, which massively dislodged Black Africans in Darfur, in order to draw attention to a less-studied element of genocide: elimination through forced migration.
"Routes and Roots of Empire: Pots, Power, and Slavery in the 18th-Century British Caribbean." Mark Hauser, Anthropology. American Anthropologist 113 (3) 2011: 431-447.
Hauser uses research from Jamaica and Dominica to track economic networks through analysis of ceramic assemblages from house yards of enslaved laborers. He suggests that ceramic assemblages speak to how boundaries were enacted differently depending on the status of the actors engaged in these transactions.
"Uneven Topographies: Archaeology of Plantations and Caribbean Slave Economies." Mark Hauser, Anthropology. The Archaeology of Capitalism in Colonial Contexts: Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology (Springer, 2011).
Hauser examines the archaeology of slavery in the Caribbean. He analyzes the diverse practices of enslaved labor in order to demonstrate that the frames of colonialism and capitalism are not sufficient explanatory devices.
"Reckoning with War in the Museum." Laura Hein, History. Critical Asian Studies 43 (1) 2011: 93-110.
Hein examines how people handle their regret at having believed that a foolish war was not just acceptable but necessary. Using Japan after World War II, she finds that many contrite Japanese revisited the aesthetic realm, looking for ways to interpret culture that did not convey the values of fascism.
"Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan." Laura Hein, History. Cold War History 11 (4) 2011: 579-599.
Hein evaluates the recent English-language scholarship on the Occupation of Japan. She argues that works from the past decade affect longstanding interpretations of American history, Japanese history, and post-colonial studies.
"Secularism and International Relations Theory." Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Political Science. Religion and International Relations Theory (Columbia University Press, 2011).
Hurd examines two trajectories of secularism, laicism and Judeo-Christian secularism, to draw attention to the politics surrounding the management of religion in modern politics.
"A Suspension of (Dis)Belief: The Secular-Religious Binary and the Study of International Relations." Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Political Science. Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Hurd interrogates the relation between the secular and the religious. She politicizes the division of labor between these two categories, called the secular/religious binary, and questions its utility through the use of examples from recent world politics.
"Is Humanitarian Intervention Legal? The Rule of Law in an Incoherent World." Ian Hurd, Political Science. Ethics and International Affairs 25 (3) 2011.
Hurd asks if humanitarian intervention is legal or not and finds that both views are sustainable by conventional accounts of the sources of international law. He then considers the implications for the idea of the rule of law in world politics.
"Law and the Practice of Diplomacy." Ian Hurd, Political Science. International Journal 66 (3) 2011: 581-596.
This article views public diplomacy as a social practice and states as 'particles' of social life that are interconnected and constrained by their sociality. It focuses on the macro effects of the interaction between states around and through international law, including the reproduction of law by means of those interactions.
"Enforcement and the Concept of Law," Joshua Kleinfeld, Law/Philosophy. Yale Law Journal 121 (93) 2011.
International law, many think, is not really law at all because it is not enforced. Kleinfeld asks two philosophical questions about that claim. What do we mean by enforcement when we channel the intuition that enforcement is part of law's nature? And what is the place of enforcement in our concept of law?
"An Economic Analysis of Fact Witness Payment." Eugene Kontovorich, Law, et al. Journal of Legal Analysis 2011: 139-164.
The article discusses the disparate treatment of perceptual ("fact") witnesses and expert witnesses in the legal system. Arguing that the current system provides incentives for biased testimony, the authors support a court-mediated system for compensating fact witnesses.
"The Effects of Local Medicinal Knowledge and Hygiene on Helminth Infections in an Amazonian Society." William Leonard, Anthropology, et al. Social Science & Medicine 72 (5) 2011: 701-709.
Leonard investigates the association between parental ethnomedical knowledge, parental biomedical knowledge, and household sanitation behavior and childhood soil-transmitted helminth infections among a group of foragers–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon.
"The Fractal Process of European Integration: A Formal Theory of Recursivity in the Field of European Security." Grégoire Mallard, Sociology, et al. French Politics, Culture and Society. 29 (2) 2011: 68-89.
Mallard explains why and how European states engaged in the negotiation of federalist treaties in the fields of European defense and security. He argues that federalists convinced states to sign their treaties by spreading the risk of rejection attached to European security treaties into successive periods of negotiations.
"Culture and the Quest for Universal Principles in moral reasoning." Douglas Medin, Psychology, et al. International Journal of Psychology 46 (3) 2011: 161-176.
The article presents a review of moral cognition and discusses challenges that remain in trying to understand crosscultural variability in moral values. It suggests that the universalist framework may lead to an underestimation of the role of culture in moral reasoning.
"Article III and the Scottish Judiciary." James Pfander, Law, et al. Harvard Law Review 124 (7) 2011: 1613-1685.
This article explores the previously hidden influence of the Scottish judiciary on the language and structure of Article III of the United States constitution. Important principles included the hierarchical appellate-style judiciary model and the protection of the role of the supreme court from legislative remodeling.
"Policy, Politics, Gender. Bringing Gender to the Analysis of Welfare States." Ann Orloff, Sociology. Sociologica 1 2011.
Orloff argues that the transformation of mainstream scholarship via the full integration of gender analysis is necessary to understand the development of welfare states and capitalism as well as gender.
"Tax 'Expenditures' and Welfare States: A Critique." Monica Prasad, Sociology. Journal of Policy History 23 (2) 2011: 251-266.
Prasad analyzes tax expenditures, called tax preferences, and their equation with welfare state spending in government accounting. She discusses how such an equation brings particular aspects of the US tax code to focus on the relationship between state's rights and tax revenue.
"Pushed Beyond Recognition? The Liberality of Family Reunification Policies in the EU." Gayla Ruffer, Political Science. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37 (6) 2011: 935-951.
Ruffer discusses the EU Family Reunification Directive. She examines the liberality of recent restrictions to family reunification that set conditions for integration, and argues that family restrictions based on a concern for cultural integration push the limits of the liberal-rights framework.
"What does it mean to 'live' and 'die'? A cross-linguistic analysis of parent-child conversations in English and Indonesian." Sandra Waxman, Psychology, et al. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 29 (3) 2011: 375-395.
The article examines everyday conversations of English- and Indonesian-speaking children with their parents as they acquire meanings for words corresponding to the concepts "live" and "die." It finds that parental input in both languages does little to support the acquisition of broad, inclusive biological concepts.
2010
“Immigration and LGBT Rights in the USA: Ironies and Constraints in US Asylum Cases.” Héctor Carrillo, Sociology. Handbook on Sexuality, Health, and Rights (Routledge, 2010).
Carrillo studies the use of asylum as a strategy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals to immigrate to the United States. While this has been a successful way to legally enter into the country, the author argues that there are practical and conceptual limitations to requesting asylum for immigration purposes.
“The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam.” Jonathan Caverley, Political Science. International Security 34 (3) 2010: 119-157.
Caverley explains why democracies can enter into incredibly risky small wars. He finds that the development of a capital-intensive military doctrine has shifted the costs of these small wars onto the rich, making them a rational policy for the relatively less wealthy average voter.
“Berber Law by French Means: Islam and Language in the Moroccan Hinterlands, 1930-1954.” Katherine Hoffman, Anthropology. Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (4) 2010: 1-30.
Hoffman examines the French administration of Berber customary law in Morocco. Viewing law as a social process, she finds that the kind of customary law forged within the Moroccan courtroom was distinct from both the pre-Protectorate indigenous legal codes and Islamic law.
“Strong Chieftaincies out of Weak States, or Elemental Power Unbound.” Georgi Derluguian, Sociology, and Timothy Earle, Anthropology. In Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflicts (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010).
Derluguian and Earle find that different facets of chieftaincy become successful manipulation tools in the presence of weak or non-functioning formal institutions of control. Rather than representing aberrant phenomena, the authors find that chieftaincies functioned as key internal organs of the modern state.
"Federalized Party Systems and Subnational Party Competition." Edward Gibson, Political Science, et al. Comparative Politics 43 (1) 2010: 21-39.
The authors offer a reconceptualization of political party systems, taking into account the subnational dimension of party systems into the conceptual mapping of party politics more generally. They then identify and define a new kind of political party system – a federalized party system – and examine the Argentine case to demonstrate the empirical and theoretical utility of the term.
“Racial Violence, Universal History, and Echoes of Abolition in Twentieth-Century Zanzibar.” Jonathon Glassman, History. Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic (Ohio University Press, 2010).
Glassman reconstructs the connections between abolitionism and twentieth-century popular political thought. Using the case of Zanzibar, he uncovers how abolitionist historicism comes to be prominent in the country by the end of the colonial era and how echoes of it are used to provoke violence amongst Zanzibari islanders.
“Modern Art Patronage and Democratic Citizenship in Japan.” Laura Hein, History. The Journal of Asian Studies 69 2010: 821-841.
Hein examines the role of economics professor Wakimura Yoshitarō in establishing and sustaining art museums in post-war Japan. Through a consideration of Wakimura’s motivations, the author finds that his efforts help us to understand the growth of public and private art museums in the country and the nature of postwar Japanese political culture more generally.
“Iran, In Search of a Nonsecular and Nontheocratic Politics.” Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Political Science. Public Culture 22 (1) 2010: 25-32.
Hurd considers the Iranian opposition movement led by Mir Hussein Moussavi in 2009. She finds it may represent a third path for the future of the country, which departs from the rigid dichotomy between secularism and political Islam.
“‘A Guantanamo on the Sea’: The Difficulty of Dealing with Pirates and Terrorists.” Eugene Kontorovich, Law. California Law Review 98 2010: 243-276.
Kontorovich examines the effects of different international legal rules by studying the treatment of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Despite the existence of powerful legal tools available to bring pirates to trial, countervailing international norms protecting individuals and limiting state authority have ultimately made it difficult to combat piracy.
“The Construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the Perspective of Conceptual History.” Henri Lauzière, History. International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 2010: 369-389.
Lauzière calls for an examination of the production of knowledge on the origins and meaning of Salafism, in an effort to relieve some of the confusion surrounding the religious orientation. He finds that recent scholarship is beleaguered by two epistemological problems that make resolving the conflicting narratives on Salafism difficult.
“Income Inequality: New Trends and Research Directions.” Leslie McCall, Sociology, et al. Annual Review of Sociology 36 2010: 329-347.
This article reviews and discusses recent research on income inequality. It considers the role that incentive pay, corporate governance, income pooling and family formation, social and economic policy, and political institutions play as potential causes of the recent surge in income inequality.
"Rapid weight gain after birth predicts life history and reproductive strategy in Filipino males." Thomas McDade, Sociology, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (39) 2010: 16800-16805.
The authors examine the relationship between weight gain among male children from birth to six months and life history characteristics. They find that rapid weight gain during this period predicts early maturation and sexual activity, elevated hormone production, and costly somatic characteristics among the Filipino men sampled.
“Hindu Victimhood and India’s Muslim Minority.” John McLane, History. The Fundamentalist Mindset (Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs, 2010).
McLane examines the gains made by the Hindutya (Hinduness) movement in India by scapegoating Muslims as a grave danger to the country. He studies the spread of Hindu militancy and violence to new groups of the population, concluding that violence between these groups is likely in the future.
“Does Compliance Matter? Assessing the Relationship between Sovereign Risk and Compliance with International Monetary Law.” Stephen Nelson, Political Science. Review of International Organizations 5 (2) 2010: 107-139.
Nelson tests the assumption that noncompliance by countries who sign binding international monetary agreements is costly. He examines the effect of noncompliance with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) article on sovereign risk ratings and finds that noncompliance tempers any benefits that would accrue to the article’s signatories.
"Reclaiming the Immigration Constitution of the Early Republic: Prospectivity, Uniformity, and Transparency." James Pfander, Law, et al. Virginia Law Review 96 2010: 359-441.
Pfander offers a new account of the immigration Constitution of the United States by focusing on the body of federal immigration and naturalization law that arose during the Republic in the 1790s. He finds that, while Congress had the power to fashion immigration policy, it could do so only by acting in accordance with the norms of prospectivity, uniformity, and transparency.
“Transforming West African Militia Networks for Postwar Recovery.” William Reno, Political Science. Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflicts. (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010).
Reno argues that the survival of wartime associations of combatants is not entirely negative in terms of its effects on society and the economy. These associations can sometimes develop into business operations, which can and should be integrated into the formal economy.
“The Unmaking and Making of Self: Embodied Suffering and Mind-Body Healing in Brazilian Candomblé.” Rebecca Seligman, Anthropology. Ethos 38 (3) 2010: 297-320.
Seligman studies Candomblé mediums in northeastern Brazil to understand how discontinuities in the experience of self are suffered and eventually repaired. She finds that healing practices, such as that of Candomble, can recohere disrupted selves through mutually reinforcing embodied and discursive processes.
2009
“Islands of Effective International Adjudication: Constructing an Intellectual Property Rule of Law in the Andean Community.” Karen J. Alter, Political Science, et al. American Journal of International Law 103 (1) 2009: 1-43.
The authors consider how the Andean region, an area not known for its strong institutions, nonetheless created a stable rule of law in the area of intellectual property (IP). They find that the existence of IP compliance constituencies within each country helps to ensure that rulings on IP law, as put forth by the Andean Tribunal of Justice, are respected.
“Vultures, Hyenas, and African Debt: Private Equity and Zambia.” Olufunmilayo Arewa, Law. Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business 29 (3) 2009: 643-673.
Arewa uses a court case involving the private equity fund, Donegal, and the Republic of Zambia to highlight the ongoing debate on the operation of vulture funds in developing countries. In studying this case, the author finds that the role of these kinds of commercial activities in exacerbating economic and political instability must be better understood.
“Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?” Lori Beaman, Economics, et al. Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (4) 2009: 1497-1540.
The authors test the assumption that exposure to elected female officials will make individuals more likely to vote for them in the future. Using randomly assigned gender quotas for leadership positions in Indian village councils in the state of West Bengal, they find initial evidence supporting the assumption and suggesting that exposure to a female chief councilor improves perceptions of female leadership effectiveness.
“Rethinking Hard and Soft News Production: From Common Ground to Divergent Paths.” Pablo Boczkowski, Communication Studies. Journal of Communication 59 (1) 2009: 98-116.
Boczkowski examines the effect that the increase in the frequency and volume of the dissemination of online news has on the conceptual distinction between hard and soft news. He carries out an ethnographic study of the online news production of an Argentine newspaper to show that the increase in onlines news dissemination appears to emphasize rather than blur the distinctions between the two.
“Toward Agency: Photography and Everyday Subjects in Cuzco, 1900-1940.” Jorge Coronado, Spanish and Portuguese. Latin American Perspectives 36 (3) 2009: 119-135.
Coronado examines the work of adherents to the Cuzco School of Photography. He finds that the school documents how ordinary Andeans preserved and negotiated their sense of self during the turbulent period of modernization.
“Of Speaking Natives and Hybrid Philosophers: Lahontan, Diderot, and the French Enlightenment Critique of Colonialism.” Doris Garraway, French and Italian. The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Garraway examines two philosophical dialogues written at key moments in the history of French colonial expansion. She argues that each work represents a subversion of discourses by the colonial object and thus anticipates some of the most influential critiques of colonial discourse in late twentieth-century postcolonial theory.
“Immigration and Youthful Illegalities in a Global Edge City.” John Hagan, Sociology, et al. Social Forces 88 (1) 2009: 337-372.
The authors study two cohorts of adolescents across two generations in Toronto to develop a process model in which measures of bonds to parents and schools, commitment to education, and risk adversity mediate youth involvement in illegal activities. In so doing, the authors help to explain why some immigrant youth refrain from illegalities.
"Racial Targeting of Sexual Violence in Darfur." John Hagan, Sociology, et al. American Journal of Public Health 99 (8) 2009: 1386-1392.
The authors use the Atrocities Documentation Survey to examine the extent to which Sudanese government forces were involved in racially targeted sexual victimization toward ethnically African women in Darfur. They find that, when government forces attack alongside the Janjaweed militias, racial epithets were used more often than when either force attacked separately.
“Linstead Market before Linstead? Eighteenth-century Yabbas and the Internal Market System of Jamaica.” Mark Hauser, Anthropology. Caribbean Quarterly 55 (2) 2009: 89-111.
Using multiple sources of evidence, Hauser finds that the establishment of the Linstead Market in Jamaica was earlier than typically assumed. The author analyzes the production and distribution of a local Jamaican ceramic and finds that the market space has ties to one of the most important slave rebellions of 18th-century Jamaica.
“Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War.” Benjamin Jones, Management and Strategy, et al. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 1 (2) 2009: 55-87.
The authors utilize a dataset on assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004 to assess the consequences of such attempts on politics. They find that small sources of randomness, such as assassinations, can affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts and can foster moves toward regime transition.
“Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates.” Benjamin Jones, Management and Strategy, et al. American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings 99 (2) 2009: 198-204.
The authors offer new insights on the relationship between climate and income. They incorporate subnational data into the cross-country dataset, finding that the positive correlation between climate and income still holds, although to a weaker degree. They also argue that adaptation can offset almost half of the negative effects of higher temperatures.
“The Constitutionality of International Courts: The Forgotten Precedent of Slave Trade Tribunals.” Eugene Kontorovich, Law. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 158 2009: 39-115.
Kontorovich examines debates from the 19th century over the constitutionality of the creation of international courts to punish slave trading. He argues that the lessons learned from those discussions can provide guidance for the contemporary debate in United States about its accession to the International Criminal Court.
"Inequality in social rank and adult nutritional status: Evidence from a small-scale society in the Bolivian Amazon." William Leonard, Anthropology, et al. Social Science & Medicine 69 (4) 2009: 571-578.
This article examines the relationship between inequality in social rank and nutritional status. Studying a society of forager-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, the authors find that village inequality in dominance, but not prestige, is associated with short-term indices of individual nutritional status.
“Small Time Crooks: Opium, Migrants, and the War on Drugs in China, 1819-1860.” Melissa Macauley, History. Late Imperial China 30 (1) 2009: 1-47.
Macauley chronicles the culture of illegality that developed in the Chinese administrative borderland region of Chaozhou during the Qing empire. She finds that, although official state records from the time suggest a different story, Qing authorities could not compete financially or militarily with the drug-smuggling networks that proliferated in areas such as Chaozhou.
“A World Made Simple: Law and Property in the Ottoman and Qing Empires.” Melissa Macauley, History. Shared Histories of Modernity in China, India, and the Ottoman Empire (Routledge, 2009).
Macauley examines different efforts at state-building through regulation. By comparing the Ottoman Land Law of 1858 with the Qing empire’s efforts to regulate land tenure on the southeast coast, she finds that, while the Ottomon law was part of an effort at European-style state-building, the Chinese effort was more an instance of legal simplification without state-building.
"The Logic of Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences." James Mahoney, Political Science and Sociology, et al. Comparative Political Studies 42 (1) 2009: 114-146.
The authors identify five different types of causes that are normally employed in research that makes use of historical explanations. Additionally, they introduce a new method – sequence elaboration – for evaluating the relative importance of different causes.
“Emerging Sacred Values: Iran’s Nuclear Program.” Douglas Medin, Psychology, et al. Judgment and Decision Making 4 (7) 2009: 930-933.
The authors argue that Iran’s nuclear program is treated by many Iranians as sacred. Because sacred values tend to violate the cost-benefit logic of rational choice models, the strategy of presenting monetary incentives to the country to end its program may ultimately backfire.
“Courting Genocide: The Unintended Effects of Humanitarian Intervention.” Jide Nzelibe, Law, et al. California Law Review 97 (4) 2009: 1171-1218.
Nzelibe argues that humanitarian interventions may have unintended consequences within the context of civil war. Because they tend to increase the chance that rebel leaders will achieve their political objectives, those leaders may feel incentivized to commit the kind of human atrocities that would lead to intervention in the first place.
"Gendering the Comparative Analysis of Welfare States: An Unfinished Agenda." Ann Orloff, Sociology. Sociological Theory 27 (3) 2009: 317-343.
Orloff argues that the agenda of gendering comparative welfare state studies is currently unfinished. She assesses the gendered literature on systems of social provision that currently exists in an effort to draw conclusions on what is needed to finish the agenda.
“An Unlikely Alliance: the 1907 Ukrainian-Jewish Electoral Coalition.” Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, History, et al. Nations and Nationalism 15 (3) 2009: 483-505.
The authors examine the political alliance between Ukrainian and Jewish national activists in the 1907 Austrian elections. They find that, rather than treating each other as staunch enemies, the two sets of activists were able to overcome profound differences in order to form an electoral alliance that would forge a new paradigm in Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
"The Origins of Tax Systems: A French-American Comparison." Monica Prasad, Sociology, et al. American Journal of Sociology 114 (5) 2009: 1350-1394.
This article traces the origins of tax systems in France and the United States. It finds that decisions about the tax structure in each country, and differences between the two structures, were shaped by resistance to the concentration of economic power in the United States and the centralization of state power in France.
“Illicit Markets, Violence, Warlords, and Governance: West African Cases.” William Reno, Political Science. Crime, Law and Social Change 52 (3) 2009: 313-322.
Reno finds evidence that, contrary to conventional understandings of warlords, some leaders of illicit commercial networks can harness their popularity to launch electoral campaigns and thus protect themselves from marginalization or persecution for past deeds.
“The Politics of Constitutional Amendment in Eastern Europe.” Andrew Roberts, Political Science. Constitutional Political Economy 20 2009: 99-117.
Challenging conventional wisdom on the causes and consequences of constitutional amendments in Eastern Europe, Roberts finds that political and social context, and not institutions, cause constitutional amendments. Moreover, the amendments tend to reduce rather than increase the power of executives and strengthen rather than limit human rights guarantees.
“Being as Good Muslims as Frenchmen: On Marabouts, Colonial Modernity, and the Islamic Sphere in French West Africa.” Rüdiger Seesemann, Religious Studies, et al. Journal of Religion in Africa 39 2009: 91-120.
The authors put forth a new perspective on marabouts under French colonial rule. They examine the work of three Tijani leaders to demonstrate that, rather than simply reacting to colonialism, marabouts engaged with it in an effort to spread Islam and advance other specific religious objectives.
“Tools of Survival: Sovereign Wealth Funds in Singapore and China.” Victor Shih, Political Science. Geopolitics 14 (2) 2009: 328-344.
Using the cases of Singapore and China, Shih examines the extent to which sovereign wealth funds (SWF) serve the geopolitical ends of owner countries. He finds that unified autocratic regimes are more successful at orienting SWFs to maximize long-term profits. In fragmented regimes, the SWF is more likely to serve as an arena for domestic infighting.
“Russian Modernism.” Andrew Wachtel, Slavic Languages and Literature. A companion to Russian History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Wachtel examines the evolution of and influences on Russian modernism. In particular he examines the rise and eventual fall of the artistic creativity of modernism, highlighting, at the era’s height, the experimental nature of its literature, art, music, and film.
"My volk to come: Peoplehood in Recent Diaspora Discourse and Afro-German Popular Music." Alexander Weheliye, English. Black Europe and the African diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2009).
Weheliye examines contemporary Afro-German musical practices and demonstrates that these sonic formations manifest a limitation of diaspora discourses more generally: the inability to find other ways to imagine collectivity other than through the form of Volk, or peoplehood. |
