Conferences, Seminars and Other Events

 2013 Spring Seminar Series 

Gillian Hart is Professor of Geography and Co-chair of Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Honorary Research Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has worked in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia on questions of agrarian change, labor, and gender. Since the early 1990s she has been deeply engaged in research and writing for academic and popular audiences in her native South Africa. More recently, her work has addressed debates over globalization, neoliberalism, and the rise of new social movements.

In this lecture, Professor Hart will engage critically with Partha Chatterjee’s enormously influential analysis of civil society and political society in The Politics of the Governed (2004) and several subsequent writings. This framework has gained traction in many parts of the world, including South Africa. Drawing on her forthcoming book, Rethinking the South African Crisis, the talk will illustrate the key limitations of Chatterjee’s approach, and why an alternative approach is important. The talk will also draw on debates surrounding primitive accumulation and methods of relational comparison explored in her 2006 article, “Denaturalizing Dispossession: Critical Ethnography in the Age of Resurgent Imperialism.

My research program advances knowledge in the field of development sociology through substantive and methodological contributions in three areas, including the sociology of education, social change, and especially the demography of inequality. My most recent research investigates the consequences of demographic change on a variety of socioeconomic outcomes, including schooling, gender, and income inequality. These investigations are based on theoretical extensions of existing arguments (e.g. dilution, dividends) and decomposition methods. The empirical component of this research uses existing macrosocial data as well as new panel data under collection. My teaching goals for the next five years are to strengthen our department`s undergraduate and graduate training in social science research. These goals will be achieved by creating opportunities for practical research for the departmentÕs undergraduates, and by continuing to build a graduate course on the empirics of development and inequality. Specific objectives for the next five years are to (a) publish a reader for my course on education and inequality (DSoc3050); (b) work more closely with undergraduates on honors or research scholarships, and (c) develop cross-campus collaboration with students interested in the empirical study of global inequality. These teaching goals address existing needs and they are in line with our department`s focus on applied sociology and global development.

April 26, 2013: Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA, Sociology, "The Labor Question of Chinese Capitalism in Africa," 305 Ives Hall, 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

I am currently working on two projects. One is on the politics of rights and changing citizenship regime in China. I am looking at the effects of three major national laws respectively giving citizens labor rights, land rights, and property rights. By examining how ordinary Chinese mobilize legal and extra-legal resources to battle for their rights as citizens, forging new notions of property, labor and land, engaging the local and central governments, I want to understand the micro-foundations or the lack thereof, for the formation of new citizenship regimes in China. The second project I am working on is Chinese investment and labor practices in Zambia, a major copper producer and the site of the first of several Chinese-run Special Economic Zones in sub-Saharan Africa. I want to understand the mechanisms of accumulation and domination of Chinese capital as well as its limits imposed by local politics, class and race relations. This study involves a double comparison: between copper and construction; and between Chinese and non-Chinese investors in one country.  

April 16 , 2013: Tom Dietz, Sociology, Environmental Science and Policy, MSU, "Synthesizing Ecological Modernization and the Treadmill of Production:  The Role of Power,"  Whetzel Room (404 Plant Sciences). noon - 1:00 p.m.

This seminar is sponsored by the CALS Joint Environmental Social Science Seminar Series. 

Thomas Dietz is a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy (ESPP) and Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research at Michigan State University.He is also Co-Director of the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessment Center (glisa.msu.edu). He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a Bachelor of General Studies from Kent State University. At MSU he was Founding Director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program and Associate Dean in the Colleges of Social Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources and Natural Science. Dr. Dietz is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been awarded the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, the Distinguished Contribution Award of the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society, and the Outstanding Publication Award, also from the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society and the Gerald R. Young Book Award from the Society for Human Ecology.

Although the literature on Chinese labor has grown significantly in recent years, there are no empirical studies of teachers' work. I begin to address this major shortcoming by focusing on the socially and politically significant migrant schools that have emerged in China's urban areas. I argue that while private education has come to be an increasingly prevalent method for cities to address the social reproduction needs of migrants, the way in which they have done so differs significantly by region. These strategies are key in the construction of distinct education work regimes in various regions within China. Specifically, the animating logic of the Beijing government is a biopolitical concern with overpopulation and instability, which results in highly exclusionary education policies and manifold precarity in the working lives of teachers. On the other hand, the Guangzhou government is more subject to economic imperatives and has legalized and privatized migrant education – leading to rationalized exploitation of teachers. I show that teachers' work is a key sociological category that indexes a broad array of social, political, and economic conditions and tensions that call into question the sustainability of China's model of development. 

This seminar is sponsored by the CALS Joint Environmental Social Science Seminar Series. 

Jonathon Schuldt joined the Cornell faculty as an Assistant Professor of Communication in the summer of 2012. His research focuses on everyday judgment and decision making in the domains of environmental and health communication. Prior to Cornell, he was a faculty member at California State University - Northridge. He holds a bachelor's degree from Cornell and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. 

His research focuses on the factors that influence judgments, decisions, and public opinion in the health and environment domains. Specific topics of interest include message framing, health claims and food labeling, and political communication. Recent work examines the intersection of online search behavior, issue framing, and political identity. A prrimary goal of our lab is to apply and extend theory in ways that inform real problems facing New York State and the world. Findings from the lab are routinely shared with local and national media outlets in order to maximize the potential public benefit of the work. 

This Seminar is sponsored by the Department of Natural Resources and is listed here as a courtesty

I have four major areas of research: 1) historical, political and social roots of the food system in northern Malawi; 2) sustainable agriculture, food security and social processes in rural Africa; 3) social relations linked to health and nutritional outcomes and 4) local knowledge and climate change adaptation. My general approach to food systems has been holistic, interdisciplinary and collaborative, drawing from both the natural and social sciences. I examine the social relations and processes that interact with environmental, political and economic processes within food systems. I often collaborate with researchers in different disciplines, including those working in agricultural and nutritional science, public health and ecology. Most of my research is also applied, community-based and participatory, involving local organizations and community members addressing ways to develop a sustainable food system. I use principles from participatory action research and integrate local knowledge and perspectives into my research. In my work I pay attention to different scales of a problem, as well as the historical roots that shape contemporary realities, drawing on political ecology theory. I also study discursive framings of food issues, using post-structural and feminist theory for this approach. Concepts drawn from agroecology, public health and international nutrition have also been important in my research. A major theme of my work is a deeper understanding of the historical, political, economic and social dimensions of agricultural practices and policies in southern Africa.My long-term collaborative research project has shown evidence-based improvement in nutrition, food security and soil management in Malawi.

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