7pm Breasted Hall

Mar 6: Geoffrey Wodtke University of Chicago 

March 4: Ben Laurence Instructional Professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division and the Division of Social Sciences, University of Chicago  “Labor Struggle and Transformative Experience” 

Yuting Dong, an assistant professor at the Department of History and CISSR 24-25 Faculty Fellow, published a paper on “red brick imperialism.” Focusing on Japanese-governed Manchuria, Prof. Dong adds to the more recent production in the history of labor and power by attempting to re-center the laborer in labor history accounts. According to the article, when the Japanese first took control of Manchuria, the severe weather conditions struck them as a primary barrier to durable construction, deciding to use red brick to build stronger structures. Although Prof. Dong states how the colonial empire in Japan would tend to be at odds with the “local” knowledge creation and rely on Russian expertise, she shows that the colonists and locals had more of a give and take in building practices, particularly with the red brick structures. Prof. Dong’s paper suggests that when centering the laborer in colonial history, the daily work of the empire relied on local knowledge to create the most durable structures and she refers to this as Red Brick Imperialism. Prof. Dong outlines the importance of symbolic power in colonial memory, and argues for a better understanding on the give and take between local and colonial practices globally. Read the full paper in the Technology and Culture.

Matthew Wolf-Mayer, a researcher at the Rensselaer Institute, and Michele Friedner, a Professor of Comparative Human Development and a CISSR Board Member, recently co-wrote an article on disability and the anthropological praxis. Friedner and Wolf-Mayer extend the discussion of accessibility within the academic sphere, and the anthropological sphere per se, beyond specific applications and introduces a more generic concept: malleability. Despite the broad scope of anthropology, the authors suggest that there should be a more expansive framework than the current accessibility or circumstance-dependent solutions. Hence, Friedner and Wolf-Mayer introduce the concept of malleability. Like the human experience itself, the discipline(s) that examine the human experiences should be flexible, moldable, or even, reflexively moldable by the very subject on which they produce their entire discourses. The concept of malleability is more inclusive and adaptive, therefore requiring a mental plasticity that is all-encompassing, so it can meet different needs of different modes of existence with a versatile experience for any human whether disabled or not. In the end, Friedner and Wolf-Mayer’s version of malleability calls for a new ethos for the entire academic infrastructure that will, in the long run, materially justify the claims of diversity in anthropology and other fields and enrich the praxis of all social science-related disciplines. Read the full text from the American Ethnologist here.

Monika Nalepa, a professor in the Department of Political Science and 2017-22 CISSR Faculty Fellow, published an article on the possible transitional justice scenarios in the aftermath of the current Russo-Ukrainian War. Prof. Nalepa considers the concept of transitional justice which goes back, in practice, to the post-Peloponnesian war restoration of Athens’ political system. While also exploring the formal history of the practice from the 19th century, Prof. Nalepa debates the different transitional justice scenarios in history, describing the merits and challenges of each specific instance of transitional justice scenario. As the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other official government systems do not have the luxury to prosecute a person who is not under their authority, the acts of the street-level bureaucrat or other lower level officials remain difficult to prosecute. Prof. Nalepa argues that international tribunals pose a challenge to proportional accountability and legality. She identifies two concepts used frequently as the methods of transitional justice praxis in the domestic sense which are 1.) “transparency” and 2.) “purge” – one concept prioritizes the public trust in the system and the other relies on secretive expunging of those who were once in power. Although some experts think a purge or “victor’s justice” is most likely to happen in Russia post-war, Ukraine is working to avoid this perception. According to the article, ninety Ukrainian judges have been working with British judges at a secret location to familiarize themselves with the international criminal norms and best practices for fair transitional justice in the transparent ways. Prof. Nalepa is careful to note that all these routes are possible in case of a “de-Putinization”, and that transitional justice will be a task for the new regime’s efforts to differentiate itself from the previous authoritarian rule. Read the full article in Post-Soviet Affairs here.