CISSR Bi-Weekly Digest
May 21 - June 3, 2024
Spotlight
CISSR hosts Book Launch for The Geopolitics of Shaming by Professor Rochelle Terman
Partnering with the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, CISSR hosted a book launch to celebrate Rochelle Terman's, Assistant Professor of Political Science and 19-20 CISSR Book Fellow, new book, The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works - and When it Backfires.

Paul Poast, Professor of Political Science and CISSR Board Member, gave the introductory remarks. Terman was in conversation with John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science. Mearsheimer taught the first Political Science class Terman took as an undergraduate at UChicago.

Terman presents a new theory on international human rights enforcement, exploring why and how states punish violations in other nations. Human rights shaming is a political process that operates in and through strategic relationships. Terman argues that preexisting geopolitical relationships impact the causes and consequences of shaming. She shows that adversaries are quick to condemn human rights abuses but often cause a counterproductive response, while allies are more effective shamers but may be reluctant to impose sanctions.

Terman discussed several case studies she examines in the book, such as the similarities in rights violations by Saudi Arabia and Iran but the very different responses from the United States to those nations. Additionally, a state could receive similar recommendations, but are more likely to accept one from a geopolitical ally versus an adversary.

During the talk, Terman emphasized a key point of the book: that shaming isn't either good or bad, but needs to be thought about on a case-by-case basis to understand the particular context where shaming is going to be helpful.

In 2020, CISSR hosted a virtual book workshop for The Geopolitics of Shaming.

The Geopolitics of Shaming was published by Princeton University Press.


Upcoming Events
May 21

Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation Colloquium


12:30pm - 1:30pm
1155 E. 60th Street, Room 101
Seminary Co-op


6pm, 57th Street Books
May 23

Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC) and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS)


4:30pm - 6:30pm, Centers for Gender/Race Studies, Community Room (105)
May 24

CHHS/HPS Workshop


12pm-2pm, SSRB 122
May 26

Seminary Co-op


3pm, Seminary Co-op Bookstore
May 28

SSRC


3:00pm - 4:30pm, Social Sciences Research Center, Room 344

NOTE: This event is open only to junior faculty and postdocs in social science disciplines (in SSD, Crown Family School, Harris, and Booth)
Seminary Co-op, Department of Anthropology


6:00pm, Seminary Co-op
June 1

The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and Arts + Public Life.


7-9pm, Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd
June 4

Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity



7:00pm, Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center (4048 W. Armitage Ave.)
Around Town and Down the Road
May 28

Chicago Public Libraries


Professor emeritus of anthropology at Han-Yang University in Korea.

6:30PM – 7:30PM, live on CPL's YouTube channel and CPL's Facebook page.
May 30

Northwestern University



Keynotes: Julie Tannenbaum, Pomona College, "(Almost) No Excuses" Sergio Tenenbaum, University of Toronto, "Practical Reason and the Satisfaction of Desire"

All day, 2122 Sheridan Road, 120
Workshops and Forums

4:00 - 5:30pm, CEAS 319, 1155 East 60th Street

May 23: Yuan Tian 
Teaching Fellow, Social Sciences Division, Chinese Junks Flying Foreign Flags: Tax Evasion, Provincial Revenue, and State-building in Treaty Port Chongqing
Workshop on International Politics

3:30 – 5:00 p.m. in person (Pick 506) and via Zoom (password 208212)

May 23: Ned Lebow, King’s College London - "Why Nations Still Fight"

Thursday from 4:30 - 6pm in SSRB 305 (Albion Small Room) 

May 23: Daniel Burnfin and Noah Zeldin - Sohn-Rethel on Fascism and Managerialism: The Social Reconsolidation of Capitalism 
Research Updates
Hold Fast the Reins and Be Guided: Embodied Expressions of Taqwā in Prophetic Hadith and Orations of ʿ⁠⁠Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib 
Erin Atwell, 21-22 CISSR Rudolph Fellow, published an essay titled "Hold Fast the Reins and Be Guided: Embodied Expressions of Taqwā in Prophetic Hadith and Orations of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib" in the Journal of Arabic Literature. Atwell’s research explores the intersection of classical Islamic texts and contemporary Muslim practices, with a particular focus on the concept of taqwā (piety or consciousness of God). In her essay, Atwell examines the interplay of form and content in early Islamic expressions of taqwā, especially through prophetic hadith and the orations of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. She argues that taqwā is profoundly corporeal, manifested through bodily intimacy and practices such as the healing of bodily sickness. This corporeality extends to techniques involving the limbs, tongue, eyes, ears, and heart, illustrating a comprehensive embodiment of piety. Atwell’s analysis reveals that taqwā is not merely an internal state but an active, transformative practice that shapes both the inner and outer lives of believers. By examining these dimensions, she expands the understanding of taqwā and its role in early Islamic tradition. 
Conceptualizing Organizational Advocacy Across the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector
Jennifer Mosley, professor at the Crown School of Social Work and 23-24 CISSR Book Fellow, co-authored an article on the sweeping assumptions and dichotomous distinctions taking hold of the nonprofit sector. Mosley argues that since advocacy became a staple in the core strategies of many nonprofit organizations, defining them through the more conspicuous advocacy work becomes a reflex in academia and the sector. To better conceptualize the diversity within the nonprofit sector and to establish advocacy as a technique that could be integrated into the tactical menu of organizations operating in vastly different venues. The authors create a conceptual plan where the NGOs seeking a direct versus indirect and social versus policy impact can be easily positioned. This new framework helps establish advocacy as a method, not an identifier. It exhibits that organizations combine many outward-facing and ingroup methods as well as action and discourse-oriented activity to attain their goals of social and political impact. The fact that the critical stakeholders for the former set of goals are generally public, whereas, for the latter, it is institutional actors, gives advocacy a cross-sectoral applicability and internal diversity that enriches every organization without necessitating melting pot conceptualizations. You can read the article in full here.
 
Adam Almqvist Rethinks Egypt’s ‘Failed’ Desert Cities
Adam Almqvist, teaching fellow in the social sciences and 18-19 CISSR Rudolph Fellow, published an article that analyzes the infrastructure of Egypt's desert cities and the autocratic urge to build. A product of Anwar Sadat's project of industrializing and opening the Egyptian economy to the world, desert cities present themselves as the products of an autocratic desire to build and build from scratch and economic experiments standing in the middle of a lunar landscape almost as mirages of economic activity and urbanization and looking at how these cities transformed Egyptian society like they transformed the landscape. Starting with Anwar Sadat and continuing into the Mubarak regime, these cities were considered spaces of condensed capital and innovation. Almqvist notes that autocrats were often conflicted by their desire to build and build from scratch and the prospect of condensed capital creating a potential counterforce. Hence, they tried to diversify the capital attracted to these invented cities by attracting foreign capital. Some companies moved their headquarters but not the living quarters of their managers to these cities, while living costs in desert cities increased, creating an imbalance in interclass texture in these cities. Almqvist takes a holistic approach towards authoritarian innovation and delves into the economic and social aspects of a standing phenomenon. You can read the full version of Dr. Almqvist's article here.
 
Electorate Responses to Fiscal Rule Measures in Colombia
Luis Martinez, assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and 2017-18 CISSR Faculty Research Fellow, examines the reverberations of the fiscal rule measures implemented by municipal governments in Colombia. First implemented in 2000, the budgetary rules aimed to procure more resources and use the said resources more efficiently towards critical areas of local administrative services. Encompassing local government functions, educational and public-health-related initiatives, and fiscal rule measures created a channel of direct responsibility between the local administration and the electorate. Limited to a single term, which can be multiplied through participation in non-consecutive elections, Colombian municipal administrators are expected to be motivated by the public's direct reflection on their implementation strategies. Through a mixed methods approach that relies on exclusively provided fiscal data, media coverage, interviews with former mayors and formal models, Martinez finds that in the transition period between 2000-2004 following the initial implementation, the struggles of compliance and structural change caused an incumbent disadvantage in the 2003 local elections. Judging by the responses to incumbent compliance patterns during this and following elections, Martinez classifies local administrators as congruent and dissonant with the first category denoting the politicians who directly respond to the public's demands of procurement and fiscal resource allocation and the latter denoting politicians who follow their agenda or the agenda of the parties with which they are affiliated. The study finds that the electorate judges implementation success from a public demand and expectations perspective, and congruent politicians remain in favour for longer than dissonant politicians. To review the article in full, please visit here.
ICYMI
ICYMI: Forecasting for Hunger with Professors Luis Martinez and Amir Jina
Luis Martinez and Amir Jina, assistant professors at Harris School of Public Policy and previous CISSR Faculty Fellows were featured on the One World, One Health podcast by One Health Trust in the December 2023 episode titled "Forecasting for Hunger." The podcast in partnership with Environmental Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) released an episode examining the devastating effects of weather events, such as droughts and floods, on crop failure and child malnutrition. It highlights the potential of predictive tools based on the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to anticipate and prepare for these disasters. By leveraging climate data and other metrics, these forecasts could help governments, aid organizations, and communities mitigate food shortages and malnutrition, ultimately saving lives and preventing long-term socio-economic and health issues. 

Prof. Jina's research integrates economics, climate science, and remote sensing to investigate how environmental factors influence societal development. His work includes field studies on climate change adaptation in India, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Uganda. The podcast emphasizes a holistic "One Health" approach, considering the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health to address complex health issues. Key insights include the importance of hunger early warning systems, the impact of El Niño on food security, the reallocation of crops to optimize production, and the necessity of incorporating social and environmental consequences into forecasting models. You can listen to the episode here on the EPIC website.
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