Duke University Press Log

Two Radical History Review Articles Win Awards

Two articles published in the Duke University Press Journal, Radical History Review, have recently won awards. Congratulations to the Radical History Review and to these authors!

Gregg Mitman and Paul Erickson’s article "Latex and Blood: Science, Markets, and American Empire" from the special issue Transnational Environments: Rethinking the Political Economy of Nature in a Global Age (issue 107) has been awarded the Ralph Gomory Prize, which distinguishes historical work on the effects of business enterprises on the economic environments of the countries in which they operate.

Camille Bégin’s article “‘Partaking of choice poultry cooked a la southern style’: Taste and Race in the New Deal Sensory Economy,” which appeared in the special issue Radical Foodways (issue 110) has been awarded The Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence from the American Society of Food Studies. 

 

Karen Ho Discusses the Culture of Wall Street on MSNBC

Watch anthropologist Karen Ho, author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, on this great segment of MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes." Ho clearly lays out how Wall Street's "culture of smart" and "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" attitude is partly to blame for the financial collapse.

Ousted Prime Minister on Greek economy

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou resigns today as the economic crisis in Greece continues to agitate European and global markets. Last year in the Mediterranean Quarterly, Papandreou assessed strategies for recovery in the eurozone, including government bailouts like the assistance that his successor is now tasked with securing from the European Union:
“It is essential to remember that it was not the public sector but the private financial sector — enabled by neoliberal governments —that caused the subprime bubble and speculative boom. And it was the bailouts and stimulus packages provided by governments that prevented the financial crisis from turning into another Great Depression. So it is only fair that the financial sector should bear some of the costs of the crisis, which was largely of its own making.” 
¾ George Papandreou in “A New Global Financial Architecture: Lessons from the Greek Crisis”

 Read the article for free here.

Free Chapter on Thomas J. Sargent from "The Mangle in Practice"

Earlier this month the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims. Sargent, Professor of Economics at New York University, was cited by the Nobel committee for his work on "how structural macroeconometrics can be used to analyze permanent changes in economic policy." To learn more about Sargent, we invite you to read a free chapter from the recent book The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming, edited by Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik. The chapter is called "Resisting and Accomodating Thomas Sargent," by Esther-Mirjam Sent. Sent argues that "Thomas Sargent was faced with the emergence of different interpretations of rational expectations in different periods as a result of the dance of human and disciplinary agency."

The Provocative Joan Robinson Wins HES Spengler Award

Congratulations to Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes, authors of The Provocative Joan Robinson: The Making of a Cambridge Economist. The book won the Joseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize at the recent History of Economics Society annual meeting. The book is about the life and work of Joan Robinson (1903–83), one of the most original and prolific economists of the twentieth century who is widely regarded as the most important woman in the history of economic thought.

Karen Ho in The Guardian

The Guardian's "Brain Food" column features anthropologist Karen Ho this week. Aditya Chakrabortty writes, "Anthropologists used to study the alien: pygmies in rainforests with blowdarts and more piercings than a knife-thrower's assistant. Nowadays, however, few societies are more foreign than that found on Wall Street. After all, what could be more outlandish than the tribes of Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and the famously fierce Goldman Sachs – with their obscure tongue (CDOs, CLOs and the rest), their worship of gold and those grisly ritual cullings of staff?" Ho's book Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street is an in-depth investigation into the everyday experiences and ideologies of Wall Street investment bankers which shows how financial markets, and particularly booms and busts, are constructed.

First Woman Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

This morning the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the Nobel prize winners in economics, one of whom, Elinor Ostrum, is the first woman to receive the honor in economics. Ostrum said she was "in shock" over being the first woman to get the award, but women have long been underrepresented in economics. Those interested in the history of women in the field should take a look at our new book The Provocative Joan Robinson: The Making of a Cambridge Economist by Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes. Robinson had a fifty year career at Cambridge but she remains not nearly as well known as many of her male colleagues, who included John Maynard Keynes, A. C. Pigou, Dennis Robertson, and Richard Kahn. Aslanbeigui and Oakes trace the strategies and tactics Robinson used to create her professional identity as a Cambridge economist in the 1930s, examining how she recruited mentors and advocates, carefully defined her objectives, and deftly pursued and exploited opportunities despite the difficulties she faced as a woman in a man's field.

Financial Times Reviews Ho's Liquidated

Karen Ho's Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street was reviewed this weekend in the Financial Times. Reviewer Gillian Tett writes, "Karen Ho has picked an excellent time to publish her fascinating new study." She comments, "As field-sites go, Wall Street is not classic anthropological territory . . . Ho nevertheless embarked on her study in classic anthropological manner: by blending into the background, listening intently, in a non-judgmental way – and then trying to join up the dots to get a “holistic” picture of how the culture works. That patient ethnographic analysis has produced a fascinating portrait that will be refreshingly novel to most bankers."

Patrick Weil's How to Be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789 also got a mention in the Financial Times this weekend. In an article about immigrant Muslims in Belleville, Weil describes a Muslim funeral with very French touches.

Karen Ho Featured in Princeton Alumni Weekly

Karen Ho, author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, is featured in the new issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly. Ho did her research while studying anthropology at Princeton in the mid 1990s. Shortly after beginning her research, she realized she did not know enough about finance to ask the proper questions, so she interviewed with on-campus recruiters and took a job with Bankers Trust. Mark F. Bernstein writes in PAW: "Although Ho told potential employers that she intended to return to graduate school and write a book about Wall Street culture, it seemed that her more salient qualifications — a Princeton pedigree and a pulse — assured her of a job." At the end of the article, PAW asks Ho what she'd most like to see reformed on Wall Street, and she replies, "changing the current bonus and compensation structure so that it is tied more closely to long-term productivity; reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which barred commercial banks from engaging in riskier investment-banking practices; and rebuilding a social safety net for senior citizens and those with lower incomes." Let's hope some Princeton alums on Wall Street and in Washington are reading this article!

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost on Health Care Reform

A Washington Post article on health insurance co-ops this weekend quotes Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, author of Health Care at Risk: A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement. Jost says, "If we want to have co-ops in addition to the public plan and in addition to private insurance, that's great, let's see if it works." But if co-ops are the only alternative to private insurance, "then essentially what we have will be private insurance." Jost was also recently featured in a Forbes article about his first-hand experience with the German health care system, and he has been writing regular commentaries on health care reform for the Roanoke Times.