Publications

What did people make of death in the world of Atlantic slavery? In The Reaper's Garden, Vincent Brown asks this question about Jamaica, the staggeringly profitable hub of the British Empire in America—and a human catastrophe. Popularly known as the grave of the Europeans, it was just as deadly for Africans and their descendants. Yet among the survivors, the dead remained both a vital presence and a social force.

In this compelling and evocative story of a world in flux, Brown shows that death was as generative as it was destructive. From the eighteenth-century zenith of British colonial slavery to its demise in the 1830s, the Grim Reaper cultivated essential aspects of social life in Jamaica—belonging and status, dreams for the future, and commemorations of the past. Surveying a haunted landscape, Brown unfolds the letters of anxious colonists; listens in on wakes, eulogies, and solemn incantations; peers into crypts and coffins, and finds the very spirit of human struggle in slavery. Masters and enslaved, fortune seekers and spiritual healers, rebels and rulers, all summoned the dead to further their desires and ambitions. In this turbulent transatlantic world, Brown argues, “mortuary politics” played a consequential role in determining the course of history.

Insightful and powerfully affecting, The Reaper's Garden promises to enrich our understanding of the ways that death shaped political life in the world of Atlantic slavery and beyond.

This publication reviews one strategy that addresses both a broader and a narrower dimension of urban poverty. The Human Rights Cities Program is not directed toward securing legal title as a means of protecting the urban poor from market eviction and gentrification or to catalyze investment in low-income housing. It is rather a broader strategy of empowering inhabitants of communities to find collectively the ways and means of ensuring respect for their human rights, including the right to adequate housing, component elements of which are security of tenure, access to basic urban services, transport and mobility, financial services and credit, women’s empowerment, urban citizenship, income and livelihoods. It is thus a broader strategy than securing legal tenure.

This collection of papers deals with the legal issues involved in considering an international convention on the right to development. It is the outcome of a meeting jointly convened by the Program on Human Rights in Development of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Geneva Office in an effort to provide clarity regarding a highly charged issue on the human rights agenda of the international system. The Expert Meeting on legal perspectives involved in implementing the right to development was held at the Chateau de Bossey, Geneva, Switzerland, on January 4–6, 2008, and was attended by 24 experts in their personal capacity.

While positions of governments are entrenched and debates in the diplomatic setting of the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council are often acrimonious, none of the contributions to this study is premised on any political preference for or against the elaboration of a convention. The aim of each author was to provide clarity regarding the legal problems to be addressed.

There are good reasons to be skeptical—even cynical—about the outcome of the Annapolis Conference and pessimistic about the prospects of achieving a negotiated agreement by the end of this year. Yet, granting the vagueness of the commitments made in Annapolis and the discouraging effect of subsequent actions on the ground that have undermined the peace process, the conference has opened up the best opportunity since the failure of the Camp David summit for a return to a serious negotiation of a final agreement on a two-state solution. I saw such an opportunity, for example, in a February statement by Haim Ramon that Israel hoped to reach agreement with its Palestinian negotiating partners by the end of 2008 on a "declaration of principles" for peace, but not on a detailed peace treaty.

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.

Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world’s first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.

With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?

This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world’s biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.

Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that’s why, whether you’re scraping by or rolling in it, there’s never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.

The President of the Commission of the European Union, José Manuel Barroso, will speak at the Weatherhead Center's 18th Paul-Henri Spaak Lecture on September 24. Created in 1981 thanks to the generosity of Frank Boas, the Spaak lecture series brought eminent Europeans to Harvard to address issues of importance to both Europe and the United States. After its suspension in 1999—and thanks to a donation by the Nicolas Janssen Family Fund of Brussels—this lecture series has been re-launched to address the new challenges and prospects of transatlantic relations.

President Barroso will deliver the 2008 Paul-Henri Spaak Lecture titled "A Letter from Brussels to the Next President of the United States."

Barroso became Commission President in the midst of the ratification process of the "Constitutional Treaty," worked out to further advance European unity and to better accommodate the EU enlargement by the formerly Communist Central European countries as well as Malta and Cyprus. He dealt with a crisis when the French and Dutch rejected this Treaty in a referendum in 2005, and spearheaded the drafting of a “Reform Treaty” to meet its constituents’ demands, which was ratified by a large majority of EU members but rejected by the Irish voters in a referendum in 2008.

This lecture series was named after Paul-Henri Spaak, the Foreign Minister of Belgium who played a decisive role in working out the Treaty of the European Economic Community and EURATOM of 1958.

Almost twenty years after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against him, Salman Rushdie remains the most controversial and perhaps the most famous living novelist. Far more than an acclaimed author, Rushdie is a global figure whose work is read and studied by a wide variety of constituencies, many of whom are not primarily concerned with its literary significance.

This important collection of essays and interviews brings together a distinguished group of critics and commentators, including Rushdie himself, to explore the political and cultural contexts of Rushdie's novels. While each of the essays offers a distinct and often highly original take on Rushdie and his work, the two substantial interviews with Rushdie illuminate his thoughts on a series of literary and political subjects that he has for the most part been reluctant to discuss in public. This combination of fresh perspectives and historical and political context will appeal to a wide array of readers interested not only in Rushdie's own work but also in the many collateral cultural and political issues it raises.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs has selected eleven Harvard doctoral candidates to receive pre- and mid-dissertation grants to conduct research on a project related to the core research interests of the Center. In addition and for the first time in 2008, the Center is awarding foreign language grants to doctoral students to assist them in their field research studies. The Weatherhead Center dissertation grant recipients, along with their research projects, are listed below:

Christopher Bail, Ph.D. candidate in sociology, is researching the distortion of collective memory among Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States and the UK.

Amy Catalinac, Ph.D. candidate in government, is conducting research on the electoral politics of national security to explain the contemporary rise of Japan.

Suzanna Chapman, Ph.D. candidate in government, will conduct interviews with immigration policy-makers to examine how states select their population.

Paul Cruikshank, Ph.D. candidate in the history of science, is investigating the late twentieth century historical transformation of the politics in the field of international health.

Michael James Esdaile, Ph.D. candidate in history and Middle Eastern studies, is studying Arabic for his dissertation on the anti-imperial movements termed the “Aden Emergency” that opposed British control in Yemen.

Alex Fattal, Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, is conducting an analysis of the demobilization of insurgents in Colombia to better understand the cultural politics of humanitarianism.

Meghan Healy, Ph.D. candidate in history, is conducting research on South African women’s schooling and power since 1869.

Max Hirsch, Ph.D. candidate in architecture and urban planning, is researching architectural and urban planning strategies that are designed to attract and retain highly skilled international migrants in Frankfurt and Hong Kong.

Jane Hong, Ph.D. candidate in history, is examining political deportation cases of foreign-born Asian communists living in Los Angeles as a lens to explore the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in East Asia and domestic security measures passed between 1945 and 1965.

Catherine Kelly, Ph.D. candidate in government, is studying Wolof in Senegal for her dissertation on Franco-West African relations.

Katherine Mason, Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, is conducting an ethnographic investigation of the rebuilding of China’s disease control system in the wake of the 2003 SARS epidemic.

Sreemati Mitter, Ph.D. candidate in history and Middle Eastern studies, is studying Arabic and Hebrew for her dissertation on relations between Jordan and Israel between 1950 and 1967.

Vipin Narang, Ph.D. candidate in government, is exploring the sources and consequences of regional power nuclear postures by examining the India-Pakistan crises that occurred both before and after nuclearization.

Rebecca Nelson, Ph.D. candidate in government, seeks to explain why some governments get more debt restructurings with private creditors than others.

Aleksandar Sopov, Ph.D. candidate in history and Middle Eastern studies, will study Arabic and Albanian for his dissertation on how the competing histories of the peoples in the Balkans and the Middle East influence their social and political realities.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is supporting twenty-six doctoral candidates as Graduate Student Associates for 2008-2009. The Center’s Graduate Student Associates are a multidisciplinary group of advanced degree candidates from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ departments of Anthropology, Government, History, Religion, Public Health and Sociology on topics related to international affairs. 

The Center provides its Graduate Student Associates with research grants, office space, and computer resources; and they participate in a variety of seminars, including their own graduate student seminars during which they present and receive feedback on their work. This year grantees, along with their research projects, are as follows: 

Marcus Alexander, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Behavioral political economy; experimental social science; econometrics; dynamics of conflict and cooperation.

Christopher Bail, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Sociology. Diverse Diversities: the configuration of symbolic boundaries against immigrants in twenty-three European countries.

Suzanna Chapman, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government. Measuring and explaining trends in restrictive immigration policy in wealthy democracies, 1960–2006.

Alex Fattal, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology. Demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration of insurgents in Colombia.

Garner Gollatz, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology. Healing, pilgrimage, and spirituality at the Sanctuary of Lourdes, France.

Karen Grépin, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Health Policy. Economics of health systems; health human resources; and effectiveness of health development assistance. Research area: Africa, specifically Ghana.

Zongze Hu, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology. How locals have encountered and seen the national state in a North China village.

Robert Karl, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History. State formation, politics, violence, and U.S. influence in 20th century Colombia.

Yevgeniy Kirpichevsky, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Secret weapons and secret diplomacy in international relations.

Ian Klaus, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History. The role of trust in the business and military relations of the British empire.

Diana Kudayarova, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History. Labor policy and labor-market strategies of white-collar professionals in the Soviet Union.

Rebecca Nelson, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Explaining variation in the terms of sovereign debt restructurings with private creditors in the post-WWII era.

Vernie Oliveiro, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History. The United States’ efforts against the bribery of foreign public officials by multinational corporations wishing to do business abroad, 1975-1997.

Sabrina Peric, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Social Anthropology. Examining intersections of violence, identity and primary resource extraction in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnographic present, and in its history.

Sanjay Pinto, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Sociology and Social Policy. The Political Economy of Social Stratification: Varieties of Class Structure in Post-Industrial and Newly Industrialized Societies.

Giacomo Ponzetto, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Economics. The role of partisanship and voters’ asymmetric information in the political economy of trade policy.

Brenna Powell, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government and Social Policy. Comparative ethno-racial politics, civil conflict and political violence; dissertation work in Northern Ireland, Brazil, and the United States.

Jonathan Renshon, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. How status considerations affect the calculations of states in international politics.

Meg Rithmire, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Building modern cities: development, space and power in urban China.

Claire Schwartz, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Implications of the shift from state governance toward "civil governance" in industrial regulation and the differential effects of developed and developing countries.

Sarah Shehabuddin, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. The rules of engagement: women’s rights and the determinants of secularist-Islamist relations.

Anthony Shenoda, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology and Middle East Studies. Coptic orthodox Christian encounters with the Miraculous in Egypt.

Anya Vodopyanov, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Political economy of service provision in the Middle East: impact of increased basic service provision by Islamic groups on the quality and reach of government services.

Ann Marie Wilson, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History. An investigation into the origins of modern American human rights activism, focusing on the Anglo-American humanitarian movements that arose in response to crises in Armenia, Russia, and the Congo Free State between 1880 and 1920.

Lili Zhang, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Government. Reputation and War Termination: An approach based on psychology and behavioral economics.

Min Zhou, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Sociology. Grassroots organizations in the 2005 anti-Japan movement in China.

The Center also granted three dissertation completion fellowships for the current academic year:

• Yevgeniy Kirpichevsky, Graduate Student Associate and Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government was awarded the Sidney Knafel Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• Giacomo Ponzetto, Graduate Student Associate and Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics was awarded the Hartley Rogers Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• Nico Slate, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History was awarded the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Dissertation Completion Fellowship

The G8 summit in Toyako offers Japan, as the host government, a special opportunity to influence collective action on global health. At the last G8 summit held in Japan, the Japanese government launched an effort to address critical infectious diseases, from which a series of disease-specific programmes emerged. This year’s summit provides another chance to catalyse global action on health, this time with a focus on health systems.

Global efforts to improve health conditions in poor countries have embraced two different strategies in recent decades, one focusing on health systems, the other on specific diseases. The interactions of these two strategies have shaped where we stand today.

In the last 20 years, orphan drug legislation (ODL) has been adopted in several countries around the world (USA, Japan, Australia, and the European Union) and has successfully promoted R&D investments to develop new pharmaceutical products for the treatment of rare diseases. Without these incentives, many life-saving new drugs would have not been developed and produced.

For economic reasons, the development of medicines for the treatment of diseases prevalent in the developing world (or tropical diseases) is lagging behind. Among several factors, the low average per-capita income makes pharmaceutical markets in developing countries appear relatively unprofitable and therefore unattractive for R&D-oriented companies.

The case of ODL may offer some useful insights and perspectives for the fight against neglected tropical diseases. First, the measures used in ODL may also be effective in boosting R&D for neglected tropical diseases, if appropriately adapted to this market. Second, small-sized companies, which have played a successful role in the development of orphan drugs for rare diseases, may also represent a good business strategy for the case of tropical diseases.

Terror has rocked India before but never have terrorists been so audacious. South Mumbai is India’s economic heart. This attack is "India’s 9/11".

Mumbai is no routine urban agglomeration. It is a fabled city, where millions of Indians, migrating from poor hinterlands, seek a living; where rags-to-riches stories are not uncommon; where vast business deals are struck. It is where dreams are manufactured by a film industry that gives countless Indians relief from the struggles of life. Millions identify with the city.

Mumbai is a paradox. It has areas of appalling squalor but is India’s city of hope. It is in south Mumbai that the Tatas honed world-class business skills, Zubin Mehta learnt how to conduct Beethoven’s Fifth and Salman Rushdie understood how to turn the drama of everyday life into novels.

By targeting south Mumbai, the terrorists have not only attacked the economic symbol of a rising India but also its most globalised quarters.

A big hypothesis beckons: India is a highly unequal democracy in a bad neighbourhood, and as long as its democracy, inequalities and regional misfortunes remain unreformed, it will be vulnerable to terrorism.

Consider how Indian democracy has addressed terrorism. India’s politicians have asked: are terrorists simply terrorists, or are they Muslim or Hindu terrorists?

This question is tied up with electoral politics. Muslims comprise about 13 per cent of India’s population. Given how they are geographically distributed, they form a crucial electoral segment of at least a quarter of India’s parliamentary seats.

Seeking Hindu votes, some politicians have been quick to equate terror with Islam. Others, especially pro-Muslim political parties, focus on the unfair treatment of Muslims by the police rather than the fight to eliminate terror.

Recently Indian democracy has been treated to the obverse of "Muslim terror". Prima facie evidence and intelligence suggest the rise of Hindu networks practising terror against Muslims. In India’s democracy, terror has become identified not as an evil but as an outgrowth of the grievances of Muslims or Hindus, or as a sign of whether the Indian state is unfair to Muslims or Hindus. That is a recipe for further disasters.

Inequalities are the second part of the problem. The Indian economy has been booming, but while some business leaders, film stars and sports icons are Muslim, Muslims mostly come from the poorest, least educated and most poorly skilled communities.

Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in Mumbai. It has some of the richest Indian Muslims but there is a huge Muslim underclass and a connection between Mumbai’s underworld and its poor Muslims has been noted. Muslim gangs are among the most powerful players in Mumbai’s organised crime. To many, crime appears to offer greater and easier rewards than a dogged pursuit of regular employment.

Finally, Indian democracy functions in a region, whose failings are second only to the Middle East’s. Recent works by Pakistani scholars make it clear that the state in Pakistan has long been fractured between agencies that support terrorism and those that seek to control it.

India has its troubles in Kashmir and the north-east, but these conflicts have never reduced the Indian state to a shambles. Alone in south Asia, India has had sufficient institutional strength to hold regular elections.

India has to ask how long it can continue to be institutionally strong if the neighbourhood is so violent. Its borders are porous and the prospect of maritime terrorism, raised by the Mumbai carnage, makes them more so. Foreign policy and national security are increasingly tied up with India’s political health, with potential consequences for India’s economic resilience.

What can be done? How to include India’s Muslims in the economic mainstream is key. India’s political parties need to learn that terrorism cannot be seen as a vote-winner. It is an evil and a security threat. If political parties link terrorism with Muslims or Hindus, they will only bring greater catastrophe closer. Finally, India must vigorously cultivate peace with Pakistan. Luckily, a government today exists in Pakistan that has made the most resolute gestures towards peace in decades. President Asif Ali Zardari has opened up a unique opportunity for regional peace. After Mumbai, India needs to respond.