` Social Problems and Global Issues SSSP Global Division Newsletter Fall 2012 MESSAGE FROM THE GLOBAL DIVISION CHAIR Hello Global Division Members, As the year comes to a close, I want to thank all of you for your continued support of the Division. I want to extend a special thanks to those who have in different ways contributed their time and effort to working on committees and in other ways to build the Division. The annual meeting in Denver went really well, and I’m excited to begin working on our next meeting in New York city. The theme for next year is Re-imagining Social Problems: Moving Beyond Social Constructionism, an appropriate theme for a time when we face unprecedented challenges on a global scale, but also opportunity. The Global Division will be sponsoring or cosponsoring ten panels in partnership with members of other divisions within the SSSP and within the ASA. You can view the call for papers here: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/509/fuseaction/ssspsession2.publicView The Division will again sponsor two competitions this coming year, the Outstanding Book Award and the Graduate Student Paper Competition. We are pleased to announce that the SAGE journal Critical Sociology has again agreed to co-sponsor the paper competition and contribute to the award. This support has been crucial over the years in helping to develop a competition that continues to attract exciting and innovative work. The nomination and submission processes for both competitions are now open. More information on all of the action in the coming year can be found inside this newsletter and on the SSSP website. You’ll also find in this issue a call for nominations, as a number of positions are open for the 2014 General Election. Most importantly, we are looking for a new chair for this division! Please take a close look and consider nominating a colleague or yourself! We’ve also included announcements of recent publications and other news that may be interest to members. Finally, we are really pleased to run short articles by our 2012 Graduate Student Paper competition and Outstanding Book Award winners. Kristen Hopewell, now assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan, won the paper competition with her research on the role of Brazil at the World Trade Organization. Our book award winner is Cheris Shun-ching Chan, associate professor of sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Her book, Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China, examines the emergence of the private life insurance market in China. Please join me in congratulating both winners. And that’s it for me until the spring/summer newsletter. As always, don’t hesitate to send me an email with your ideas, questions, or if you are interested in working with the Division. See you in New York! Warm regards, Tony Roshan Samara Contents Page New Protagonists in Global Economic Governance 2 Marketing Death and Culture 4 2012 Award Winners 6 Member Publications 6 Announcements 7 2013 Planned Conference Sessions 12 NEW PROTAGONISTS IN GLOBAL ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE: BRAZILIAN AGRIBUSINESS AT THE WTO By Kristen Hopewell The global economy and the institutions charged with its governance are in the midst of a period of transformation as new developing country powers – such as Brazil, India and China – emerge and potentially challenge the longstanding dominance of the US and other advanced-industrialized states. The existing international economic order has been heavily shaped by US power and the US has been a key driver of globalization and neoliberal economic restructuring. Many have argued that the institutions of global economic governance – including the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank – and their neoliberal policies have been biased against the Global South and served to perpetuate the disparity between rich and poor countries. There have therefore been debates about whether shifts in power could rupture the current trajectory of neoliberal globalization – the restructuring of the global economy in favour of deregulation and market liberalization – and usher in an alternative form of globalization and potentially a more equitable and progressive global economic order. My research contributes to these debates by analyzing the case of Brazil at the WTO. The WTO is a core institution in global economic governance, responsible for setting and enforcing the rules of the global trading system. It has been a key site of struggle over global power relations and was one of the first international institutions to experience a shift in power away from the US and other developed countries and the rise of new developing country powers. The WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), historically operated as a ‘rich man’s club’ dominated by the US and a small group of other advanced industrialized states. The US was the key driver of liberalization, aggressively pushing other countries to open their markets to its exports, while maintaining protections in sensitive areas of its own market, such as agriculture. Agreements were negotiated among ‘the Quad’ – the US, EU, Canada and Japan – and imposed upon the rest of the organization’s membership effectively as a fait accompli. These states carved out a trading order that suited their own interests, while developing countries were severely marginalized. In the last decade, however, Brazil waged two high-profile and successful trade disputes against US and EU agricultural subsidies – the cotton and sugar cases – and created a major coalition of developing countries – the Group of 20 (G20) – which helped to destabilize the traditional power structure at the WTO, bring an end to the unfettered dominance of the US and EU, and put their trade policies at the centre of the Doha Round. These events were widely hailed as a major victory for developing countries at the WTO and generated a tremendous amount of interest from academics, policymakers, activists and the media. The G20, for example, is frequently characterized as a highly successful example of contemporary South-South cooperation being used to project the interests and development concerns of the Global South onto the international stage. Many view it as a progressive force with echoes of the sort of developing country activism not seen since the efforts of the G77 and the Non-Aligned Movement to construct a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1960s and 70s. However, I argue that these accounts of Brazil’s activism at the WTO miss one of its central components: the critical role played by business actors, specifically Brazil’s agribusiness sector. To analyze Brazil’s activities and agenda at the WTO, I draw on 15 months of field research conducted at the WTO in Geneva, as well as in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Beijing, New Delhi and Washington, involving 157 interviews with trade negotiators, senior government officials, and representatives of industry and non-governmental organizations; over 300 hours of ethnographic observation; and extensive documentary research. I argue that far from challenging the neoliberal agenda of the WTO, Brazil has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates of free market globalization and the push to expand and liberalize global markets. I show that Brazil’s stance has been driven by the rise of its sophisticated and highly competitive agribusiness sector, which has emerged as an influential force in Brazilian trade policy and at the WTO. An extensive literature has documented the role of corporate and business actors in economic globalization and their influence in global economic governance. Yet the study of private sector actors in global governance has focused almost exclusively on those based in the Global North; meanwhile, developing countries and their business actors have generally been viewed as either inconsequential or victimized by Northern multinationals and the economic governance institutions they dominate. Drawing on the case of Brazilian agribusiness at the WTO, however, I show that states and business actors from the Global South are becoming important new protagonists in global economic governance. Brazilian agribusiness – working with and through the Brazilian state – has had a significant impact on the multilateral trading system, making use of both the WTO’s strong dispute settlement mechanism and the Doha Round negotiations to further its commercial interests. In the process, it has posed a serious challenge to the policies of the US, EU and other developed countries. This case demonstrates that Southern business interests are now using the global governance institutions created by the states and corporations of the Global North to pry open and expand markets for their exports. Moreover, the commercial interests of Brazil’s agribusiness sector have been advanced by being portrayed as part of the Global South’s struggle for development and social justice: the North-South divide has been mobilized strategically as a tool to advance the interests of business actors from the Global South. Kristen Hopewell is the winner of the 2012 Graduate Student Paper Competition, sponsored by the Global Division and Critical Sociology, from which this essay is drawn. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. The full article is forthcoming in New Political Economy. MARKETING DEATH: CULTURE AND THE MAKING OF A LIFE INSURANCE MARKET IN CHINA By Cheris Shun-ching Chan How can a particular capitalist enterprise be diffused to regions with different cultural traditions? How does a market for a new product emerge in the face of cultural barriers? In Marketing Death, I explore how and why the life insurance industry has managed to emerge in China, a country with an entrenched cultural stigma against the very topic of death. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the processes and micro-politics by which foreign and domestic life insurance companies have negotiated local cultural resistance and created a market. In doing so, Iasks larger questions about how Chinese societies value life and death, what is meant by "cultural values," how they interact with a set of fragmented cultural tools to compellingly organize individuals' practical daily lives, and how the market is influenced by them. Home to one-fifth of the world’s population and noted for its impressive economic growth, China has become a primary target for the global expansion of commercial life insurance. Being the first transnational life insurer in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), AIG’s subsidiary, American International Assurance Company, Ltd. (AIA), has set forth in its mission to educate the local public about the concept of life insurance since its arrival in 1992. It defined life insurance as a new, modern, and effective risk management instrument, as protection against misfortunes. Despite its effort to raise people’s sense of risk, the population at large refused to entertain the possibility of premature death or other fatal misfortunes. Local resistance to the idea of insuring against early death is rooted in traditional Chinese concepts of life and death that portray early death as extremely horrifying. In contrast to Western philosophy where death is a central theme, death is largely treated as an untouchable topic in Confucianism. Crucially, the Confucian notion of death does not imply the possibility of eternity as it does in Christianity. Furthermore, when death is mentioned, it is consistently cast in negative terms: for example, folk Buddhism has bred the idea of a cruel hell and a damp cold “dark world” that gives death a dreaded and terrifying image. The folk beliefs surrounding hell and the dark world have continued to have an influence even into the contemporary era. To AIA’s surprise, however, there was a sudden explosion in life insurance sales in a few years after its arrival. The term baoxian, which is locally referred to as “life insurance,” became popular and known to the general public in 1996-1997. Even more surprising was that this popularity was brought about by a new, inexperienced domestic insurer: Ping An Life Insurance Company of China, Ltd (Ping An). This insurer did not even have an actuary or a trained underwriter when it joined the life insurance industry in 1994. But within four years, nonetheless, it captured the largest market share among all competitors in Shanghai. Although a novice life insurer, Ping An quickly proved its sensitivity and responsiveness to local demand and preferences. Three products, all serving primarily a savings function, dramatically boosted its sales. Equally important is that sales of these products did not have to address the troublesome topic of premature death and other misfortunes. AIA and other foreign insurers were not ignorant about the local cultural taboo. But they all defended the risk management function of life insurance because money management products were not as profit-guaranteed as risk management products. Their profit-oriented model deterred them from fully localizing their products. Instead, the domestic players’ market-share approach, though riskier, permitted them to yield to the taboo and to meet the local preference. As a result, the life insurance market in the PRC emerged first as a money management market, with features quite different from those found in Euro-American markets. While the book highlights the role of cultural values in shaping the development of the Chinese market, I also expand the “culture matters” argument by incorporating the tool-kit dimension of culture into the analysis. My argument is that the folklore, values, moralities, and perceptions rooted in the Chinese cultural values compose public resistance to receiving life insurance as an instrument of risk management. While the foreign players attempted to remove the resistance, the domestic players endeavored to circumvent the resistance by redefining the concept of life insurance. It was through the circumventing strategies that life insurance sales were fostered. Thus, the characteristics of the Chinese market are shaped by the dual processes in which one form of culture composes the resistance and the other form of culture circumvents it—what I call “interactive multiple-process model of culture in market formation.” I subsequently expanded the study to other Chinese societies. To my surprise, the popularity of life insurance in Hong Kong has been far lower than that in Taiwan, despite Hong Kong’s much wealthier economy. In an article published in British Journal of Sociology, I (2012) argue that the distinction between the Taiwanese and Hong Kong markets can be attributed to the extent to which indigenization took place, which in turn is a question of who dominated the market. The market in Hong Kong has been dominated by foreign players who attempt to remove the cultural obstacle. These foreign players, like those in the PRC, operate according to a rigorous profit-oriented model at the expense of a larger market. On the other hand, the market in Taiwan has been dominated by domestic players who are more accommodating to the local resistance in order to boost their growth. Therefore, the power of the domestic players is an important element affecting how a globalizing enterprise operates in a locality. This power, I argue, is often a function of their policies and the bargaining powers of the local states. The weaker local state like Hong Kong resulted in an absence of competitive domestic players and a market with a lesser degree of localization. Cheris Shun-ching Chan is the 2012 SSSP Global Division Book Award Winner. Dr. Chan is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Hong Kong. 2012 GLOBAL DIVISION AWARD WINNERS BOOK AWARD Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China, by Cheris Shun-ching Chan (2012, Oxford University Press) Pictured: John Dale, Cheris Shun-ching Chan, and Tony Samara STUDENT PAPER AWARD Winner: Kristen Hopewell, University of Michigan. "New Protagonists in Global Economic Governance: Brazilian Agribusiness at the WTO,” Honorable Mention: Valerie Francisco, City University of New York, The Graduate Center. “‘The Internet is Magic’: Technology in the Transnational Family,” NEW ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS PUBLISHED BY MEMBERS OF THE GLOBAL DIVISION Heather M. Brown. 2012. “Book Review: Arab Media: Globalization and Emerging Media Industries, by Noha Mellor, Muhammad Ayish, Nabil Dajani, and Khalil Rinnawi.” Media, Culture & Society, 34(8). Cheris Shun-ching Chan. 2012. “Culture, State, and Varieties of Capitalism: A Comparative Study of Life Insurance Markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan.” British Journal of Sociology 63(1). Nancy A. Matthews. 2012. “‘Learning the Truth and Stating the Facts:’ US State Department Claims-Making and the Construction of ‘Human Rights.’” Societies Without Borders, 7(2). Julie Stewart. 2012. “A Tale of Two Communities: Divergent Development and Embedded Brokerage in Post-war Guatemala.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 42(4). NEW BOOKS BY MEMBERS OF THE GLOBAL DIVISION Locating Right to the City in the Global South edited by Tony Roshan Samara, Shenjing He and Guo Chen (Routledge, 2012) Despite the fact that virtually all urban growth is occurring, and will continue to occur, in the cities of the Global South, the conceptual tools used to study cities are distilled disproportionately from research on the highly developed cities of the Global North. With urban inequality widely recognized as central to many of the most pressing challenges facing the world, there is a need for a deeper understanding of cities of the South on their own terms. Locating Right to the City in the Global South marks an innovative and far reaching effort to document and make sense of urban transformations across a range of cities, as well as the conflicts and struggles for social justice these are generating. The volume contains empirically rich, theoretically informed case studies focused on the social, spatial, and political dimensions of urban inequality in the Global South. Drawing from scholars with extensive fieldwork experience, this volume covers sixteen cities in fourteen countries across a belt stretching from Latin America, to Africa and the Middle East, and into Asia. Central to what binds these cities are deeply rooted, complex, and dynamic processes of social and spatial division that are being actively reproduced. These cities are not so much fracturing as they are being divided by governance practices informed by local histories and political contestation, and refracted through or infused by market based approaches to urban development. Through a close examination of these practices and resistance to them, this volume provides perspectives on neoliberalism and right to the city that advance our understanding of urbanism in the Global South. In mapping the relationships between space, politics and populations, the volume draws attention to variations shaped by local circumstances, while simultaneously elaborating a distinctive transnational Southern urbanism. It provides indepth research on a range of practical and policy oriented issues, from housing and slum redevelopment to building democratic cities that include participation by lower income and other marginal groups. It will be of interest to students and practitioners alike studying Urban Studies, Globalization, and Development. ANNOUNCEMENTS GLOBAL DIVISION CHAIR NOMINATIONS **The nomination process will open January 14th, 2013 and close on February 1st** We are currently soliciting nominations for the position of Chair for the Global Division. Chairs serve two year terms, and are responsible for: developing the Division program (identifying sessions and organizers) for the annual meeting; running the Division business meeting at the annual meeting; working with the newsletter editor to assure publication of the annual newsletter; overseeing the award committees; and other Division business. Tenure begins as chair-elect at the annual meeting in summer 2013. If you are interested in learning more or in nominating yourself or another individual for this position, please contact Tony Roshan Samara (tsamara@gmu.edu). Chairpersons are elected for two years. No Division chairperson can serve for more than three consecutive years. Self-nominations are acceptable. If you are nominated, the Executive Office will contact you to request your biographical information and statement prior to the elections. Election procedures will insure to all members of the Division an opportunity to vote in the election. A majority of votes cast will be necessary to elect any Division Officer. If there are more nominees for an office and there is not a clear majority, a run-off election will be held between the two candidates receiving the most votes. The same election procedures described above will be followed for the run- -off election. GLOBAL DIVISION: GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER COMPETITION DEADLINE: 1/31/13 The Global Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in cooperation with the Sage journal Critical Sociology announces its 2013 Graduate Student Paper Competition. The goal is to encourage critical scholarship in the areas of global or transnational studies and social problems. Suggested paper topics include but are not limited to the following themes: * Transnational Public Sociology * Knowledge Production about Globalization * Democratizing Globalization * The Politics of Human Rights * Re-imagining Community * Critical and/or Institutional Ethnography and Global Governance * Transnational Corporate Accountability * Immigration, Citizenship, and Global Justice * Globalization and Environmental Justice * Transnational Movements * Transnational Organizing within the Global South * Gender Issues in Globalization * Transnational Families Jointly-authored papers are accepted, but all contributing authors must be current graduate students or have graduated not prior to January 1, 2013. The award recipient will receive student membership in the SSSP, conference registration at the 2013 Annual SSSP Meeting in New York, a ticket to the SSSP awards banquet and a $400 prize (this award has been made possible in part by support from the Sage Journal Critical Sociology). Award recipients are expected to present their paper at the 2013 Annual Meeting. Winning papers will be invited to submit their paper for publication in Critical Sociology. Papers must be submitted electronically in a format compatible with MS WORD and authors should ensure that they receive a confirmation of receipt for their submission. Although faculty sponsorship is not formally required to enter the competition, participants are invited to request a note from a faculty member or independent scholar that speaks to the academic quality of the submission and they should be emailed directly to the addresses below. Note: Previous winners of this award are ineligible to compete. Papers should be double-spaced pages and not exceed 10,000 words including citations. Submissions must be sent by January 31, 2013 to Dr. Tony Samara (tsamara@gmu.edu). GLOBAL DIVISION: OUTSTANDING BOOK AWARD DEADLINE: 4/1/13 The Global Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems is pleased to announce its 2013 Outstanding Book Award. Given the massive growth of interest and research in the areas of global studies and social problems over the last decade, the Award is intended to recognize published work of exceptional quality in these areas and to encourage further critical scholarship about them. Accordingly, books on a variety of topics and themes will be considered for the Award, including but not limited to the following: alternative models of globalization; global dynamics and forms of resistance to neoliberalism (including the post-Washington Consensus era in Latin America, Asia, Africa, or the Middle East); transnational social movements; human rights struggles and global activism (around gender, indignity, migration, peace, social justice, etc.); transnational communities and cultural politics; global cities. We are particularly interested in books that link critical politics and activism with analytical and theoretical rigor. To be eligible for consideration, books must have been published within 3 years of the meeting (2010-2013 for this year’s award). Single or multiple-authored books will be accepted. At least one of the authors must be a member of the SSSP in order to qualify for the Award, although they will not be required to present a paper at the 2013 Annual Meeting. The award recipient(s) will receive one or two tickets to the SSSP awards banquet, at which the Award will be announced. Nominations can be made by members of the Global Division as well as from publishers; self-nominations are also welcomed. Nominees should send full publication information and a paragraph explaining why this book is recommended. If available, contact information for the author should be included. Authors will be requested to facilitate with their publishers that copies of the nominated book be sent to each of the Award Committee Co-Chairs. Nominations must be received no later than April 1, 2013. To nominate a book for this award, please send your message to the Co-Chairs of the 2013 Global Division Outstanding Book Award Committee, Paul Dean (psdean@owu.edu) and Cheris Chan (cherisch@hku.hk). SSSP GENERAL ELECTION NOMINATIONS DEADLINE: 6/15/13 Nominations are open for candidates to run in the 2014 General Election. We will be electing a President-Elect, a Vice-President Elect, regular and student members of the Board of Directors, members of the Budget, Finance, and Audit Committee, Committee on Committees, Editorial and Publications Committee, and the Membership and Outreach Committee. Please consider nominating a colleague or yourself for one of these offices by completing the online nomination form. Nominations should include a brief description of the nominee's SSSP involvement and other relevant experiences. The Nominations Committee will meet at the Annual Meeting in New York City, NY. All nominations should be submitted prior to Saturday, June 15, 2013. The Board of Directors will approve the slate of candidates for the 2014 General Election on August 11, 2013.  If you have any questions, please contact Shannon M. Monnat, Chairperson, Council of the Special Problems Divisions. Note: If a SSSP member is interested in serving on an appointed committee, the member may select the appropriate committee when renewing membership.  The Administrative Office will give your name to the Committee on Committees for consideration. EDITORIAL SEARCH – SOCIAL PROBLEMS EDITOR The Editorial and Publications Committee of the Society for the Study of Social Problems is soliciting applications for the position of Editor of the Society’s journal, Social Problems. The Editor’s three-year term will begin with the operation of the new editorial office at mid-year 2014.  The new editor will be responsible for editing Volumes 62-64 (years 2015-2017).  Applicants must be members or become members of the SSSP by the time of their application and for the duration of their tenure as editor. The Editor is responsible for managing the peer review process for approximately 300-400 submitted manuscripts per year, and preparing four issues of the journal (approximately 650 printed pages) annually.  The editorial office manages the review process using the on-line services of ScholarOne/Manuscript Central and also has responsibility for copy editing and proofreading in accordance with customary publishing standards. The committee seeks editorial candidates with distinguished scholarly records, previous editorial experience (e.g., service as journal editor or associate editor, editor of scholarly editions, etc.), strong organizational and management skills, and the ability to work and communicate well with others.  A familiarity with, and commitment to, Social Problems and the SSSP are essential. The SSSP supports the operation of the editorial office with an annual budget and provides a modest stipend and travel expenses for the Editor.  Support is also expected from the host institution.  This may include office space, utilities, the use of computers and other office equipment, tuition waivers for office personnel (if appropriate), faculty release time, and other basic expenses.  Each year the Editor will be expected to submit a budget to the SSSP to cover operating expenses that the host institution does not support. Individuals interested in applying for the editorship should submit their curriculum vitae with a cover letter detailing their relevant experience, a preliminary operating budget, and a letter from their Department Chair, Dean, or other authorized university administrator confirming the institutional support referenced above.  Guidance in the preparation of applications is available from the Editorial and Publications Committee Chair as well as the current Social Problems Editor, the Executive Officer, and the Administrative Officer, if necessary. Please direct all questions, inquiries, nominations, expressions of interest, and application materials to: David A. Smith, Chair, SSSP Editorial and Publications Committee Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-5100 (949) 824-7292 Email: dasmith@uci.edu EDITORIAL SEARCH – COMMUNICATION, CULTURE & CRITIQUE EDITOR The International Communication Association Publications Committee is soliciting nominations for editor of Communication, Culture & Critique. Self-nominations are welcome. Communication, Culture & Critique provides an international forum for critical, interpretive, and qualitative research examining the role of communications and cultural criticism in today’s world. The journal welcomes high-quality research and analyses from diverse theoretical and methodological approaches from all fields of communication, media, and cultural studies. A completed nomination package would include a letter of application from the candidate indicating a willingness to serve and a vision for the journal, a CV, three letters of support from published scholars familiar with the candidate’s work and experience, and a letter of institutional support from the candidate’s home institution. Responsibilities are detailed in the ICA Publication Manual on the ICA website:http://www.icahdq.org. Details about the journal are available through the following link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1753-9137/homepage/Society.html Editors of ICA publications should reflect and seek to enhance the diversity of the Association in interest, gender, ethnicity, national origin, and regional representation. Some previous ICA editors have worked with a support structure of associate editors to meet the diverse demands. The term of editor extends three years beginning 1 January 2014. Please send your nomination package by 15 December 2012 to: Frank Esser, Chair, Publications Committee (frank.esser@uzh.ch). NEW PROGRAMS RELATED TO GLOBAL STUDIES Master of Arts, Middle East and Islamic Studies George Mason University will be launching a new Master of Arts program in Middle East and Islamic Studies in the Fall of 2013. Due to very strong interest in the program, they will also be accepting applications for a small intake of students for the Spring 2013 semester (to start January 2013). The expressed goal of this program is to situate the study of the Middle East and Islam within a globalized world. Accordingly, the curriculum covers topics of recent scholarly significance including the Arab Uprisings and transitions in the Middle East, new media, political Islam, the political economy of the Middle East, the relationship between “resource wars” and the “war on terrorism,” new diasporas and transnational Muslim communities in the ‘West,’ and the changed geopolitical environments of Muslim and Middle Eastern countries. This interdisciplinary graduate degree prepares students for a variety of post-graduate opportunities in academia, government, and an expanding job market for people with this expertise. More information can be found at their website. Undergraduate Major and Minor in Global Studies Northeastern Illinois University (located in Chicago) recently created a major and a minor in Global Studies. Several sociologists served on the Taskforce that designed the program and shepherded it through the curriculum review process. One innovative aspect of the program is that the introductory course for Global Studies has a variety of faculty from different disciplines each teach two weeks of the course so that students get a sense of the true interdisciplinary spirit of the field. PLANNED GLOBAL DIVISION SPONSORED AND CO-SPONSORED SESSIONS FOR THE 2013 CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK The call for papers can be found on the SSSP website at: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/509/fuseaction/ssspsession2.publicView Submissions/inquires should be sent to corresponding session organizers’ emails Session 24 Global Innovations in Drug Policy Organizer: Stephen J. Sifaneck (sps@berkeleycollege.edu) Co-sponsored with the Drinking and Drugs Division Session 46 Reimagining Globalization and Social Change – THEMATIC Organizer: Tony Roshan Samara (tsamara@gmu.edu) Session 47 CRITICAL DIALOGUES: Globalization: Defining and Debating Costs and Benefits – THEMATIC Organizer: David A. Smith (dasmith@uci.edu) Session 48 Transnational Social Movements, Markets and Change – THEMATIC Organizer: Paul Dean (psdean@owu.edu) Session 49 Gender and Globalization Orgranizer: Ligaya Lindio McGovern (lmcgover@iuk.edu) Co-sponsored with the Labor Studies Division Session 55 Public Health Sustainability, Ecological Justice, and Globalization Organizer: Jennifer J. Reed (reedj32@unlv.nevada.edu) Co-sponsored with the Environment and Technology Division and the Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division Session 62 Institutional Ethnography Approaches to Gender, Race, Colonization and Migration in Transnational Contexts Organizers: Roxana Ng (roxana.ng@utoronto.ca) and Samit Dipon Bordoloi (diponbordoloi@gmail.com) Co-sponsored with the Institutional Ethnography Division Session 72 Reimagining Human Rights – THEMATIC Organizer: Lloyd Klein (lklein@sfc.edu) Co-sponsored with the Law and Society Division Session 105 Social Welfare Policies in the Global South Organizer: Najwa Sado Safadi (nsafadi@art.alquds.edu) Co-sponsored with the Sociology and Social Welfare Division Session 107 Human Rights and Global Inequality Organizer: Najwa Sado Safadi (nsafadi@art.alquds.edu) Co-sponsored with the Sociology and Social Welfare Division Global Division Newsletter Editor Jason Smith, PhD Student George Mason University Jsm5@gmu.edu 13