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Roundtable: Information Technology and Governance: Who Gets to Shape the Future? Wednesday, June 5, 6-8PM Roundtable Participants:
Evolve New York Open Studio: Rebuilding Proposals May 9-10, 2002, Room 555, Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University 
In the aftermath of 9/11, numerous architecture, urban planning, and design studios have focused their efforts on rethinking downtown New York and proposing solutions for the redevelopment of the WTC site. This common focus offers the rare opportunity for wider collaboration and exchange among the academic, design, and urban policy communities. Similarly, social scientists in New York and elsewhere have been studying the complex issues of response, recovery, and redevelopment. Their shared focus with the design community now offers a rare opportunity for dialogue across areas of specialization that, regrettably, are too often distant.
We will convene an "Open Studio," to be held at Columbia University on May 9th and 10th, to bring together faculty and students from universities in New York and beyond to present their studio projects and discuss the resources and constraints that have informed their proposals. They will be joined by sociologists, political scientists, and legal theorists who have been working on problems of public policy, democratic participation, economic districts, and regional and community development. Conference participants will also include government officials and community representatives to respond to the proposals and to discuss the guiding principles of the planning and decision-making process.
The broad themes to be explored in the conference will include the following: How do diverse stakeholders reach agreement and shape common ground, despite their different principles of evaluation and accountability? How might the dispersed deliberations shaping urban policy and planning become more open and inclusive? What are the politics of representation in urban redevelopment? What translations occur across these very different activities as the representatives of social groups meet designers' representations of 21st Century urban form?
The studio presentations will subsequently be made available to the general public by being displayed on the evolvenewyork.org Web site.
With the Generous Support of
Dr. Susan Gitelson · ISERP New York Conference on the Social Studies of Finance May 3-4, 2002 
After a decade of unbridled optimism about the financial markets, it is time to re-consider how we think about them. For ten years, the currency of neoclassical economics and accompanying notions of "market equilibrium" and "market efficiency" have risen with every uptick of the NASDAQ. But the crash of the dot-com bubble and the spectacular bankruptcies of Long Term Capital -- and now of Enron -- call for some new thinking on the financial markets. The New York Conference on Social Studies of Finance will gather select group social scientists not typically associated with finance to share new theories on financial markets. The meeting is organized by Professor David Stark, director of Columbia's Center of Organizational Innovation and Daniel Beunza, graduate student at the Stern School of Business of New York University. It is sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, aims at developing and the emerging field of Social Studies in Finance. In the past years, a select group of researchers in the United States and Europe have been taking a fresh look at financial markets from fields outside the realm of rational choice such as economic sociology, social studies of science, and anthropology. Their efforts are leading to an emerging field of study that examines socio-technical networks and knowledge claims in financial markets. The emerging field, which calls itself "Social Studies of Finance," offers new and powerful research methodologies that can potentially address questions that lie beyond the reach of traditional economic treatment. Ethnomethodology, network analysis, and the systematic analysis of new digital technologies, for example, promise new insights into the problems of valuation and the dynamics of financial markets. The conference will be held in New York City where discussion of organizational features of financial services figure prominently in public policy debates about the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. Already before September 11th, new information and interactive technologies were reshaping the financial district. The papers, directly or indirectly, will yield insights that will illuminate fundamental processes of place and space in the New York City economy. For more information about the conference and its participants, please contact Daniel Beunza, dbeunza@stern.nyu.edu, Tel. (212) 998-0224; David Stark, dcs36@columbia, Tel. (212) 854-3972. From Infrastructure to Interface: Social and Technical Networks in Recovery December 5, 2001, Columbia University  (requires Acrobat Reader)
In the wake of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, firms at the heart of the financial district had to contend with a quick succession of extreme challenges. In coping with everything from catastrophic human loss to emergency response and relocation, redundant channels of communication and multiple information networks played a critical role.
Information technologies, new and old alike, allowed individuals and institutions to put into play both rehearsed and spontaneous organizational responses. Much can be learned from the socio-technical networks mobilized during this period. What were the communication and information needs that became evident in this crisis? How did existing resources address these needs and what impromptu and innovative network strategies were generated?
Although rebuilding infrastructure commanded firms' attention in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, the challenges of the subsequent recovery period involve issues of information architecture and interface design. After all, accessibility and appropriateness are as critical as accuracy to the value of information, and knowing who to communicate with is as important as having a working channel to use. How are firms evaluating the role of intranets, Instant Messaging, virtual offices, and other forms of distanced collaboration under circumstances of relocation and reconfiguration? What lessons are being learned for the organizations' operations in the longer run? It is clear that the information technologies themselves are only a part of the story.
We will convene a roundtable of key actors engaged in the recovery efforts of firms affected by the WTC attack. Our goal is to provide a structured opportunity for these key decision-makers to reflect on their experiences away from the glare of publicity, and in thoughtful collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of Columbia University sociologists, anthropologists, and interactive design researchers. The insights and new perspectives gained should provide a valuable resource for participants formulating strategies of recovery, as well as guidance for the future direction of our post-WTC research efforts at Columbia.
Uncivil Acts - Global Civil Society December 3, 2001, Columbia University A Special Roundtable presented by the School for International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and the London School of Economics and organized by David Stark, Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Columbia University. Guest Speakers: Mary Kaldor, Principal Research Fellow and Program Director Centre for the Study of Global Governance London School of Economics Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Director, Institute of African Studies, SIPA Columbia University Richard Falk, Professor of Politics and International Affairs Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Princeton University Speaker Biographies: Mary Kaldor is the Principal Research Fellow and Program Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. Her expertise includes 'new wars' and humanitarian intervention, the Balkans and Trancaucasus, democracy and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe and global civil society. She is the author of New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era and co-editor and contributor of Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and the Director, Institute of African Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His research interests include political identity, colonialism, state formation and state reform. Mamdani's publications include Citizen and Subject, And Fire Does not Always Beget Ash: Critical Reflections on the NRM, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda, "Politics and Class Formation in Uganda" and "Myth of Population Control". He received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, his M.A. and M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Richard Falk is a Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs and International Affairs at Princeton University. Falk has been a congressional fellow of the American Political Science Association, a fellow of the Science and Public Policy Program at Harvard University, a Guggenheim fellow, a Lehrman fellow, an Abe fellow, vice president of the American Political Science Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and twice a Rockefeller fellow. He writes in the field of international relations and is the author of American Scientists and Nuclear Weapons Policy, France in the Age of the Scientific State, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation, War and Change in World Politics and The Political Economy of International Relations. Falk received his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. |
