Day: March 7, 2013

Mimicking Hedge Funds: Rethinking risk, return and the organization

Hedge-Fund-Risk_HO_UofMinn_D_000What are the anthropological roots of the financial meltdown of 2008?

Today, anthropologists at York University will consider that question as part of the annual lecture presented by the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

The lecture features Karen Ho, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and one of a new breed of anthropologists examining the financial markets. Today, from 3:30 to 5:30pm, Ho will present her research on the anthropology of economy and how it relates to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Her research centres on the problematic of understanding and representing financial markets, sites that are resistant to cultural analysis and disavow various attempts to locate or particularize them. Ho’s domain of interest is the anthropology of economy, broadly conceived. She considers finance capital, capitalism, globalization, corporations, inequality, dominant discourses, comparative studies of race and ethnicity and feminist epistemologies.

“Ho draws on her deep personal experience and work in Wall Street and will speak about why and how the 2008 financial crisis occurred,” says Professor Albert Schrauwers, Department of Anthropology chair and undergraduate program director. “This will be a compelling lecture and all are welcome to attend.”

Ho’s ethnography, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), based on three years of fieldwork among investment bankers and major financial institutions, has won two honorable mentions from the Society for Cultural Anthropology and the Society for the Anthropology of North America.

Recent publications include: “Disciplining Investment Bankers, Disciplining the Economy” (American Anthropology, 2009); “Finance” (Encyclopedia of Social & Cultural Anthropology, 2010); “Outsmarting Risk: From Bonuses to Bailouts” (Anthropology Now, 2010); and “Financial Morality” (Didier Fassin’s Companion to Moral Anthropology, Blackwell 2012).

Her latest book project attempts to excavate an alternative cultural history of financial risk through the ethno-historic investigation of three central sites – corporations, investment practices and investment funds – from the mid-twentieth century until the present moment.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in 010 Technology Enhanced Learning Building (TEL) on York’s Keele campus.

Are you ready for ‘justice care’?

Do Canada’s early childhood education and justice systems share common ground?

The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) is betting they do and they will explore the similarities in their round-table series Issues of Cost & Access: Beyond Silos, Towards Strategies.

Shanker2Stuart Shankar

Set for March 19 at Osgoode Hall Law School, the round table will explore analogies between early childhood education and access to justice issues.  The event will feature presentations from: Stuart Shankar, distinguished research professor of philosophy and psychology and director of the Milton & Ethel Harris Research Initiative; Christine Forsyth, council member with the College of Early Childhood Educators and PhD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School; Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Professor Les Jacobs, executive director, CFCJ; and Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Trevor Farrow, CFCJ chair.

FarrowTrevor Farrow

“In recent years some of Canada’s largest publicly funded systems have made important strides in improving access to services,” says Jacobs. “We are interested in learning from early childhood education experts about how re-framing costs in the civil justice system might help us to improve access. We are particularly keen on learning more about the long-term benefits of early intervention.”

For Sabreena Delhon, executive officer at CFCJ, the event itself is an exercise in efficiency. “Our event underscores the need to share existing information about how to make publicly funded systems more effective, to get it out of silos and into coordinated action that will improve the lives of Canadians.”

Lesley Jacobs2Les Jacobs

Previous round tables in 2012 contrasted access issues in the justice system with those in the health-care and social-investment spheres.

Issues of Cost & Access: Beyond Silos, Towards Strategies is co-sponsored by the York Centre for Public Policy & Law and is a part of the Cost of Justice Project, a $1 million, five-year study funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council. Outcomes from the Cost of Justice Project will provide a foundation for policy, practice and program initiatives that will improve access to legal services and resources.

The CFCJ is a national non-profit organization that has been dedicated to advancing civil justice reform through research and advocacy since 1998. It is affiliated with Osgoode Hall Law School.

Wrestle with Plato in new collection, Summer Sport: Poems

The newest collection by poet, author and York English Professor Priscila Uppal, Summer Sport: Poems, a companion volume to the popular Winter Sport: Poems, will launch this month.

Summer Sport: Poems were composed by Uppal in her capacity as Canadian Athletes PriscilaUppalSummerSportPoemsNow Poet-in-Residence for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games and the 2011 Rogers Cup Tennis Tournament.

The launch and readings will take place Tuesday, March 12 at 7:30pm at The Monarch Tavern, 12 Clinton Street (just south of College Street) in Toronto. Books by former Canadian Poet Laureate George Bowering, David McFadden and Peter Norman will also launch. Everyone is welcome to attend this free event.

Reading this book, you will wrestle with Plato, volley with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, eat yams with Usain Bolt, fence with Don Quixote, make soccer history with Canada’s women, bash chairs in wheelchair rugby and more.

The book also includes an introduction about physical and creative practice and health, a “sports writing boot camp” outline to conduct your own sports writing PriscilaUppalworkshop and recommended reading for the off-season. It’s a great gift for any sports fan, poetry aficionado, English teacher or Olympic junkie.

Priscila Uppal

All Uppal’s royalties from Winter Sport: Poems and Summer Sport: Poems are donated to the Canadian Athletes Now Fund. As she says, “10 million Canadians watched the women’s soccer bronze-medal match. If every person who watched donated $1, our athletes could be funded for the next games, rather than in debt.”

To pre-order the book, visit the Mansfield Press website.

In addition, Uppal’s U.K. publisher of poetry, Bloodaxe Books, will send her on an extensive book tour this April/May for her book Successful Tragedies: Selected Poems 1998-2010, where she will be featured at international festivals in Galway, Ireland, and Liverpool, England. She will also read in Newcastle, Hull, Sheffield, the Edinburgh Scottish Poetry Library and at William Wordsworth’s famous cottage in England’s Lake District.

Have your say, complete York’s transportation survey

York is one of the greenest universities in Canada. To promote more sustainable transportation and a cleaner environment, the University is investigating the interest in electric vehicle ownership through the greening transportation survey IRISSurvey– Moving Transportation into the 21st Century.

Complete the survey, which runs until March 22,  for a chance to win a monthly Metropass.

The survey will help in planning for providing electrical vehicle charging stations. It also seeks critical input into planning for other transportation initiatives, including the Yonge-University-Spadina subway expansion to York, parking, and assistance in building a carpooling culture and improving cycling infrastructure.

This survey is part of a study being conducted by the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability on behalf of Campus Services & Business Operations with input from York community members.

To complete the survey now, click here.

Minimum wage hikes: Benefits offset the costs

“The best economic evidence seems to show that modest minimum-wage increases have very limited macroeconomic impacts in terms of overall growth and employment. They can, however, have positive impacts for both workers and their employers in low-wage sectors of the economy,” wrote York University Packer Professor of social justice Andrew Jackson in The Globe and Mail March 7. “It is far from clear why higher productivity prompted by higher wages is a bad thing. And it is worth underlining that even small negative impacts on employment arising from a minimum-wage increase will leave the great majority of minimum-wage workers better off.”  Read full story.

Terence Corcoran: Canada’s energy superpower dreams
For some reason Canada is suddenly awash in grand projects and industrial schemes, the product of a new national dream created some seven years ago by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reported the Financial Post March 6….At the Vancouver-based Asia Pacific Foundation on Wednesday, a couple of consultants – Boston Consulting’s George Stalk and York University Professor Charles McMillian – produced a grand strategy paper calling for a massive infrastructure megaproject aimed at making Canada the “North American Gateway” for a flow of goods and resources from a giant port in Prince Rupert, B.C. Read full story.

B.C. election outlook: Is Christy Clark’s goose cooked?
“The B.C. NDP has a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” said York University political science Professor Dennis Pilon in The Province March 7. “They excel at losing.” If you include the party’s previous incarnation as the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, the NDP has lost 19 of 22 B.C. elections, Pilon noted. Read full story.

’The Next Step’ puts drama in a dance studio
When Frank Van Keeken set out to make a TV drama about the subculture of dance, there was one important requirement: the stars had to be real dancers, reported the Toronto Star March 7. Thus every cast member on “The Next Step”, which debuts on Family Channel on Friday at 7pm, has dance credentials….Indeed, the show is packed with dancing, whether in the studio scenes or the competition scenes, which were shot at York University. Read full story.

Conference highlights outstanding grad student research

The third International Graduate Student Research Conference on Latin America & the Caribbean will be held March 15 and 16 at York University, featuring more than 90 student presenters.

The two-day conference will highlight outstanding graduate student research across a broad disciplinary range, representing 12 Canadian universities, 24 United States-based universities and six universities in Europe and Asia.

The event will take place at 280N York Lanes and 519 York Research Tower, from 9:15am to 5:45pm both days. Click here for a full schedule of panels, times and locations. For information on how to register, click here.

CerlaceGradConfSome 22 interdisciplinary thematic panels will look at everything from politics and performance, free trade and globalization, diaspora, literature and society, explorations of cultural memory and Indigenous politics to violence, memory and overcoming, and gender issues in Caribbean societies.

In addition to the student presenters, 22 faculty members of York University, the University of Toronto, Ryerson University and Trent University will serve as expert discussants.

Sponsored by York’s Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC), the conference is organized by a committee of graduate students. One has been held bi-annually since 2008. Reflecting the event’s growing reputation, this year’s call for papers received twice the number of responses compared to the previous two conferences; the program is close to double the size of its antecedents and integrates a higher proportion of international participants.

This event provides an important professional development opportunity for its participants, graduate students who will receive expert feedback from faculty discussants and engage in intellectual exchange with an international cohort of their peers.

Some of their papers may be nominated by discussants for publication in one of CERLAC’s publication series. Dozens of York University students will benefit by presenting papers, by serving on the organizing committee for the event, and by attending and being exposed to a diverse range of accomplished scholarship.

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Political Science, the Faculty of Environmental Studies, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the York Graduate Students Association.

For full program details, visit the International Graduate Student Research Conference on Latin America & the Caribbean website.