Annual Theme, 2008-2009
PLEASE NOTE: If you are applying for a postdoctoral fellowship for the 2009-2010 academic year, you should refer to the 2009-2010 Annual Theme (http://www.bentley.edu/arts-sciences-center/annual-theme-09-10.cfm)
The theme for the 2008-2009 academic year is Its Own Reward? The Political Economy of the Common Good. From Bernard Mandeville’s declaration that private vices bring public benefits through Adam Smith’s assertion that a man pursuing “only his own gain . . . frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” to Oliver Stone’s pithy statement that “greed is good,” the common good has been a terrain contested among private actors, interest groups and governments.
As the political leaders of rapidly expanding capitalist economies purposefully dismantled older concepts of just price, moral economy and republican virtue, impersonal markets increasingly determined the meaning of the public good and set limits on government intervention. Historians of liberalism like Steven Pincus have nevertheless argued that “it was possible to have a commercial society devoted to the promotion of the common good.”
Many historical and contemporary debates have placed protagonists of the public good in the position of arguing that their reforms reinforce, rather than restrict, the benefits of a market society. Recent discussions of business ethics and corporate global social responsibility often frame those issues in a similar way: ethics and social conscience are not only good in themselves, they will also inevitably improve a corporation’s bottom line.
The questions explored by fellows at the Valente Center in 2008-2009 will include the ways that specific embodiments of the public good are assimilated to the values of a market-driven society and made law. How do projects in support of the common good sell themselves to polities, politicians, philosophers, political scientists and economic interest groups?
The following examples of research topics related to the annual theme are included for illustrative purposes; they are not meant to restrict the range of viable projects.
- analysis of the ways that deregulation and privatization have redefined the responsibilities of government and the meaning of democracy in developing or industrialized countries;
- exploration of the role of NGOs and popular organizations as guardians of the public good in less-developed countries through, for example, social audits of government spending;
- quantifying or modeling the common good by exploring parliamentary or congressional voting patterns, public opinion polls, statistics about social mobility, or other data sets;
- examination of the role of literature, film and other cultural texts in shaping definitions of a just society, the proper role of government, or the function of the market;
- interrogation of historical records to discover why merchants, industrialists and other economic groups in developed countries embraced some reforms, such as abolition of the slave trade, while rejecting others;
- engagement with philosophical debates about public eudaimonia, the idea that virtuous societies are successful societies;
- investigation of the ways that for-profit health care systems undermine or advance the public good of preventive treatment.
The call for proposals is normally made in December of each year, with a deadline for submission in mid-January. Previous annual themes and fellows are listed below.
2007-2008 Theme: Equalities and Inequalities
Chris Beneke, Assistant Professor of History
Common School: Early Struggles over Integration, Segregation, and Equality in American Public Education
Jeff Gulati, Assistant Professor of International Studies
Media Coverage of International Human Trafficking and its Consequences for Women's Equality
Dominique Haughton, Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Inequality in Vietnam: Insights From Recent Vietnam Living
Standards Surveys
Ranjoo Herr, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Equal Respect for Persons: A Culturally Sensitive Re-examination
Anna Siomopoulos, Assistant Professor of English
Public Daydreams: Consumer Citizenship and Hollywood Cinema
of the 1930s
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2006-2007 Theme: The Global in the Local
Gary David, Associate Professor, Sociology
Making Distributed Work Collaborative: The Social Side of Global Software Development
Samir Dayal, Associate Professor, English
Globalization and Identity in Hindi Cinema
Bonnie Field, Assistant Professor, International Studies
Frozen Democracy? Modes of Transition and the Consolidation of Democracy: Spain and Argentina in Comparative Perspective
Bridie Andrews Minehan, Assistant Professor, History
Missionaries of Medicine and Modernity in China
Kristin Sorensen, Assistant Professor, International Studies
Chilean Media and Discourses of Human Rights
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