The Other Side of the Penny: Stanford University Launches “Pathways” Magazine, Full of In-Depth Analysis of Distribution of Wealth and Inequality

This past weekend I took a crash course in the economy and inequality studies. My guide? Pathways Magazine, the brainchild of Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, and two senior editors – David Grusky and Christopher Wimer (along with an editorial board of scholars from the nation’s top colleges and universities).

Pathways sets out to examine the distribution of economic output. The editors explain in the inaugural issue:

"The United States has an ongoing love affair with magazines about the economy. If supermarket shelves stocked with Business Week, the Economist, Forbes, and Fortune are any guide, there is clearly more interest in how the economy is doing and what policies might generate more (or less) output. But strangely enough there are no popular magazines focused on how that output is distributed. This is surely a puzzle. If we care about the total output, shouldn't we also care about who is getting all that output? Why not a magazine on who's winning, who's losing, and why?"

What Pathways offers readers are bi-partisan ideas and approaches to such topics as health care reform, what the United States can learn from the anti-poverty programs and achievements of other countries, and fighting poverty during an economic downturn, among other topics.

Published quarterly, each issue presents a broad topic and asks smart academics to propose answers, stats, policies and views (in short articles). Brief blurbs on current research are also included. A sampling of topics in the most recent issue:

Flexicurity: Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel argue that the time has come to build a 21st century labor market modeled on key principles of Denmark's "flexicurity" system.

Pro-Poor Stimulus: Lessons from the Developing World: Martin Ravallion looks to antipoverty programs in developing countries to understand how developed nations like the United States can provide stimulus while reducing long-term poverty.

Combating Poverty by Building Assets: Lessons from Around the World: Ray Boshara describes the key features of asset-building programs throughout the world and examines how the United States can apply them to achieve economic security for the poor.

Northern Exposure: Learning from Canada's Response to Winner-Take-All Inequality: Jacob S. Hacker describes how the United States and Canada have taken two different roads and why the Canadian road provides lessons that the United States might take to heart.

Spotlight On...Growing Power and the Urban Farming Movement: In our new "Spotlight On" feature, we talk with Growing Power's Will and Erika Allen about the potential and future of urban agriculture in combating poverty.

It’s fabulously enlightening, well-written stuff that I’d encourage our readers to check out. You can preview Pathways online here.

Vermont Community Galvanizes Around Creating Support Systems and Solutions for Refugees Who Are Victims of Torture

"Recently a group of Vermonters who work with refugees, asylum seekers and new immigrants have joined in a collaborative effort to ensure that Vermont’s torture survivors get access to all the medical, psychological, legal and social services they deserve. The group, called New England Survivors of Torture and Trauma, or NESTT, has been quietly working behind the scenes to develop a comprehensive and coordinated approach to providing those services."
-from "Out of Darkness" by Ken Picard of Seven Days-

Ken Picard has a in-depth (and moving) article in this week's Seven Days about how the Vermont community is developing successful means of helping African refugees who have been victims of torture.

Patrick Giantonio, executive director of Vermont Immigration and Asylum Advocates and one of the founders of NESTT, estimates that between 50 and 75 percent of his clients are torture survivors, most of whom have never sought treatment.

NESTT is just one organization that is leading the charge to offer assistance and counsel. NESTT will:

"...host a three-day training seminar for various social-service providers — educators, medical and mental-health professionals, lawyers, social workers and so on — who work with Vermont’s refugee population. Already, NESTT’s team of graduate psychology students at the University of Vermont is providing counseling to recent immigrants who’ve had trouble coming to grips with their painful pasts. Though it’s long and difficult work, those who offer such counseling all say they’re amazed by the resilience and courage of their clients and their ability to lead normal lives now."

Read the entire article for a peak into how one small city is becoming a model for dealing with victims of torture.

*Image by Seven Days.

Do Social Networks Like MySpace and Facebook Reveal Class Divisions?

"What we’re seeing is a modern incarnation of white flight...It should scare the hell out of us." -danah boyd-

danah boyd, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has spent the past four years studying, observing and analyzing how US teens use social networks. What she's found is that high-school students began showing a trend of white, upper-class and college-bound teens migrating to Facebook while less-educated and non-white teens were on MySpace.

Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project further elucidates the social network stratification. Their December 2008 study showed that, overall, Facebook users are more likely to be male and have completed college, while MySpace users are somewhat more likely to be female, black or Hispanic, and to have not completed college.

Read more stats in this New York Times blog post on the topic. Or check out boyd's blog and her essay on the topic, which she presented at the Personal Democracy Forum.

The Place of Women on the Nation's Highest Court: An Interview with Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"It's almost like being back in law school in 1956, when there were 9 of us in a class of over 500, so that meant most sections had just 2 women, and you felt that every eye was on you. Every time you went to answer a question, you were answering for your entire sex. It may not have been true, but certainly you felt that way. You were different and the object of curiosity."
-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg-

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the lone woman on the Supreme Court these days (although, perhaps for not much longer). The New York Times has a nice interview with her, covering everything from Sandra Day O'Connor to Sonia Stotomayor. Ruth digs into current and past Supreme Court cases, her legal career and answers some interesting questions about gender and the legal system.

Here is a funny excerpt:

Q: Do you think if there were more women on the court with you that other dynamics would change?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I think back to the days when — I don’t know who it was — when I think Truman suggested the possibility of a woman as a justice. Someone said we have these conferences and men are talking to men and sometimes we loosen our ties, sometimes even take off our shoes. The notion was that they would be inhibited from doing that if women were around. I don’t know how many times I’ve kicked off my shoes. Including the time some reporter said something like, it took me a long time to get up from the bench. They worried, was I frail? To be truthful I had kicked off my shoes, and I couldn’t find my right shoe; it traveled way underneath.

Amnesty International Urges China to Conduct a Fair and Impartial Investigation in Urumqi

"There has been a tragic loss of life and it is essential that an urgent independent investigation takes place to bring all those responsible for the deaths to justice...Violence and abuses from either the authorities or protestors is in no way justified."
-Roseann Rife, Amnesty International's Deputy Director Asia-Pacific-

Amnesty International today called on the authorities in Urumqi to immediately launch an independent and impartial investigation into reports that 140 people were killed when a protest turned violent late on Sunday.

Read more here.

New Dropping Knowledge Multimedia Campaign Poses Questions to Start Conversations About Social Justice

Dropping Knowledge, the Berlin- and San Francisco-based group founded in 2003 by Mindpirates, has launched a neat new e-postcard campaign. The group is dedicated to exploring how "provocative, challenging and entertaining questions, communicated by innovative multimedia, can inspire new thinking."

I think these images speak for themselves. Spread them around to start a conversation, or ask a question yourself...







Click here to view all of the images.