Oct 28, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

In the context of the "Decade of Development," and as part of the non-military strategies of containment of communism, different public and private US. institutions turned their attention to projects of technical assistance in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that sought to modernize the legal systems of the countries of the Third World. In the Inter-American context, several initiatives were promoted under the label "Law and Development" (LD). Financed mostly by the Ford Foundation and USAID, they were conceived and implemented in the 1960s and the 1970s by those institutions, in cooperation with US law schools (Harvard, Stanford, Wisconsin, and Yale, among others) and local universities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru. The common purpose of these programs was the transformation of the national legal systems following the US model. The effort centered on removing obstacles to development attributed to obsolete legal structures and a conception of the role of the law and lawyers incompatible with the challenges of modernization.

Oct 30, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

My visit to the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) was motivated by two interrelated research projects. The first was to study materials related to the transnational construction of the academic field of Afro-Brazilian studies in the 1930s and 1940s. The second project was to focus on the impact of the making of Afro-American studies and African studies proper, in both North and South America, and on the life and trajectories of the independence leaders of African countries from the 1950s – especially the Mozambican, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane. The week I spent at the Rockefeller Archive Center, thanks to a small research stipend which I obtained, has proven highly productive for both research projects.

Nov 11, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

My dissertation examines the role of smart power in U.S.-Spain relations during the Spanish transition to democracy. The archives of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) held several collections that enriched my analysis of the development of soft power by the United States in Spain. At the archives, I found records on the movement of Pablo Picasso's Guernica from the Museum of Modern Art to the Prado in Madrid, Nelson Rockefeller's impact on the Spanish transition, how the Ford Foundation and Peter Fraenkel helped administer Spanish educational reforms and exchanges of the 1970s, and how human rights played a vital role in the Spanish transition.

Nov 19, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

The initiation of public health nursing in China in 1920s was a result of the transnational flow of people, knowledge and culture. Transnational educational institutions and non-governmental organizations, represented by Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as by individuals, played a dominant role in shaping the initiation and development of public health in China in the 1920s to 1930s. PUMC was the hub to disseminate its founder's vision and model in public health in China through integration of education with empirical initiatives in public health. Nursing education programs of the School of Nursing at PUMC provided expertise, human resources, and leadership in public health in China from the 1920s until the beginning of the 1950s. Throughout this time, as a profession predominated by women, public health nursing served as a good example to demonstrate women's role in the transnational flow of people, knowledge, and culture.

Nov 06, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), organized by the United Nations in Beijing in 1995, launched a new era of internationalization for the Chinese feminist movement. The conference facilitated the legitimation of non-state-led organizations and activism that advocated for women's rights, as well as gender and sexual equality. During this time, interactions between domestic feminists and international foundations increased dramatically. After the conference, Chinese feminist advocacy and mobilization expanded beyond the party-state system and gained momentum in the decade following 1995. My research at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) investigated the engagements of the Ford Foundation (FF) in safeguarding women's rights and advocating for gender equality in China, and the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) during the FWCW. This essay draws upon the preliminary findings from my archival research, focusing on the FF's activities in China relating to women and gender issues from the late 1970s to late 2000s, for which the FF archival collection at the RAC is available. The RF's sponsorship during the 1995 Conference is also included. I start with a brief introduction of my research project and materials I found helpful, then elaborate on the two foundations' activities in three sections in a diachronic order, highlighting files available at the RAC and their contribution to my dissertation research. This essay provides only a sketch of the FF and RF's engagements in China, as further investigation of the files I collected at the RAC has not yet finished.

Jun 25, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

This paper examines the role that Austrian economists played in international economics discussions in the 1920s and 1930s. With the support of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, Austrian scholars received the opportunity to study abroad, learning the latest social scientific techniques in use, particularly in the United States. They also applied to the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) for funds to support their ongoing research in Central Europe. The most notable innovation was the Institut für Konjunkturforschung (IfK; Institute for Business Cycle Research), which existed as an independent economics institution until the Anschluss in 1938. The IfK became the crown jewel in a string of Central European business cycle institutes. Under the leadership of Friedrich Hayek and especially Oskar Morgenstern, the institute introduced innovative techniques and produced reliable economic data. Additionally, the Austrians wrote books and organized conferences about the Great Depression. Finally, when many Austrians sought refuge from the ever-worsening political situation in Europe, they turned to their contacts at the RF for assistance in finding employment or for financial assistance. For several of the émigré Austrian scholars, the relationship with the RF endured throughout most of their productive careers. Well into the 1960s, the RF continued to sustain projects from the Austrians, some of which outlived their originators.

Jul 02, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

This essay charts the career of the entomologist and popular author Marston Bates (1906-1974) within the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) between 1935 and 1952. Today, Bates is best remembered as a science communicator. Publishing over a dozen books on natural history and the environment, he helped bring ecological ideas to broader public audiences during the 1950s and 1960s. Not simply a popularizer of contemporary scientific concepts, Bates stood out for his critical commentary on the environmental problems of economic development, conservation, and global population growth, as well as the need for more integrative, cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding humans in nature. Long before becoming a public intellectual, however, he worked for the RF as a mosquito specialist, serving as director of International Health Division malaria and yellow fever laboratories in Albania, Egypt, and Colombia during the 1930s and 1940s. Bates' mid-career shift from researching mosquito ecology to writing about human ecology may seem to be a sudden left turn. A closer look at the archival record reveals the pivotal role played by the Rockefeller Foundation in shaping Bates' career trajectory and ideas about the environment. Furthermore, placing Bates' work in the context of his time with the RF reveals connections between twentieth-century U.S. environmental thought and international health projects.

Jun 13, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

For the first time in 1943—at the height of the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago—Soekarno expressed the relationship between medicine and nation-building. He had foreseen, in the not-too-distant future when the country would proclaim its independence from colonial rule, that physicians would have a unique niche in Indonesian society —as advocates of the largely illiterate Indonesian masses. He envisioned that a physician would not only treat the sick, but also educate the public about preventative health measures such that Indonesia would become a strong and healthy nation. Eleven years later, President Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines asserted in his first State of the Nation Address that no nation could go ahead if crippled by disease. These two vignettes attest to the centrality of public health in nation-building in postcolonial Indonesia and the Philippines.

Jun 18, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

January 1, 2019 marked the 40th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and China. Scholars and policymakers are deeply divided over the virtue of U.S. engagement with China in the past 40 years, with some criticizing it as failure and others defending it as success. Both camps would probably agree, however, that the complexity of U.S.-Chinese relations rules out a simple answer. The dense, thick web of economic, cultural, and educational ties, most of which did not exist in the 1950s and 1960s due to Cold War tension, constitute the contemporary Sino-American relationship.

Jul 18, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

Many stories about green revolutions in South America and Asia revolve around the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation and their seed research. The materials of the Rockefeller Archive Center have proven to be a rich source for researchers studying the influence of foreign policy actors on agricultural development policy in the Global South. Yet, this research has not included multinational corporations as potential partners of U.S. foreign policy makers and philanthropic foundations in the dissemination of ideas and practices of 'modern agriculture'. This is linked to the understanding of the dissemination of Green Revolution seeds as the spread of a public good. My research has revealed that this was not always the case. It shows that ideas of seed accessibility as a public good competed with ideas and ideals of an effective market economy. Following the ideal of the superiority of a free market, some of the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation in India valued highly the participation of private corporations in their projected ability to effectively organize and market goods. In order to drive technological change in Indian agriculture, especially in maize cultivation, the Rockefeller Foundation relied on U.S. seed companies to increase hybrid seed production. In doing so, the Rockefeller Foundation acted similar to a chamber of commerce by establishing contacts for U.S. corporations with government officials in the US and India, and actively recruited and advised companies to enter the Indian market.

Aug 02, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

I conducted research at the Rockefeller Archive Center for my dissertation and current book project on the history of psychological testing in American business. My work has examined the network of psychologists and management experts who developed and implemented personality tests, such as the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The Rockefeller Archive Center was a crucial site to understand the origins, spread, and influence of personality tests. As a historian of science and business, I sought to understand the translations and circulations of research between psychologists and business. I focused particularly on the way that research into personality and work refracted existing social inequalities and biases of race and gender, at the same time that researchers sought to counter inequality through psychological testing. Both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations funded research in personality psychology and in management that studied the psychological capacities associated with creative and managerial work. In particular, these two foundations both provided direct grants to four key organizations discussed in this report: Berkeley's Institute for Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR), Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Opportunities Industrialization Commission (OIC), and the Public Agenda Foundation (PAF). IPAR and ETS were especially important as early sites for research and publications on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a personality test whose history I examine in my project. OIC and PAF both conducted research and implemented training programs that linked motivational psychology to the work ethic. All four organizations were important sites for studying the personality traits associated with work in 20th-century America.

Apr 04, 2019

Rockefeller Archive Center;

This project examines the politics motivating the expansion and institutionalization of the fields of foreign language study and American studies in the United States and internationally during the Cold War. Both fields were considered to be ancillary to the United States's assumption of an international leadership role in the postwar years, and were mobilized as front lines in the Cold War. American studies faculty taught other scholars, students, and members of the public about the nation so that they would, in turn, convey their knowledge about it to colleagues and compatriots.  Language scholars, in turn, championed foreign language study as a means of resisting political isolationism. By demonstrating the myriad ways that scholars in these fields used their teaching, scholarship, and administrative efforts to complement official U.S. efforts to win "hearts and minds" around the world, I reveal how these fields functioned, in effect, as vehicles for soft power from the 1950s through the 1970s, even as they expanded the practical reach and prominence of the humanities both domestically and abroad.