Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World

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Ethnic Europe examines the increasingly complex ethnic challenges facing the expanding European Union. Essays from eleven experts tackle such issues as labor migration, strains on welfare economies, the durability of local traditions, the effects of globalized cultures, and the role of Islamic diasporas, separatist movements, and threats of terrorism. With Europe now a destination for global immigration, European countries are increasingly alert to the difficult struggle to balance minority rights with social cohesion. In pondering these dilemmas, the contributors to this volume take us from theory, history, and broad views of diasporas, to the particularities of neighborhoods, borderlands, and popular literature and film that have been shaped by the mixing of ethnic cultures.

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Roland Hsu
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Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Financial Crisis?

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From 2007 to 2010, a financial and economic crisis gripped the United States, Europe and the world. 7 million Americans lost their jobs, 10 million were pushed below the poverty line, thousands of families lost their homes, and many lost their savings. Somewhat lower numbers were reported from Europe, although the structural mechanisms behind the crisis were seemingly similar, eventually affecting not only the West, but the whole world. It is foreseen that the effects of the crisis will last for years, and it is still uncertain if a full recovery will be possible.

Given that a variety of highly speculative practices put into place by the banking and finance sector during the "neoliberal“ decades between the early 1990s and 2007 allegedly played a role in triggering the crisis, the request for more down-to-earth and sustainable ways of dealing with money and finance has surfaced to international attention. Particularly in Europe, social banks were among the most successful financial institutions during the crisis years, with annual growth rates of up to 30%, factually doubling their assets between 2007-10. This unprecedented success was supposedly due to the fact that many European savers shifted their assets from mainstream banks to social banks, driven by the hope that the latter would handle their money in less abstract and egoistic, and more realistic and community oriented ways. In recent years, social banks have forged influential global networks such as the Global Alliance of Banking on Values and the International Association of Investors in the Social Economy, which pursue the ambitious strategy of reaching out to 1 billion people by 2020.

Given that, not least as a result of the crisis, increasing numbers of people are improving their financial literacy and are taking a growingly critical stance towards the mainstream international banking and finance sector as we knew it before the crisis, the seminar poses the questions of whether (and how) social banking and social finance may concretely contribute to improving the current financial system, and how they might help to restore confidence in capitalism by providing “best practice” examples in selected fields.

The seminar will try to provide some answers to these questions by examining the pros and cons of contemporary social finance and by outlining perspectives of structural complimentarity and cooperation between speculative and sustainable finance.

 

Audio Synopsis:

In his seminar, Professor Roland Benedikter argues that too little has been done to reform the banking and financial sectors in the wake of the recent crisis, then presents social banking and social finance as an alternative system. First, he argues that the widespread bank bailouts of the past few years have "saved the wrong system" and points out that many of the largest US banks, for example, have actually grown since the crisis despite calls by the Obama administration for these banks to downsize or break in to smaller pieces. He acknowledges that new measures initiated by both the Obama administration (establishing a consumer protection bureau; imposing limits on fees by financial intermediaries) and by European countries (banning high-risk transactions in Germany; reducing public liability for private bank bailouts) are steps in the right direction. He adds his own suggestions, including increased regulation, better international agreements on regulating capital flows, a fee on high-risk speculative transactions, and a preventative tax on banks to protect against future crises. Many of these reforms, however, have faced enormous opposition from the major players in the banking and finance sectors in Britain, the United States, and China.  Progress seems to have stalled, with popular figures like Niall Ferguson, who once led calls for dramatic reform, now insisting that the system is too resistant to change, and that simpler goals such as a new hippocratic oath for the financial sector will suffice.

Benedikter then presents social banking and social finance as an answer to the seemingly intractable problems of the traditional system.  He first describes the industry in terms of what it is not. Traditional banks, he argues, made three major mistakes leading up to the crisis: irresponsibility (loans that were too high, too much derivative investment); lack of transparency; and unsustainability (by participating in speculation and contributing to market bubbles). The current economy, he explains, is based on a tripolar system: a "real" economy of manufacturing and tangible goods; and two "side economies" of real estate and financial derivatives, which have steadily drawn capital away from the real economy since 1989. A breakdown of this unsustainable system was predicted by multiple think tanks before 2007, based partly on the frantic growth of the derivatives market (from  $100 trillion to $516 trillion annually between 2001 and 2006 - for perspective, Benedikter cites the annual world GDP figure of approximately $50 trillion).

Social banks, on the other hand, invest 100% of their capital toward responsible, transparent, and sustainable ventures such as green technology and social initiatives. Banks emphasize knowing their customers, which requires them to operate on a smaller scale than traditional banks, and conversely customers know where their money is invested and can even participate in making investment decisions. These decisions  are meant to take the potential social as well as financial return on an investment into account. Benedikter describes this as a "Triple Bottom Line" approach, emphasizing profit, people, and the planet.

A discussion period following the presentation addressed questions including:  What are the mechanisms available to enforcing the triple bottom line approach in social banking and social finance? Are social banks guided by a common charter? What are the details of the proposed high-risk transaction fee? Why have some US social banks been successful while others have struggled?

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Roland Benedikter Speaker
Seminars

Race and Ethnicity: Marking Difference in Europe and the U.S.

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This collaborative effort marks the recent publication of Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century (Norton, 2010) and Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World (Stanford, 2010).  Both volumes are the result of national and international conferences, scholarly lectures, and class discussions that have taken place over several years under the auspices of CCSRE and TEC respectively.  Both also demonstrate the deep well of knowledge about and keen interest in the subjects of race and ethnicity in the U.S. and Europe on the part of faculty at Stanford University and beyond.
 
This workshop brings together the insights generated within both TEC and CCSRE with the aim of furthering our collective knowledge about race and ethnicity in contemporary global society.

This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsors include: The Europe Center (TEC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), and the Stanford Humanities Center. Co-sponsored by the Department of American Studies.

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Levinthal Hall
Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford, California

Ounia Doukoure Speaker

Amir Eshel

Dept of German Studies
Building 260, Room 204
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2030

(650) 723-0413 (650) 725-8421
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Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies
Professor of Comparative Literature
Professor of German Studies
Eshel.jpg MA, PhD

Amir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies. He is Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and as of 2019 Director of Comparative Literature and its graduate program. His Stanford affiliations include The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of Stanford’s research group on The Contemporary and of the Poetic Media Lab at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). His research focuses on contemporary literature and the arts as they touch on philosophy, specifically on memory, history, political thought, and ethics.

Amir Eshel is the author of Poetic Thinking Today (Stanford University Press, 2019); German translation at Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020). Previous books include Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (The University of Chicago Press in 2013). The German version of the book, Zukünftigkeit: Die zeitgenössische Literatur und die Vergangenheit, appeared in 2012 with Suhrkamp Verlag. Together with Rachel Seelig, he co-edited The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange (2018). In 2014, he co-edited with Ulrich Baer a book of essays on Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt: zwischen den Disziplinen; and also co-edited a book of essays on Barbara Honigmann with Yfaat Weiss, Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge (2013).

Earlier scholarship includes the books Zeit der Zäsur: Jüdische Lyriker im Angesicht der Shoah (1999), and Das Ungesagte Schreiben: Israelische Prosa und das Problem der Palästinensischen Flucht und Vertreibung (2006). Amir Eshel has also published essays on Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Dani Karavan, Gerhard Richter, W.G. Sebald, Günter Grass, Alexander Kluge, Barbara Honigmann, Durs Grünbein, Dan Pagis, S. Yizhar, and Yoram Kaniyuk.

Amir Eshel’s poetry includes a 2018 book with the artist Gerhard Richter, Zeichnungen/רישומים, a work which brings together 25 drawings by Richter from the clycle 40 Tage and Eshel’s bi-lingual poetry in Hebrew and German. In 2020, Mossad Bialik brings his Hebrew poetry collection בין מדבר למדבר, Between Deserts.

Amir Eshel is a recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt and the Friedrich Ebert foundations and received the Award for Distinguished Teaching from the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Affiliated faculty of The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty of The Taube Center for Jewish Studies
Faculty Director of The Contemporary Research Group
Faculty Director of the Poetic Media Lab
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Amir Eshel Speaker
Cecile Alduy Speaker

Roland Hsu

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Affiliate
Hsu.jpg PhD

Roland Hsu is director of research of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project.

Hsu’s research is dedicated to bringing creative and multi-disciplinary thinking to the challenges of international cultural dialogue, and post-conflict peace and reconciliation.  His own research focuses on migration and ethnic identity formation.  His publications combine humanistic and social science methods and materials to answer what displaces peoples, how do societies respond to migration, and what are the experiences of resettlement. 

Currently he is pursuing the subject of displaced peoples, with plans to publish three books.  The three books address ethnicity, migration, and diaspora.  His first book, “Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World” (Stanford University Press, 2010) revealed what it means to lay claim to ethnic difference in the traditional national cultures of Europe.  “Ethnic Europe” combines essays by leading scholars whom Hsu with research partners brought to Stanford.  The book is edited and begins with an essay by Hsu on how we think about ethnicity, and why recognizing ethnicity unsettles social tradition in increasingly globalized Europe.  Hsu continues to foster public questioning of the meaning and use of ethnicity by sponsoring programming on European political and cultural initiatives, and with blog postings on diversity policy and the politics of immigration in such publications as Le Monde Diplomatique.

Hsu’s second book, “Migration and Integration: New Models for Mobility and Coexistence” (University of Vienna Press, 2016) asks what displaces people, and how do migrants return or resettle.  Co-edited with Christoph Reinprecht (University of Vienna) “Migration and Integration” compares international and internal migration in East and South-East Asia, North Africa and Southern Europe, Western and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia.  Based on Hsu’s design with faculty partners of a series of visiting fellowships, workshops, and an international conference, Hsu and Reinprecht invited scholars from multiple disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences to contribute to this volume on the history, politics, and culture of migration and integration in an illuminating East-West comparison.

His third book in this series of studies on displaced peoples is “Global Diaspora: Communities of Mind and Place”, co-edited with Dag Blanck (Uppsala University) from Oxford University Press (in process).  Essays in this book will ask how models of resettled communities and diasporas should be revised to help us understand today’s migrant experience.  Combining thirty historical and contemporary case studies, this book on “Diaspora” to be published in the Oxford University Press Handbook series, will help us rethink what has been the consequence of labeling a migrant community as a diaspora, why contemporary displacements due to war, poverty, and climate change disperse peoples more widely, and how we can understand the emerging experience of real and virtual migrant communities.

A fourth project under consideration in this series will be a web-based, curated and dynamic clearing house of the new thinking from scholars, policy leaders, and non-governmental actors on migration and refugees in national, regional, and trans-national settings.

Hsu developed this interest through his teaching and lecturing at Stanford, the University of Chicago, and European universities, and working with scholars, and policy and civil society leaders who have been invited to co-sponsored programming.  Working with Stanford and international university, government, and NGO partners, the list of co-sponsored conferences, workshops, seminars, and public events includes:

  • Authors and artists: Ian McEwan, Orhan Pamuk, Aris Fioretos.
  • Conferences/workshops/seminars: Stanford Faculty Working Group on Responding to Refugees; New thinking on Nobel Laureate Nelly Sachs; Diversity and Community in Sweden in film and the arts; Writings and Response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Roundtable on Salmon Rushdie’s “Joseph Anton: A Memoir”; Hannah Arendt in the Humanities; Ethnic Europe; Conscience; Democracy in Adversity and Diversity; Migration and Integration
  • Scholars/Analysts: Francis Fukuyama, Vali Nasr, Olivier Roy, Timothy Garton Ash, Istvan Deak
  • Journalists: John Micklethwait (Editor, the Economist), Josef Joffe (Die Zeit), Frederick Mitterand. 
  • Policy leaders: Catherine Ashton (EU High Representative and Vice President), Jan Eliasson (former UN Secretary General), Jonathan Phillips (Permanent Secretary, UK Northern Ireland Office), Lionel Jospin (former French Prime Minister), Daniel Cohen Bendit, European Ambassadors to the US, Foreign Ministers and Presidents from Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Algeria, Ukraine, Spain, Basque Region

Hsu’s previous research and teaching explored a wide range of historical and cultural ruptures.  At the University of Chicago, Hsu taught courses on literature and the visual arts (including themes of “evil”, “revolution”, and the authorial “other” in world literature).  His dissertation on public monuments, history texts, and the political use of the French Revolution reveals the role of history and revolution in legitimizing modern French regimes.  This research inspires his work on conflict and reconciliation in Europe.

At the University of Idaho, Hsu was Assistant Professor of History, completing research on visual representations of revolution and reception theory in nineteenth-century France, and teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on nineteenth-century European intellectual and political history, world history (ancient through modern), empire, colonial and post-colonial eras, and the French Revolution.

At Stanford, Hsu was awarded a three-year Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship in the Introduction to Humanities Program.  Serving as a Fellow he conducted research on collective memory, and was inspired by Stanford faculty and students to turn his focus to post-conflict and post-atrocity research.  He has increasingly focused on investigating the history and future of post-conflict studies and models for truth and reconciliation and emancipation, using material and methods from the humanities (history, philosophy, literary criticism, visual arts) and the social sciences (political science, sociology, anthropology.)

Hsu has more than twelve years of administrative leadership experience.  At FSI Hsu teamed with staff and faculty to build the Europe Center from its founding as the European Forum, to its growth into the Forum on Contemporary Europe, and ultimately a research center at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Hsu’s contributions to the growth of the Europe Center included building multiple research scholar exchange and fellowships (with new funding) for residencies at the Europe Center.  Hsu also cultivated institutional partnerships with more than six European universities for on-going cooperative programming and scholar exchange.

Currently, Hsu is Director of Research for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University. 

Previously at Stanford, Hsu has held the following appointments:

  • Associate Director of the Stanford Humanities Center
  • Associate Director of the Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Global Studies
  • Project Director, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
  • Senior Associate Director of Undergraduate Advising and Research
  • Acting Associate Director of the Introduction to Humanities Program
  • Post-doctoral Fellow, Introduction to Humanities Program
  • Research Coordinator, Program in Writing and Rhetoric

Hsu earned his Ph.D. in Modern European History at the University of Chicago.  He holds an M.A. in Art History from Chicago, and a dual B.A. in Art History and also English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Director of Research
Affiliate, The Europe Center
Roland Hsu Speaker
Pavle Levi Speaker
Paula Moya Speaker
David Palumbo-Liu Speaker
Matthew Snipp Speaker
Hazel Markus Speaker
Monica McDermott Speaker
Ramon Saldivar Speaker
Workshops

Ethnic Conflict Resolution in the 21st Century: A Functioning Model from Europe

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The 21st century has been branded the century of the worldwide return of ethnonationalisms. Conflicts based on cultural differences are boiling up in many regions, leading to civil wars and to the breakup of states. Many of these conflicts are direct and indirect consequences of modernization and transnationalization; and they are usually as complex as they are enduring and difficult to settle, because rooted in the "deep“ dimensions of culture and religion. The result is in many cases a conflict pattern where political solutions are often only of temporary value, because the far deeper rooted ethnic and cultural dimensions sooner or later undermine them and spiral the conflict up again. As a consequence, there is a new debate today about the advantages of partition and separation, and an increasing number of scholars and politicians seems to believe that the still most humane lasting solution for ethno-cultural conflicts is to institutionally divide ethnic groups once and for all, accepting to a certain extent (non-recurring) ethnic cleansing and new flows of refugees. Answering such approaches (like the one of Jerry Z. Muller propagated paradigmatically in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008), Roland Benedikter presents a functioning and long-term proven model from Central Europe, where different ethnic groups have managed it to find a unique institutional arrangement that permits them to live together without territorial and political partition. In presenting core features of the model of autonomy of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, a border region between Northern Italy and Austria where three ethnic groups coexist and have made the area formerly ridden by civil wars (until 1972) now one of the wealthiest regions of Europe, Roland Benedikter shows how cornerstones of this model may be successfully applied also to other ethnic conflict regions.

Roland Benedikter, Dott. Dr. Dr. Dr., is European Foundation Fellow 2009-2013, in residence at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, with duties as the European Foundations Research Professor of Political Sociology. His main field of interest is the multidimensional analysis of what he calls the current "Global Systemic Shift", which he tries to understand by bringing together the six typological discourses (and systemic order patterns) of Politics, Economy, Culture, Religion, Technology and Demography. Roland is currently working on two major book projects: One about the "Global Systemic Shift", and one about the "Contemporary Cultural Psychology of the West", the latter comparing culturo-political trends in the European and American hemispheres. With both projects he is also involved in European Policy Advice.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Roland Benedikter Speaker
Seminars

Religion, State and Multiculturalism in Israel

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Michael Karayanni, Edward S. Silver Professor of Civil Procedure  and Director of the Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for  Legislative Research and Comparative Law, Faculty of Law, Hebrew  University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on private  international law and inter-religious law, civil procedure, and  multiculturalism. He holds an LL.D in law from the Hebrew  University (2000) as well as an S.J.D. degree from the University  of Pennsylvania Law School, received in 2003. He is the author of  "Conflicts in a Conflict" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2012)

 

Event Summary

Professor Karayanni's talk addresses the question of why religious and political issues in Israel are dominated by the conflict around disproportionate funding for Jewish institutions and norms, and the implications this emphasis has on jurisdictional authority in Israel. Professor Karayanni points out that while there are 14 recognized religious communities in Israel, less than 2% of the budget for support of religious institutions goes to non-Jewish organizations. However, as a result of the relative lack of official recognition, the Israeli Supreme Court has in some cases deferred from enforcing Israeli administrative law, a practice that has afforded greater freedom to some private religious institutions such as religious schools, as Karayanni outlines demonstrates with examples from several recent court cases . He then describes how judicial freedom for some religious groups can create a "multicultural predicament" in which the autonomy allowed to minority religious groups may conflict with the best interests of more vulnerable members, such as women and children, in groups with illiberal social and judicial norms. Nonetheless, Professor Karayanni argues that the perception of being multicultural is important to the Jewish state, as it is in Egypt, Jordan, and India, where minority religious groups have similar autonomy.

A discussion session following the talk addressed such questions as: Is there any political will to divorce Jewish identity from the state and instead have it represented only through community institutions? How many Christian Palestinians live in the Palestinian Territory versus in Israel? How do they operate legally within the Palestinian community? How are minority Jewish sects treated in Israel? How would a binational state resulting in the absorption of Palestine affect these religious issues?

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Michael Karayanni Edward S. Silver Chair in Civil Procedure; Director, The Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law, The Hebrew University Speaker
Seminars

Workshop on Islam and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey

This workshop is sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Program, and co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the Europe Center,  and the Stanford Humanities Center

Stanford faculty, students, scholars and staff are welcome to attend. To RSVP, please contact medstudies@stanford.edu.

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE:
 
November  15th
 
10:30 am – Noon:   Conceptual Explorations

Haldun Gulalp (Department Political Science, Yildiz Technical University)
“Rethinking Islam and Secularization in Turkey: A Durkheimian Perspective”

Ahmet Kuru (Department of Political Science, San Diego State University)
“Islamism, Secularism, and Democracy in Turkey”
 
2:00 pm- 3:30 pm:  Managing the Difference

Aykan Erdemir (Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University)
“Faith-based Activism for Secularism: The Transformation of Alevi Collective Action Repertoire in Turkey”

Murat Somer (Department of International Relations, Koc University; Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University)
“Islamic-Conservative and Pro-Secular Values and the Management of Ethnic Diversity and Conflict”
 
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm: Claiming Secularism

Umit Kurt (Department of History, Clark University)
“Military’s Perceptions of Islam and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey”

Kabir Tambar (Department of Religion, University of Vermont)
“Staging Alevi Pasts in Secular Time”
 
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November 16th
 
10: 30 am- Noon: Turkey’s “Islamists” and “Secularists” Abroad

Betul Balkan (Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Northeastern University)
“Opinions of Turkish Immigrants in Houston About Secularism and Islam in Turkey”

Zeynep Atalay (Department of Sociology, University of Maryland-College Park; The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Stanford University)
“From the Neighborhood to Umma: Global Networks of Muslim Civil Society in Turkey”
 
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm: Contextualizing the Turkish Case

Hootan Shambayati (Division of Public Affairs, Florida Gulf Coast University)
“Controlled Democratization, Moderate Islam, and Radical Secularism: Lessons from Turkey and their Implications for the Middle East”

Nora Fisher-Onar (Department of Politics and International Relations, Bahcesehir University; Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford)
“Vision or Cacophony?:  Mixing Liberal-Democratic, Religious-Conservative, Power Political, and Ottomanist Metaphors in Contemporary Turkey”
 
4:00 pm- 5:30 pm:  Concluding Session

Riva Kastoryano (Center for International Studies and Research, Sciences Politique)

Larry Diamond (Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University)

Stanford Humanities Center, Board Room

Workshops

A New View on the Financial and Economic Crisis of 2007-2010

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The new book of Roland Benedikter, Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, and European Foundation Professor of Sociology, with the title Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis will be published in print and online in February 2011 by Springer and will be available worldwide. Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis will be available worldwide, with a foreword by Professor Stefano Zamagni of Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities, and an introduction by Professor Karen S. Cook, Chair of the Sociology Department and Director of its Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford University.

The outcome of research carried out in the academic year 2009-10 at The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, in cooperation with the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the book was given the honor to be the very first of the new Springer Series called “Springer Briefs,” dedicated to concise texts on innovative, future-oriented  topics for researchers, students, and the broader public.

The book presents an alternative analysis of the financial and economic crisis of 2007-10 from the viewpoint of social banking and social finance, and offers a complete introduction into contemporary social banking and social finance for readers with no previous knowledge. Written in a concise and accessible manner, it explains the history, the philosophy, the current state and the perspectives of social banking and social finance in the United States and Europe. It describes their place within the global economy, and the visions of their “global alliances” for the years to come. The book focuses on the basic mindset that gave birth to social banks about a century ago, and that still constitutes their main driving force in the age of globalization; and on the comparison of the current state of social banking in the United States and Europe. Since most social banks are found on both sides of the Atlantic, their interplay can be considered as crucial also for the world wide development of social banking and social finance.

The book aims to increase the financial literacy of students and of the average reader. Its 12 chapters can be used as 12 single lessons for college and university students and their teachers. Courses on social banking and social finance are being developed all over the world, especially in the United States and Europe, for example at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship of Oxford University and at the Center of Rethinking Capitalism of UC Santa Cruz. Civil society is also increasingly concerned with the topic, as more and more people begin to recognize the fundamental impact of the finance and banking sector on all aspects of contemporary life. This book is one of the first texts of its kind available in English.

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