The Social Science Dissertation Workshop at ISS continues, and welcomes guests. Our May session has been moved back a week to June 2.* Presenting will be Kristin Vekasi, a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, doing her field work at ISS this year.

Kristin starts from the observation that, despite ever-deepening economic ties between Japan and China, political relations are tense. She approaches this problem through the role of business in international politics, in particular the political and economic strategies of international firms in situations with political risk. She will try to explain how economic actors can be effective interstate actors in circumstances where state actors are bound by domestic
or geo-political concerns. This angle is a fresh perspective on Japan-China relations (the subject of three of our four sessions this year).

I'd be grateful if you let me know if you are coming.
If you would like to be on the mailing list, or interested in presenting, let me know. A lot of our recent sessions have been about international relations but we welcome all social scientists, certainly including historians and anthropologists who lean in that direction.

John Campbell

*Meetings of the Shaken Social Science Dissertation Workshop start at 12 pm and go to 1:30 and sometimes beyond. The Institute of Social Science provides coffee and tea and you are welcome to bring lunch. The location is a seminar room on the 5th floor in the Akamon General Research (Sougou Kenkyuu) Building.
The building is down a little passage to the right
after you come through Akamon. For a map, go to:

http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/campusmap/cam01_08_02_e.html
__________________________
>From John Creighton Campbell
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar, Institute of Gerontology Tokyo University jccamp at umich.edu