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John Dale is member #2271 of Peace and Collaborative Development Network. Mar 13

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Please feel free to provide a short bio about yourself (no more than 3 paragraphs): John G. Dale is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. He also an affiliate professor of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and associate faculty of the Center for Global Studies and the Center for Justice, Law, and Society . He earned an M.A. degree with the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He completed his Ph.D. in 2003 at the University of California, Davis, where he also earned an interdisciplinary designated emphasis in Social Theory and Comparative History at the Center for History, Society and Culture. He conducted the fieldwork for his dissertation research in Thailand and Burma (Myanmar), as well as the Netherlands and the United States. In the summer of 2005, he was a National Endowment for the Humanities visiting scholar at Columbia University. He is the recent recipient of George Mason University’s Fenwick Fellowship, 2007-2008, for his research on “Transnational Justice and Legal Discourse in the Making of Extraordinary Rendition.”

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Human rights; political sociology; transnational social movements; global conflict analysis; the economic sociology and politics of globalization and development; comparative/historical sociology.

Please list the countries and/or regions in which you have direct and significant expertise: Burma (Myanmar)

What is your current country of residence?: United States

What is your current job (and organization) and/or where and what field are you studying?: Assistant Professor of Sociology. and Affiliate Professor of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University

Which are your primary sectoral areas of expertise?: Conflict Resolution, Democratization, Development, Civil Society

Which are your primary skills areas?: Research

What are some of your current areas of research (if any)?: I am interested in how social movements influence the politics, law, and morality of globalization through transnational collective action, ranging from terrorist tactics to transnational legal campaigns. I examine how collective actors in civil society create transnational networks, discourses, strategies, legal mechanisms, campaigns, and movements to target corporations and states that engage in abusive human rights practices. I am particularly interested in exploring the transnational legal space that these movements create to promote more humane and democratically institutionalized market arrangements.

I am concentrating currently on jus cogens human rights violations (e.g., slavery, torture, and genocide), and examining how certain human rights norms (and not others) have become canonized as those from which no state can derogate regardless of the international treaties or conventions of which it is or is not a member state. I am currently focusing on how social movement activists are seeking to expand this canon and exploit the legal dimension of a broader structure of transnational political opportunities for reining in abusive corporations and states. I have been demonstrating how social movements affect the creation of transnational legal mechanisms that target states facilitating abusive jus cogens human rights practices, such as using the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act to target Unocal Oil Corporation’s use of slave labor in Burma to construct a natural gas pipeline, or to target aviation companies that contracted with the CIA in facilitating the transnational practice of extraordinary rendition.

If appropriate feel free to list several of your publications: Dale, John G. 2007. “Transnational Conflict between Peasants and Corporations in Burma: Human Rights and Discursive Ambivalence under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act.” In Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry, eds. The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 285-319.

Dale, John G. Transnational Legal Action: Global Business, Human Rights, and the Free Burma Movement. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Forthcoming and Under Contract)

Dale, John G. “Burma’s Boomerang: Human Rights, Social Movements and Transnational Legal Mechanisms ‘from Below’.” International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, Special Issue on “Global Dynamics.” (Forthcoming)

Kyle, David and John Dale. 2001. “Smuggling the State Back In: Agents of Human Smuggling Reconsidered.” In David J. Kyle and Rey Koslowski, eds., Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspective. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pp.29-57. [Also, REVISED second edition forthcoming, 2009]

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At 7:27am on March 28th, 2008, Patrick J. Pierce said…: Thanks for getting in touch. I'd be very interested to read your work on Burma and review any syllabi you might have on justice/peace and Burma. I'm mid-research project now, so reading as much as I can.

At 9:28am on March 22nd, 2008, Rachel M. Goldberg said…: Sounds like you are doing some very interesting work. I'm slowly moving through this network and saying hello to folks - I'm a neighbor professor at Salisbury University and I'm an ICAR alum.

At 7:55pm on March 20th, 2008, Chris LeGore said…: Welcome to the site.

It seems we share some common interests so I wanted to make my introduction. I'm Chris from New Orleans. I'm studying Comparative legal systems at Tulane Law School and am very interested in Human Rights and Mediation and Negotiation. Given our common interests it would be good to start communication so we can refer to each other for advice in the future. Please take a minute to view my page and leave a message if you like.

peace.

At 6:13pm on March 16th, 2008, Rosen Dimov said…: Greetings from Bulgaria! Congratulations for all the good work and accomplishments...Good luck!

At 12:19pm on March 15th, 2008, Christian Bartolf said…: Thank you for your friendship, John, and give my best regards to your Gandhi scholar Lester Kurtz --- let us continue correspondence, Christian