Mark Frazier joined the government department in 2001-02 as an assistant professor in a new faculty position in the political economy of East Asia, created under a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
His book, The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management, was recently praised by a reviewer as "beautifully nuanced in its approach to examining the intertwined roles of institutions and culture in shaping practice in China."
Frazier's teaching and research interests extend beyond China. He is offering a new course at Lawrence called Global Economic Relations, which addresses the politics of trade and hotly debated global bodies such as the World Trade Organization. "It's the class that I most enjoy teaching, because it's hard not to have strong opinions on these issues," he says. "I try to help students develop informed opinions."
Frazier learned a lot about the contrasts in how developing countries cope with globalization when he visited India and China in 2001 as a part of a scholarly delegation that is producing a book on Sino-Indian relations. "I think it's important that academics try to make some contribution to policy debates in the areas that we research as scholars," Frazier notes. He has given talks at several think-tanks, including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Asia Society, and he is a senior advisor and former research director for the National Bureau of Asian Research.
He earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. at the University of Washington, and a B.A. from Princeton University. He also has the unusual credential -- for an academic -- of having been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. In 1989, the political newspaper, Roll Call, put his stories on labor practices on Capitol Hill up for the investigative and public service journalism prizes.
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