User:Shane Smith

I'm getting my master's in International Affairs at The New School in New York City. I got a BA in History at Rutgers University. Most recently I spent 3 years doing qualitative and survey research at a regional hospital in New Jersey. I've also worked with a couple of grassroots NGOs:

• The Chai Project, which was a harm-reduction organization in New Brunswick NJ (this org was instrumental in getting needle exchange decriminalized in New Jersey); and
• No Limits, an arts org for deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

I had a brief flirtation with a career in the entertainment industry, but but my desire to live the Hollywood life turned out to be weaker than my desire to stop living in LA. Plus, I'm not related to Francis Ford Coppola, which really makes things difficult.

I write for publication occasionally, less regularly than I'd like to. Some of my work has appeared in City Belt1, an independent magazine focused on political and cultural life in New Jersey.

I've lived in a lot of places, but for simplicity's sake I say I'm from Jersey City.

Here are some things I'm interested in:

• all forms of cultural exchange, including but not limited to:
  • trade
  • mass migration and diaspora
  • disease epidemics
• the so-called 'informal' economy (esp illicit trade and organized crime)
• the life and culture of institutions
• tensions and changing relationships between loci of governance (eg states, NGOs, corporations, religious groups, families, etc)
• the history of ideas
• the process of capital distribution
• ethnicity and nationalism
• historiography
• the Mediterranean, especially the Levant
• translation
• language acquisition
• the lives of brands and their role as economic actors
• the transformative role of violence in literature
• stand-up comedy
• music videos
• systems theory
• tennis
• neckties
• televangelists