150: Chris Blattman on Crime, Cocaine, Chicago Gangs and the Colombia Mafia

Chris Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute and Harris Public Policy.

He is an economist and political scientist who studies poverty, violence and crime in developing countries.

Chris has designed and evaluated strategies for tackling poverty, including cash transfers to the poorest.

Much of his work is with the victims and perpetrators of crime and violence, testing the link between poverty and violence.

His recent work looks at other sources of and solutions to violence.

These solutions range from behavioral therapy to social norm change and local-level state building.

He has worked mainly in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Blattman was previously a faculty member at Columbia and Yale Universities, and holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. He chairs the Peace & Recovery sector at Innovations for Poverty Action and the Crime, Violence and Conflict initiative at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab.

In this episode you will learn:

• The real reason why Chris decided to study conflict and the conflict zone.
• How he met his wife, a humanitarian worker and Phd student, met in an internet cafe in Nairobi.
• If crime rates are lower in special economic zones than in other areas outside these zones?
• Whether Chris encounters any psychological difficulties when conducting field study research.
• Why Chris researches cocaine gangland warfare in Colombia and Chicago?
• About the hierarchy that exist in the Colombian mafia.
• Why Colombia’s coca trade is woven deep within the fabric of Colombian society.
• About Colombian gangs and how the mafia operate.
• How Chris is working with authorities to develop policy interventions and initiatives  to reduce the influence of mafia.
• and much more.

“One fairly common thing, counter intuitive so much surprising but really widely documented now is that exposure to traumatic experiences often lead people to become more socially oriented, more cooperative, more engaged in their communities. So there is a silver lining to this dark cloud.” Professor Chris Blattman

People:

• Walter O’Brien Scorpion Computer Services
• Kate Cronin-Furman Wronging Rights Blog

Links:

• Chris Blattman: www.chrisblattman.com
• Kate Cronin-Furman: www.wrongingrights.com
• University of Waterloo

Books:

• My Struggle: Book 2 A Man in Love
• The Illiad by Homer
• The Odyssey by Homer
• The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho by James Fergusan
• Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
  by James C. Scott
• The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott

Recommended Episodes to Listen After This One:

• 101: Chris Coyne on the Opportunity Cost of War, Exporting Democracy and the Nirvana Fallacy
• 055: David Skarbek on the Economics of Prison Gangs and The Social Order of the Underworld

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