Janine R. Wedel writes about the privatization of public and foreign policy, corruption and the state, and development and foreign aid through the unique lens of a social anthropologist.  She is the first anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order (previous award recipients include Mikhail Gorbachev and Samuel Huntington).  A professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and fellow at the New America Foundation, Wedel has contributed articles and opinion pieces to more than a dozen major outlets, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Nation, The National Interest, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon, and The Boston Globe.

Wedel has been a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics that are typically the terrain of political scientists, economists, or sociologists.  After 25 years studying the role of informal systems in shaping communist and post-communist societies, Wedel has also turned her attention to the United States.  In a new book, Shadow Elite: The New Agents of Power and Influence (forthcoming, Basic Books), she explores the ways in which today’s movers and shakers brandish power and influence, the new rules they are writing themselves, and the implications for democracy.  Her work assesses the extent to which the new rules take us beyond traditional corruption and conflict-of-interest—and into an accountability-challenged era.

A four-time Fulbright fellow, Wedel has also won awards from the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the United States Institute of Peace, the German Marshall Fund, the Eurasia Foundation, and the National Institute of Justice, among others.  The Foreign Policy Association selected Wedel’s prize-winning Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (Palgrave 2001), as an “Editor’s Pick.”  Other books include The Unplanned Society (edited, annotated, and introductions, Columbia University Press, 1992) and The Private Poland: An Anthropologist Looks at Everyday Life (1986), which was likened by the Christian Science Monitor to Hedrick Smith's The Russians.

Wedel’s work has been favorably reviewed and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, Foreign Affairs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Moscow Times, and Publishers Weekly; it has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, Danish, and Chinese.  She has testified before Congressional committees and appeared on television and radio programs, including BBC, CNN, NPR, and PBS’s Frontline, and associate produced three PBS documentaries.  Her stops on the university lecture circuit include Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, Princeton, Oxford, and Central European University.

Wedel is co-founder of the Interest Group for the Anthropology of Public Policy (IGAPP).  She led the development of two core courses in her school: Culture, Organization, and Technology; and Advanced Field Research for Policy: Theory and Method.  She was recognized as one of a handful of “Distinguished Alumni” Ph.D.s chosen to speak at the Berkeley anthropology department’s centennial celebration.

• Anthropology of Public Policy
• Corruption
• Eastern Europe
• Foreign Aid
• Governance and Privatization of Policy
• Social Networks

Books
Shadow Elite: The New Agents of Power and Influence, Basic Books, (forthcoming).

Wedel, J. R. Prywatna Polska (the Private Poland) with new Introduction 'The Private Poland, A Quarter Century Later'. Warsaw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2007.

Book Sections
Wedel, J. R. “The Shadow Army: Privatization.” In Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War, edited by M. Pemberton and W. D. Hartung, 116-123. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008.

Wedel, J. R., M. Intriligator and C. Lee. "What Russia Can Learn from China in Its Transition to a Market Economy." Clumsy Solutions in a Complex World: Governance, Politics, and Plural Perceptions. M. V. a. M. Thompson. Basingstoke, UK, Palgrave Macmillan: 105-131, 2006.

Wedel, J. R. “Flex Organizing and the Clan-State: Perspectives on Crime and Corruption in the New Russia.” In Ruling Russia, Crime, Law and Justice and a Changing Society, edited by William Pridemore, 101-16. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005.

Wedel, J. R., C. Shore, G. Feldman and S. Lathrop. “Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy.” In The Use and Usefulness of the Social Sciences: Achievement, Disappointments, and Promise, edited by Robert W. Pearson & Lawrence W. Sherman, 30-51. Philadelphia: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005.

Journal Articles
Wedel, J. R. “Le Developpement Pris en Otage: Comment L’Aide Americaine a la Russie a Ete Detournee Par Les ‘Transacteurs’” ("Hijacking Development: How Transactors Undermined U.S. Aid to Russia”). Revue Tiers Monde, no. 193 (2008): 13-36.

Wedel, J. R. Review of “How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business,” by A. V. Ledeneva. International Affairs 84, no. 3 (2008): 591-592.

Articles in Refereed Journals and Chapters
Wedel, J. R., C. Shore, G. Feldman, and S. Lathrop. “Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy.” In “The Use and Usefulness of the Social Sciences: Achievement, Disappointments, and Promise.” Robert W. Pearson and Lawrence W. Sherman, eds. Philadelphia: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, vol. 600 (July 2005): 30-51.

Wedel, Janine R. “Why and Anthropology of Public Policy.” Anthropology Today 21, no. 1 (February 2005): 1-2.

Wedel, J. R. “U.S. Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy: Building Strong Relationships by Doing It Right.” International Studies Perspectives Vol. 6, no. 1 (February 2005): 35-50.

Wedel, J. R. "Flex Organizing and the Clan-State: Perspectives on Crime and Corruption in the NewRussia." In Ruling Russia: Crime, Law, and Justice in a Changing Society, William Pridemore, ed. New York, N.Y.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., (2005): 101-116.

Analytic and Policy Articles
Wedel, J. R. "The Shadow Army." In The Boston Globe, (September 30, 2007):, p. D9.

Wedel, J. R. "Harvard's Role in U.S. Aid to Russia." In The Boston Globe. (March 25, 2006): A15.

Presentations and Proceedings
Wedel, J. R. “An Empire of Governance? The Anti-Corruption Industry” session discussant. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 2008.

Wedel, J. R. “Non-State Actors and the Future of U.S. Democracy Promotion,” discussant. New America Foundation, Expert Group Meeting, Washington, D.C., 2008.

Wedel, J. R. “New World Organization and the New Think Tanks.” Presented at Social Science Research Council, Workshop for International Working Group, New York, NY, 2008.

Wedel, J. R. “Transactorship in U.S. Foreign Policy: From Privatization in Russia to War in Iraq” paper, “Democratization and Democracy Promotion Revisited,” panel. American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, 2008.

Wedel, J. R. “Shadow Ellite: The New Agents of Power and Influence.” Presented at Wageningen University, Amsterdam, 2008.

Wedel, J. R. “From Privatization in Russia to War in Iraq: The Role of Global Elites in U.S. Foreign Policy.” Presented at Conference on Anthropology of Elites, Methodological and Theoretical Challenges, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 2008.

Wedel, J. R. “Serious Fun.” Commencement Address, Bethel College, KS, 2008.

Honors
Ford Foundation grant (2008-2009)

The National Institute of Justice Fellowship is (2002-2006)

Ford Foundation grant (2005-2007) (with Lloyd J. Dumas)

Ford Foundation grant (2002-2005) (with Lloyd J. Dumas)

2001 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order

Eurasia Foundation research grant (2001-2002)

National Council for Eurasian and East European Research award (1999-2001)

2000-2001 Annual Teaching Award for Outstanding Instruction (University of Pittsburgh)

Earhart Foundation research grant (2000) United States Institute of Peace award (1997-1999)

National Science Foundation award (1994-1999)

MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grant (1994-1996)

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (E. European program) fellowship (1994)

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung fellowship (1994-1995)

German Marshall Fund grant (1990)

National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (1987-1989)

International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) fellowship (1988)