Profiles of Individuals Involved in New Initiatives
Gary Dymski, Professor of Economics
Q:
Dr. Dymski, where did you receive your education?
A: I went to high school and college in Philadelphia. I earned
an MPA at the Maxwell School, Syracuse, in 1977, and received
my Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst in 1987. Then I spent a year at the Brookings Institution
in Washington DC as the 1985-86 Olin Research Fellow in Economic
Studies.
Q: What type of faculty and research positions have you held?
A: I joined the economics faculty at the University of Southern
California in 1986, and then became a member of the UCR faculty
in 1991. I have been a visiting scholar at Tokyo University,
the Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies, and the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro. I’m a Research Associate
of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, a progressive
think-tank. I’m also a board member of the Association
for Evolutionary Economics, and a board member of the American
Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Minorities
in the Economics Profession. I’m a member of the editorial
boards of Geoforum, the International Review of
Applied Economics, and the Journal of Economic Issues.
Q: What about your publishing history?
A: My publications include the 1999 book The Bank Merger
Wave and three co-edited volumes, including Seeking
Shelter on the Pacific Rim (2001). I’ve written more
than 100 articles and book chapters on banking, financial fragility,
urban economic and residential development, small business challenges,
credit-market discrimination, the Latin American and Asian financial
crises, exploitation, and housing finance.
Q: How does your work contribute to the Center for California
Native Nations?
A: Let me explain why I think I have something to contribute
-- some background on “what I bring to the table.”
To begin, it is true that while I was at UPenn, I minored in
anthropology, and was especially fascinated by the anthropological/historical
perspectives of a teacher called John Woodall on Native American
nations/cultures, taking two of his courses on American Indians.
So I learned some of the basic elements of the history of the
native peoples of North America, of the cultural/linguistic
groupings, the poetry and belief systems, etc.
However, the basis of my prospective involvement with the
nations/rezes in our area is ultimately my work as an activist
and also as a scholar. At the same time, I was a city kid,
living within the largely white and Catholic world of deeply
segregated Philadelphia even while trying to understand the
meaning of the racial divide that cut through the city like
a zone of silence/hostility.
I got a scholarship to Penn and there met some African American
fellow students (it was 1971 when I entered and there was
a big push just then at the Ivies to build up enrollments
of black students). I began to learn about my new friends,
in the social/cultural cauldron of those times (George Jackson,
nationalism, Gil Scott-Heron, etc.). I spent a semester at
Morgan State College in Baltimore as an exchange student and
then came back in my sophomore year and became an urban studies
major.
I began working in inner-city neighborhoods as an organizer/analyst
by my junior year, in Philly. After getting an MPA at Syracuse,
I moved to Indianapolis to work at the Legal Services Organization
of Indiana. My role was to work with lower-income organizations
(again, virtually all urban) on issues ranging from bank redlining
to economic development to welfare, jobs, housing, etc. I
also did some lobbying in the State House and helped on some
class-action litigation, serving as an expert on cases ranging
from prison-rights litigation at the Indiana State Prison
and Indiana State Reformatory (sic), the state's poor-relief
system, etc. After nearly five years in Indiana I went on
to grad school in economics. My first academic job was in
LA (USC). There I got involved with numerous organizations
-- South Central Organizing Committee, El Rescate (a Central
American community center in Pico Union seeking to do community
economic development), CAR (Communities Allied for Reinvestment),
the New Majority, LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy,
the group that has sponsored most of the living-wage work
in So Cal), plus virtually all of the fair-housing alliances
and organizations in Southern California (including Riverside's
FH Council, run by Rose Mayes).
Some of these involvements have become embedded in my academic
work. I work on monetary and financial institutions and behavior,
on urban economic development, housing and housing finance,
racial and ethnic segregation, ethnic banking, and so on.
This work has been focused on the US and especially southern
California, but has now led to some contacts across borders.
Q: You have traveled widely, what global experience to you
“bring to the table” that relates to the issues
involving Native Americans?
A: In 1997, I had a chance to visit Brazil for the first
time. I subsequently have been back five more times. I have
given two lectures series there on economic development, financial
structure, and poverty, and have worked with non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that are active in the favelas
and impoverished regions (such as the NE). I had a chance
to study microcredit as a community-development vehicle during
a visit to Bangladesh in 1992; in 1997 and 1998, I helped
a little with a pilot microcredit program in Rio de Janeiro
that has since taken off. In Japan too I’ve had a chance
to make three extended visits, interacting with scholars,
students, and NGOs on the problem of marginalization, development,
and financial structure. In South Africa, this year, I was
asked to help the government do some reforms of their consumer
credit laws, which have a very uneven impact on the townships
and other residential areas and commercial enterprises in
that very divided nation. These experiences, along with visits
to Bogota and to Korea, have helped me to see the connections
between the challenges facing lower-income and minority communities
in the US and those facing developing nations. These differing
situations have some parallels, and we can learn about one
by studying the other. Of course, this reaffirms and brings
into renewed focus the spirit and analytics of scholars from
the 1960s and 1970s who saw neocolonialism as a global problem.
One thing I took away from the spirit of the '60s was the
idea that you have to pay some dues if you want to sit at
the welcome table. Or maybe, you have to realize that there
is no end to this debt, this need to try to reorient one's
work with the perspectives and situation of those who lack
advocates in the corridors of power and wealth.
Q: As there are a large number of Indian Reservations in
Southern California, particularly in rapidly developing areas
of Riverside and San Diego counties, what benefits do you
foresee the planned Center for Sustainable Suburban Development
providing for these local Native American communities?
A: I hope that the Center can play a special role in, as
a bridge between the UCR academic community and the communities
and community leaders of the inland Southern California region.
The Native American peoples of this region are among the key
constituencies that the Center will serve. Given the Center’s
focus on economic, social, and environmental issues, I would
anticipate that the Center and its affiliated faculty will
provide expertise on these issues for the local nations. My
own interest is on the problem of economic development in
light of centuries of exploitation and disempowerment. Much
of the writing that we find on Native American economic issues
today tends to focus on casinos, to the exclusion of other
issues. This focus overlooks the deeply embedded economic
problems of inadequate infrastructure, isolation from jobs
and other resources, unemployment, and wealth disparities.
My sense of the situation in the Inland Empire is that the
economic circumstances of the local nations are very different.
Thus, a good first step could be to get a baseline understanding
of the situation of the different Native American peoples
in our area, and to have some dialogues with leaders concerning
their economic issues and plans for development.
Economics and California Indians
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