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Reshaping incentives: Encouraging tap water instead of bottled water

Much of the neoinstitutional and rational choice theory work that I’ve read has focused on incentive structures, rules and how these shape norms, behaviours and attitude changes in individuals. My research has examined behavioural change, but mostly from the perspective of industrial factory owners and their decision-making processes when confronted with tight environmental regulation. In my newest project, I am looking at how tap water and bottled water individual decision-making is done. This means, when confronted with the choice of ordering bottled water at a restaurant or requesting a glass of tap water, what do individuals do?

This an interesting area of research for me because, if faced with the choice myself, I will always choose a glass of tap water. This phenomenon (having to force restaurant owners to provide tap water instead of allowing them to impose a purchase of bottled water) is growing in Mexico. I was confronted with this when I lived in Vancouver, where the norm (despite having EXCELLENT quality tap water) was to serve me with a bottle of water. This pissed me off to no end, not only because of my scholarly research, but because the imposition actually shifts control of beverage choice, from the consumer to the supplier (in this case, the restaurant). Recently, the health authorities of Mexico City decided to impose a new legislative requirement on restaurants: you can’t force consumers to buy bottled water, you must provide clean, safe, potable drinking water for them.

As someone who uses neoinstitutional theory in much of his research, I’m interested in how rules and norms are constructed, stabilized and institutionalized. Thus I find it fascinating to understand how this recently-imposed bylaw will be enforced and whether it will lead to any behavioural change. I’ve long suspected that behavioural changes in water consumption are multifactorial: there are many reasons why bottled water consumption has grown exponentially in the last few years. It can’t be only the fact that bottled water is readily available or that tap water in Mexico has been routinely shunned because of badly maintained water supply infrastructure. I’m keen to delve more into this issue in the next year or so.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 27, 2014

Tenure-track position in Latin American or Mexican history at CIDE Region Centro

I am hereby reproducing the English-language call for applications for a tenure-track position in Latin American or Mexican History at CIDE Region Centro. Happy to answer questions on CIDE, the Region Centro campus, and life in Aguascalientes.

Applications are invited for the post of a tenure track assistant professor in modern Mexican and/or history of the Americas in the División de Historia, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), based in the Región Centro campus in the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico. Candidates should be available to take up the post in August 2014. Preferred candidates will have a research agenda linked to any of the following sub-disciplines: economic history, environmental history, regional comparative history, borderlands history, historical demography and geography, or digital history.
Candidates must have completed their Ph.D. degree before August 1st, 2014.

CIDE is an institute for research in social sciences with both national and international prestige. The Región Centro Campus was founded in 2011 and today it offers a bachelor degree program in Government and Public Finance, a Master’s degree in Regional and Environmental Economics, and two Interdisciplinary Study Programs, one in Drug Policy, and another in Regional Studies. The successful candidate will be expected to collaborate in one or more of these programs, as well as in the International History Master’s degree offered by the División de Historia. The candidate will be able to benefit from the
proximity of the Instituto Nacional de Geografía Estadística e Informática (INEGI) and the Fondo de Información y Documentación para la Industria de México (INFOTEC), both of which are based in the city of Aguascalientes.

Candidates must send the following documents in PDF format to the address below before March 31st, 2014: a covering letter; three references and some written assessments of their teaching skills (if they have them); an example of their written work (for example, a published or accepted article, or a book chapter or Ph.D. thesis chapter); and a project briefing outlining their future plans for research and teaching. These documents should be addressed to:

Search Committee
División de Historia
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Carretera México-Toluca #3655
Colonia Lomas de Santa Fe
México, D.F. 01210
México
Tel. (0052) 5557279826
And submitted by email to luis.barron@cide.edu & janet.rodriguez@cide.edu

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 26, 2014

In defense of service for junior scholars

I had been brewing this idea of blogging about service (the often-ingrate, unpaid, time-consuming activity of contributing to our discipline, to our department and our university/institution). The truth is, I do DO a lot of service, and I don’t regret it nor do I think it has hindered my research. Much to the contrary, being able to participate in institutional governance, and to serve on association committees and editorial boards has been incredibly eye-opening for me.

I have participated in 2 search committees for tenure-track faculty since I arrived at CIDE. I have also participated in an overhead committee (e.g. an ad-hoc decision-making committee on how to assign and spend overhead), and I am currently my campus’ representative to the library at CIDE. In addition, I’m the associate editor for a journal and I serve in six other editorial boards. I am on the Executive Committee of a Section of a scholarly association, the Chair of Professional Development of another. Plus, I peer-review about a journal manuscript per week, grant proposals, book proposals and entire book manuscripts.

Admittedly, I have the privilege of special circumstances: I’m single, have some RA support, a low teaching load, and I speed-read, touch-type 100 words per minute and have quasi-eidetic memory. So yes, I definitely can do a lot more service than someone with a 4/4 teaching load, married or single-parent with two kids. And I am the first one to acknowledge this privilege.

But if we want to have a voice in shared governance, if we want to be on top of our fields, if we want someone else to go to bat for us when we request help in our academic circles, we DO need to contribute and the best way to contribute, in addition of course to publishing papers, is to provide constructive feedback when we are asked to, to participate in shared-governance committees, to peer-review for journals and publishing houses, and to contribute to our discipline, our department and our institution.

So yes, I am defending service, and I know that most pre-tenure scholars may not want to take on any of this (and may be advised to do “the least service you can”). But I can’t vouch for that strategy. I have gained a lot of skills from actually doing stuff that is not 100% my research, and I can say this has helped me advance my career. As Christopher Lynn puts it:

So, what’s the take-home message? Do service willy nilly? Not hardly. But don’t shy away from it either. Everyone is busy, but your willingness to take on just a little more will be greatly appreciated &, to invoke some of my favorite evo theory, it is a costly honest signal of your willingness to cooperate that will reward you with unforeseen dividends!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 25, 2014

Polycentricity in Mexican water governance: Toward a research agenda (seminar at CSID, ASU)

As those who follow my research agenda know, I study water governance using common pool resource theories, championed by Elinor Ostrom and Vincent Ostrom. On Monday March 3rd, I will be in Tempe (Arizona) giving a seminar at the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity (CSID) of Arizona State University (ASU). The seminar is entitled “Polycentricity in Mexican water governance: Toward a research agenda“. I will be discussing my work studying non-hierarchical models of water governance and the implications for a research agenda in polycentricity theory. We will be meeting at Wrigley Hall in room 481 at 12:00 noon. The seminar will go on for about an hour. I am not 100% sure we’ll have streaming, but if we do, I’ll let everyone know.

Polycentricity in Mexican water governance: Toward a research agenda
Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega
Assistant Professor, Public Administration Division
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)

Water governance in Mexico has experienced substantial shifts in the past decade. Starting in 2004, with several reforms to the Ley de Aguas Nacionales (National Water Law), two new models of water-governing organizations have been implemented: the old-fashioned Consejos de Cuenca (river basin councils), and the allegedly-new-and-improved Organismos de Cuenca (river basin organization). This sudden change in organizational and institutional design is argued to be a response to the need to pursue “integrated water resources management” (IWRM). Contemporary Mexican water policy provides fertile ground to explore questions of complex commons governance, whose lessons can potentially be transferred to other countries. This talk will outline the complexity in governing water as a commons in Mexico, and more importantly, whether we can apply a polycentric governance approach to its study. The talk lays out a research agenda for the study of polycentric water governance in Mexico, and offers a few preliminary insights on which areas of Mexican water policy would be better suited for this kind of application of polycentricity theory.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 25, 2014

Academia and public engagement in English and Spanish: Not an easy task

The recent discussions on academics’ engagement (or lack thereof) reminded me about a particularity of my own circumstances now that I reside in Mexico, and after living in Canada for over 15 years. Both in academia and in my personal life, I am (for the most part) immersed in a Spanish-speaking world. My parents speak in Spanish to me, I have to teach in Spanish, and Spanish is the working language in Mexico, generally. That said, my native language is no longer Spanish. I think, write, read and speak in English. My academic life is primarily in English. My social media feeds are all maintained in English. I blog in English, I don’t blog in Spanish.

This puts me in a really awkward position. I do want to reach out to the Mexican public, and Mexican policy makers. To do so, I need to publish in Spanish. And while I do publish academic journal articles and book chapters in Spanish (quite a lot), I don’t write op-eds in Spanish often enough, I rarely tweet in Spanish, and I definitely do NOT blog in Spanish. Yet, the counter-punch is that I want to be competitive, relevant internationally and I want my academic peers in the global arena to respect my work and my scholarship. To do that, I need to present at international conferences in English, publish in English, and write on social media platforms in English. It’s the lingua franca of global academia.

So I’m stuck between rock and a hard place, where I’m criticized by Mexican scholars for not blogging and tweeting and publishing more op-eds in Spanish, where I’m sometimes questioned for wanting to teach courses in English instead of Spanish and where I am also frowned upon by some people because I talk with my Mexico-based English-speaking students and colleagues in, well, English. But at the same time, we recognize that to be a world-class academic institution, we need to imitate what is happening in Portugal, The Netherlands and even France, where universities are teaching entire graduate and undergraduate programmes in English.

This frustration is something that keeps coming up, particularly as I wrote 4 (yes, you read that right, FOUR) pieces in Spanish (1 book chapter, 1 conference papers and 2 journal article manuscripts for peer-review) in Spanish during the months of January and February 2014. In contrast, I’ve only written one journal article manuscript in English over the same period. I need to publish more in English, both because the journals that are considered most prestigious, both within Mexican academia and the international one are in English, and because I want my scholarship to be read more broadly. The worst thing is that I have a work ethic where I don’t translate my research papers in Spanish into English, but I create an entirely new piece, even if I am using the same datasets or interview data.

So, what to do? At a time when we as professors are being asked to do much more all the time (read the Kristof piece in case you doubt me), do I really have the time to write original research pieces in English and Spanish, AND undertake public engagement in English AND Spanish, AND contribute to my discipline and community? I am not sure, to be honest. But I think I am going to continue doing what I do. I am going to engage with the public in both languages only as far as I can, not much more. I am going to continue blogging, tweeting and writing scholarly pieces in English.

For better or worse, that’s what I think I need to do to reach a global audience.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 18, 2014

On the challenges of public engagement for marginalized academic voices

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t waste any more of my brain space or time on Nicholas Kristof’s ill-written piece decrying the inability of political science professors to “stay relevant” and “engage”. Even before he wrote his piece, I had already written about why it’s challenging for a public policy professor like me to engage as a “public intellectual” (do note the quotation marks, as I think that label is somewhat self-aggrandizing). Plenty of my fellow academics (including several not in the political science discipline per se) have debunked his piece. Tom Pepinsky’s piece was particularly engaging for me. Tobias Denskus makes a great series of points from the development field viewpoint. I particularly liked Marc Bellemare and Corey Robin‘s pieces who aren’t surprised to find that Kristof wants to save something/one else yet again. After all, as Marc said, “the NYT merely selling what its readers wants to buy”. Personally, I rarely read the NYT, to be quite honest. I read my Twitter stream and use it both as an information channel AND an engagement channel. If the people I follow post (or retweet) interesting links, I’ll go and read them too. I stay on top of things through my social media platforms, and I engage both with fellow academics AND with the general public through them.

As I said on Twitter, I knew perfectly that Kristof was doing link-baiting and click-baiting. He wanted to piss off academics who take it upon themselves to (on top of the work they already do) engage with the general public, policy-makers and communities at large. Those of us who thrive on public engagement were annoyed enough that we tweeted, retweeted, wrote pieces in response, and had dialogues on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.

Now, what struck me in the whole kerfuffle, and the reason that prompted me to write this post was the repeated process where the pieces most retweeted and engaged upon (even by Kristof himself) were those of white males. You could always say that it was only those academics who took it upon themselves to write a piece in response, and I’m grateful that they did. But there were several women who wrote very smart take-downs of Kristof’s column, and I saw less conversation and publicizing of those while I followed the conversation on Twitter. Five of the ones I liked best were authored by women (Erica Chenoweth, Pat Thomson, Paige Brown and Janet Stemdemwell, and a very funny one by Clarissa)

Corey does bring an important point that I think was missed in the entire discussion. There is a need for the public to listen to the voices of academics on the margins: adjuncts, up-and-coming graduate students, female scholars, people of color, and, as Zara noted to me on Twitter, disabled and queer academics. The problem is that we don’t listen to those voices enough, most likely because they don’t feel safe enough to engage publicly. So, why would a queer disabled academic want to engage if her voice would be drowned and dismissed on the basis of disability or sexual identity? It wouldn’t make sense and it would only perpetuate the problem.

Ed Carr provides a set of constructive ideas on how Kristof could contribute to the discourse by examining topics that are relevant to us as professors, and to academics in general. I would want to add one topic to the list, and (eventually, but not today as I’m pressed for time) to provide my own set of suggestions. Kristof should examine the challenges that traditionally marginalized academic voices face in engaging with the public and policy makers. And he should amplify those voices. Not because they need to be saved, but because they deserve to be heard.

Posted in academia, bridging academia and practice, bridging media and academia.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 18, 2014

#AcademicValentines or the elusive quest for love in academia

After reading a tweet from @NeinQuarterly (a Twitter account actually written by an academic, Eric Jarosinski), I couldn’t help but smile and attempt to contribute to the romanticization of February 14th through the lenses of an academic.

So I started tweeting a few pithy quotes from romantic comedies adapted to celebrate Valentine’s using academic wording and hashtagging it with #AcademicVAlentines. Because I started on February 11th, my fear was that the idea of Academic Valentines wouldn’t take off.

Strangely enough, the idea of #AcademicValentines did resonate with many people. Florence Chee, my colleague Brian Phillips, William Adler and a few other academics I follow and who follow me started tweeting their own. 2 hours later, Brian had the top retweeted tweet, a spot he held for a solid day or two.

#AcademicValentines has taken off alright, so much so, that it’s February 14th today (Happy Valentine’s!) and it is still going strong. This clearly shows that we are a nerdy, sometimes lovelorn bunch. I make fun of Valentines today because last year’s Valentines’ (a day that actually has a lot of meaning to me), I spent it talking over Skype with my (now former) partner. This year, for Valentines’, we are no longer together. While I can’t deny that it hurts (we were together for 8 years), I can’t also dwell on it.

Academia is a many splendored thing, yes. But it also has tremendous drawbacks. The two-body problem is not a small one. I have tried to solve the two-body problem issue twice, and both times, I’ve lost the battle. And while I love the accolades, seeing my name on published journal articles, books and book chapters, travelling the world for conferences and research fieldwork and to give seminar talks, I still am a human. A human who like any other, needs and wants to love and be loved in return.

Whenever I share my story with other colleagues (within and outside academia), the thing I say is “when considering a career in academia, you need to make sure to constantly communicate with your loved ones“. Be it parents, children, siblings, friends or partners/boyfriends/girlfriends, like in everything else, communication is key. Your goals need not only be aligned, but also talked about. If you are a PhD student, you need to a support network, and you have to tell your support network what you need, how you feel and where you are going. If you are going on the tenure-track or up for tenure, or seeking alt-ac career pathways, you’re going to need a support network, and you’ll need to communicate with them openly, clearly and directly.

Many fellow academics have reached out to me and said that they love my being frank, candid and open even on my academic/professional social media accounts. I appreciate the kind words, but more importantly, I think it is important for me that my fellow academics, my own PhD students, and the world in general can take a glimpse into academia that goes beyond the perception of individuals who live in ivory towers and are unreachable. I, for one, am never unreachable. If anything I do, write or tweet can help other fellow academics in their struggles to find balance in their academic and personal lives, it’ll be all worth it. Let’s call it “Contributions to Service to the Discipline and the Academic Community” 🙂

Happy Valentine’s, everyone.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 14, 2014

The value of handwritten notes in academic research

I have no shame in admitting that I’m completely old-school. I take handwritten notes. Despite my inherent interest in, and continued use of, technology tools (particularly online ones, like Mendeley, Evernote and Dropbox) I write my To-Do lists by hand. Not only that, but also when I am editing a paper (or writing a first draft), or conceptualizing research ideas, I always do them by hand.

I find that unless I write by hand, my thinking always drifts away. There is something to the physical component of jotting down my ideas. I also edit journal articles, manuscripts and grants by hand. And obviously, I grade by hand. When I was doing my PhD I used to write down all my notes in handwriting, and then typing my notes, and saving them as Word documents.

Someone recommended (and I actually agree with this idea) to write down by hand your notes, but then to type them and save them on Evernote, which allows you to index them properly. Some of my students (a vast majority) type notes in computer, but I find that when I do this, my notes aren’t as solid.

Besides, I also like to write on my whiteboard and map out how I am thinking about a particular research problem.

I also find that when I work from home, handwritten notes actually flow much more easily than when I have my big whiteboard available (I have a small one with a little corkboard at my home office, but I only note my To-Do list there). I tend to map out research ideas in a whiteboard when at my campus office.

All the tables that I usually create to accompany my journal articles or to help me think through my ideas are usually written by hand, then typed, then printed and THEN edited on paper (usually with red or purple ink). I know, old school, but incredibly effective.


Do YOU write your research notes by hand? (excluding, of course, fieldwork notes, which I suppose EVERYONE writes by hand!)

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 8, 2014

The politics of water privatization in Mexico

Whenever people ask me why I avoid some research questions I remind them that there are policy areas where I don’t think we can do much or where I feel that I cannot contribute. For years, I shunned the literature on water privatization because I was (and still am) in the politics of wastewater governance. I thought to myself that water privatization would never need to be part of my research agenda. I felt that this body of scholarship was incredibly politicized (just read some of the research that this Google Scholar search yields to see what I mean)

I used to avoid this body of work particularly on the one hand because I had other research interests, but also because the vast majority of publications on the human geography field on this topic point to neoliberalism as “the root of all evil”, as I often write in jest. Well, I will be damned (and I may have been assimilated by The Borg), because I am currently working on a project on privatization of water supply in Mexico, and my literature review has proven interesting to say the least. The links between my research topics are quite obvious, if one looks beyond the surface. Wastewater treatment is part of the infrastructure provided by municipalities. Infrastructure includes water supply, treatment and distribution. Water supply can be public, private or a mix. And privatized water supply is a really interesting topic. So there you have it, I’m finally studying water privatization.

Several Mexican municipalities have privatized their water supply in one way or another. Some of them, like Mexico City, have allowed for foreign interests to participate in an alternative service delivery model where some components of water supply are offered by private companies. Others, like Aguascalientes (where I live) have offered a transnational consortium (Veolia Water) a concession contract for public water delivery through a joint venture, Proactiva Medio Ambiente. There is, as you can imagine, strong resistance from Mexican activists to the privatization of water supply (mirroring the worldwide tendency to fight against corporatization of water resources and for a global right to water).

While obviously private companies will deny any wrongdoing or inefficiencies, several analyses I have found point out to a sad reality: water privatization doesn’t always work. Mexicans are quickly advancing towards reaching the top place as bottled water consumers. Making inferences in this case isn’t hard. If Mexicans feel that they can’t drink their tap water even under conditions of water privatization, then efficacy isn’t reached and thus, would probably be better to resort to remunicipalization (or public water supply).

I can understand that some times, in order to provide a better service to the public, you need public-private partnerships. Surely there are some places where privatization does work because it provides much needed infrastructure, particularly in urban contexts where municipal governments cannot provide it. But from what I have been investigating, private intervention in the Mexican water sector doesn’t seem to be a case study in good public service delivery.

This leads me to the main issue: I can now understand how neoliberalism as a philosophy of work can have (and possibly has had) an impact on how water supply processes are designed, and why does it get such a bad reputation in the human geography scholarship. Because market solutions don’t always mean the best solutions.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 4, 2014

Prioritizing tasks in academic life

Given my physical and personality traits (I get tired incredibly fast, have enormous amounts of energy, love focusing on a broad variety of tasks and projects), I have designed my days in such a way that I can focus on doing the stuff I need to get done and still maintain some degree of sanity and balance. As you may notice in my weekly schedule, I prioritize writing above almost everything else with the exception of napping, taking time off and exercising. and before I do anything else during the day, I write (by hand, as you can notice in the photo) my to-do list.

Every morning, I write from 4:30am to 6:30am religiously. I often combine this writing with reading journal articles, books and book chapters. I don’t actually take the 2 hours to read. What I do is I write notes as I read, and then, during my writing time, I use my notes to fill up paragraphs in the paper I am currently writing. I have also recently taken to write down my successes on an every day basis. That is, I write what I have accomplished during the day. This helps me stay focused on my work.

Writing down my To Do lists by hand, and at the end of the day (and end of the month) summarizing my achievements and accomplishments lets me see the overall picture of where I am going and what I am doing. There is a reason why I do this: I am well aware of how easily bored I can get, and how fragile my body can be sometimes. I know I can accomplish a lot if I work on a broad variety of projects, and if I can see how much progress I am making. Be it doing fieldwork, creating new datasets, reading about new concepts and ideas, or doing service to my institution and the discipline, I need variety.

I also know that I can work long hours only if I also take breaks during my day. I also require time off and being settled, which is hard to do when you travel as much as I do. Last year, when I travelled for conferences and fieldwork extensively (9 countries in 6 months), and for family visits (Calgary in Canada, and Los Angeles in the USA), I realized I was getting more and more tired. I started 2014 sick with a cold, and I quickly fell sick again in less than two weeks because I travelled from Aguascalientes to Mexico City each week of the month of January.

I have found that reading articles on productivity tips actually helps me gain focus and learn some tips that I may integrate into my own tool-kit. The 8 tips for highly productive people that are linked in the list attached have actually proven quite useful for me. There is a lot to be gained by self-examining and adopting techniques and strategies from people who are highly productive and successful. One striking similarity in all productivity tips I have read is the concept of focus and the idea of prioritizing. You need to prioritize what will bring you the most success, or what will sustain you in the long run. For me, success is measured in many ways, but one of the ways in which I want to be successful is publishing more, in both languages (English and Spanish). Therefore, I stay focused and prioritize writing.

I make sure I make time for writing before I make time for just about everything else. I have been saying NO to so many events, conferences, talks, seminars, workshops, I have actually lost count. I feel bad, of course, but my own academic success is my priority, above anybody else’s excitement about having me come and give a talk or present a seminar. I am sticking with whatever commitments I made last year, but working really hard at prioritizing travel for conferences and fieldwork, and not accepting invitations that will yield very little in terms of productive writing or bringing new ideas.

Prioritizing is something that I struggle with on a regular basis, but I am disciplined at doing. There is no other way to be successful in academia, I believe, other than actually being disciplined. 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration, someone said!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 3, 2014