I am currently participating in the National Meeting of the Thematic Network for Poverty and Urban Development in Mexico (luckily, being held in Aguascalientes, where I am based right now). This meeting is a self-organizing group of Mexican scholars (or foreign scholars who now teach at Mexican universities) and sponsored by the National Research Council of Mexico (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia). You can read some of my tweets about the meeting using the hashtag #MxPovertyUD.
While my work on poverty is rather preliminary (I am currently working on a water and poverty energy project with Dr. Hisham Zerriffi from the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC), I was delighted to be invited to this event, because at the very core, my research is driven by a philosophy focused on poverty alleviation and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor. What this meeting reminded me of was that in academia, as in any other professional activity, you are who you know. And by this I mean, it IS very important to attend conferences, seminars, scholarly meetings and a broad variety of forums to network with other scholars, or with policy makers who might be also the users of our research.
I do consider myself a public intellectual. I strongly believe that a large part of my role is to share my research widely (hence the #MyResearch hashtag, although sadly it has experienced some hashtag pollution and interference). Networking in policy circles or academic settings enables me to share my research with more people, and by introducing myself in person to other colleagues, I often find new avenues, methodological approaches and/or suggestions of case studies.
One of the pieces of (unsolicited) advice I always give my students is to network, network, network. Attend seminars, even if they’re not in the core area of what you are studying. Attend conferences. Present your work. Be a part of policy discussion roundtables. Participate in public forums where politicians can be reached more easily.
I not only encourage my students, but I often build those network relationships with policy makers and other scholars myself. Last year, for example, I brought with me a group of students from my POLI350A class (Public Policy) to a public debate where mayoral candidates for Vancouver were debating. After the debate, we sat down at a lounge and discussed what we learned from the process.
Another strategy I use is to bring the network connections to my students. Every term, I brought guest lecturers (amongst these, policy makers like Minister of Advanced Education in British Columbia Naomi Yamamoto, or other scholars I respect, like Dr. Janni Aragon from University of Victoria’s Political Science department, or practitioners, such as Mat Wright, who is a political communications advisor). By bringing these folks to meet my students, I enable small, one-on-one conversations that might derive either in an internship, a directed study seminar or even just a personal connection that can be of use for my students in the future.
Networking is perhaps one of the most shunned activities in academia, but I can’t emphasize enough its importance. For students and for professors alike. Networking enables academics like me to better fulfil our role as public intellectuals as well, I believe.
As a young (and naive) undergraduate student in chemical engineering, I always believed in the power of interdisciplinarity. My brothers were all engineers (like me) but of different specializations: civil, mechanical, electrical. Our studies crossed paths because we shared some common coursework (and my brothers were always on hand to explain to me how to calculate heat exchangers, for example).
When I decided to undertake graduate work in the administrative sciences, I figured I had jumped ship on to “greener pastures”. Yet what I found in management science literature was that it borrowed from different disciplines to build its explanatory frameworks. My Masters’ thesis topic (understanding strategic alliances) used literature from the hard-core microeconomic and industrial organization fields (I built a game-theoretic approach to alliance-building). It also used scholarship from the economic sociology and anthropology bodies of work.
While fully confessing that my doctoral training was primarily in the political science (comparative politics of public policy) field, my other major field was human geography (specifically, business geography/industrial geography/economic geography/urban geography). At the same time, my former PhD supervisor was a physicist who turned to policy analysis (and thus he valued interdisciplinarity in scholarly work).
My doctoral dissertation built an interdisciplinary framework that borrowed from the policy sciences, economic geography, comparative politics, economic sociology and anthropology, in an integrated assessment of industrial clusters’ restructuring. To be quite honest, I love what I did with my dissertation, and its interdisciplinary nature. One of the challenges I have faced given that I have taught in a department of Political Science for the past 6-7 years is that I find political science sometimes a bit insular and guarded from approaching problems from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. This isn’t a problem specific to a department, but I think it is a reflection of how universities in Canada (and for the most part, from an anecdotal perspective, it looks like this is the case worldwide) approach interdisciplinary work: “we want you to be able to do interdisciplinary work, but your PhD needs to be in a specific discipline“. This approach, I think, precludes students and faculty members from really broadening their perspectives and learning from other disciplines.
I began a dialogue with other scholarship even before I graduated from my PhD, and I am grateful to my advisors (both Masters and PhD) for letting me engage in truly interdisciplinary work. The rewards from working beyond my traditional discipline (political science, in this case) are numerous, but unfortunately there is a big challenge: reading beyond individual disciplinary boundaries means that I spend a large (somewhat inordinate) amount of time keeping up-to-date with scholarship in all these fields. I have set up email alerts that send me tables of content from several journals in geography, economics, political science, public administration, sociology, history, and even in the chemical engineering, environmental engineering realms. But to truly stay on top of all these published journals is proving a big challenge.
I am wondering how other scholars approach this problem. Feel free to chime on the comments section.
While my geographical area of specialization is originally North America (Canada, the United States of America and Mexico in a comparative perspective), I have been considering undertaking more work on Canadian studies, particularly because (a) I taught (and continue to be affiliated with) one of Canada’s best and most reputable universities, (b) I lived in Canada for the better part of a decade, (c) I have taught the Canadian versions of Public Policy and Environmental Politics and (d) I have taught hundreds of Canadian students and share scholarly goals with many Canadian professors and colleagues.
Photo credit: SonSon on Flickr
While currently based in Mexico, I still hold a very strong scholarly interest in Canada, and thus I thought I’d share the most recent call for papers for the Journal of Canadian Studies on Canadian and environmental studies. I am copying and pasting the call for papers below. The special issue will be edited by someone I respect a lot in the field of Canadian water history and Canadian environmental history, Dr. Matthew Evenden, an Associate Professor at UBC Geography.
Call for Papers: Beyond the Culture of Nature: Rethinking Canadian and Environmental Studies
Theme Issue of the Journal of Canadian Studies
Guest Editor: Matthew Evenden
Canadian and Environmental Studies are two fields in transformation. Initiated in part as emancipatory projects in the 1970s, seeking to define subjects and articulate their meanings, the two fields have diverged and been complicated by shifting ideas about nation and nationalism on the one hand, and the environment and sustainability on the other. Wilderness once stood as a central shared concern of the two fields, but constructivist critiques have highlighted its associations with race, gender, settler societies and social power, and the discourse of sustainability has transcended wilderness as a cultural and linguistic artifact, reliant on a binary vision of nature and culture. This special issue asks what has replaced the culture of nature that once provided common ground for Canadian and Environmental Studies? How do area and interdisciplinary studies intersect, and with what benefits and problems? Does a shared agenda remain? This special issue will consider the evolving relationship between Canadian and Environmental Studies scholarship and imagine their intertwined futures.
Possible paper topics include:
– The place of nature in Canadian Studies
– The place of Canada in Environmental Studies
– What’s left of wilderness and the culture of nature?
– Understanding Canada, regions and places in a world of global flows and environmental processes
Academics and graduate students nearing completion of a PhD are invited to submit 250-word abstracts for consideration. The deadline for abstracts is 1 September 2012. Papers selected for submission should be made available by 1 December 2012. All papers will undergo a formal peer review process through the Journal of Canadian Studies. Completed abstracts or questions should be directed to the guest editor, Matthew Evenden, at matthew(.)evenden(@)ubc(.)ca
Appel de communications
Au-delà de la culture de la nature : Repenser les études canadiennes et environnementales.
Numéro thématique de la Revue d’études canadiennes
Rédacteur invité : Matthew Evenden
Les études canadiennes et les études environnementales sont deux champs en transformation. Entrepris en partie en tant que projets émancipatoires au cours des années 1970, cherchant à définir des sujets et à élaborer leurs significations, ces deux champs d’études ont divergé et se sont complexifiés en même temps que les notions de nation et de nationalisme, ainsi que celles d’environnement et de durabilité, se recomposaient. Autrefois une préoccupation commune de ces deux champs, la nature sauvage (wilderness) est dorénavant associée par les critiques constructivistes à la race, au genre, aux sociétés coloniales et au pouvoir social. Quant au discours sur la durabilité, il a transcendé la nature sauvage en tant qu’artefact culturel et linguistique, tributaire d’une vision binaire de la nature et de la culture. Le présent numéro spécial s’interroge sur ce qui a remplacé la culture de la nature en tant que point commun des études canadiennes et environnementales. Comment est-ce que les études régionales (area studies) et les études interdisciplinaires s’entrecoupent, avec quels bénéfices et quels problèmes? Existe-t-il encore des points de convergence? Ce numéro spécial cherche à rassembler les chercheurs en études canadiennes et environnementales pour discuter et débattre de la relation entre les deux champs d’études et imaginer un avenir commun.
Thèmes de recherche possibles :
– La place de la nature dans les études canadiennes
– La place du Canada dans les études environnementales
– Que reste-il de la nature sauvage et de la culture de la nature?
– Comprendre le Canada, les régions et les lieux dans un monde de circulations globales et de processus environnementaux.
Les universitaires et les étudiants de troisième cycle qui obtiendront bientôt leur doctorat sont invités à soumettre des résumés de 250 mots pour évaluation. La date limite de soumission des résumés est le 1er septembre 2012. Les manuscrits qui seront retenus doivent être remis au plus tard le 1er décembre 2012. Ils feront tous l’objet d’une évaluation formelle par les pairs organisée par la Revue d’études canadiennes. Vous pouvez faire parvenir vos résumés terminés ou vos questions au rédacteur invité, Matthew Evenden, à matthew(.)evenden(@)ubc(.)ca.
I’m proud to announce that as of July 1st, 2012 I have joined the Public Administration Division of CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, AC – Center for Economic Teaching and Research) as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. My geographical base will be the new campus of CIDE, CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, the capital city of the state of Aguascalientes, in central Mexico.
CIDE is a research centre and a teaching institution as well, highly regarded worldwide as the Harvard of Mexico. Faculty here are either Mexican nationals who did their PhDs abroad or foreigners with PhDs, everyone from excellent universities worldwide. CIDE professors are world-class scholars and the camaraderie and collegiality here has been outstanding. While my office is at CIDE Region Centro, I will coordinate a research programme that will require me to travel to the main CIDE Santa Fe campus on a regular basis, in Mexico City.
Given the regional focus of CIDE Region Centro, my scholarly agenda is perfectly suited for its long-term goals. The Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC), my academic home since 2006, has been incredibly supportive of my move to Mexico and I plan to continue as Affiliated Faculty. I will also remain Affiliated Faculty in the Latin American Studies Programme at UBC.
Of course, I will continue to mentor my former students from UBC, particularly those who are collaborating with me on several scholarly writing pieces. UBC is not only my alma mater, but also the place where my scholarly research blossomed and where I gained a lot of experience teaching amazing students. I want to apologize to those of you who were hoping to take a course with me in the 2012-2013 academic year, but fear not. I am hoping to come back to teach at some point (most likely summer compressed courses or perhaps a full year as a Visiting Scholar). And whether or not I am at UBC physically, I will maintain my scholarly affiliation with UBC Political Science and with the university at large, and will always support its endeavours. It is, after all, my alma mater!
I want to thank the department of Political Science at UBC for providing an amazing scholarly home and my fellow faculty members for being wonderful and supportive colleagues. I also want to thank the hundreds of brilliant students who took my courses: you challenged me to be a better educator and I hope I rose to the challenge. I want to thank my former students who have collaborated with me through the years in my scholarly research agenda: your enthusiasm and hard work makes me incredibly proud of who you are and who you are becoming. And I also want to thank CIDE for an amazing opportunity to expand the research programme I consolidated in the past few years. I can’t think of a better scholarly home for me.
Funding for my doctoral degree did not come from SSHRC as I wasn’t a Canadian citizen nor a landed immigrant at the time, I was funded by the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT), who also changed their policies and guidelines for PhD funding as I was completing my PhD (sadly, the changes weren’t retroactive so they didn’t benefit me). Originally, CONACyT funded only 3 years of the PhD process, and then they expanded to 4 and 5 years (which I find reasonable).
However, in what I find a strange move, now SSHRC is changing its funding to apply to only 3 years of the PhD process.
Implement changes to those funding opportunities offering direct support to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (Doctoral Funding)
Align the duration of funding under the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowships with the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS) Doctoral Scholarships and the Vanier CGS Doctoral Scholarships by setting a consistent, maximum duration of three years.
This is, in my view, quite worrisome. First, it assumes that a PhD can be either completed in 3 years or income can be supplemented in the first few years with alternative sources of income. So far, I have not met ONE person in my entirely life who has completed a PhD in 3 years. One could argue “well, you can find other sources of funding for the first 1-2 years of the PhD and finish in 5”. But how many Canadian PhDs (in fact, how many PhDs overall) finish *easily* in 4 or 5 years? There are rare cases, in my view, of History PhDs who have completed in 4 or 5, but I know of others who have taken up to 9 or 10 years. And in my field, a comparativist PhD thesis may take up to 6-7 depending on length of fieldwork.
Some universities cap program length (e.g. number of years you can be registered as a PhD student) at 8 or 9 years. But as I can personally be witness to, life does happen. So, what if a PhD student has had a number of problems that hindered his/her progress? With so many challenges facing higher education, and higher PhD attrition rates, I think what we ought to do is create safeguards and mechanisms to ensure that those who already embarked in the PhD process can complete.
Second, and the reason why I am more concerned, is that changes in SSHRC policy will not be reflected fast enough in the Canadian higher education system. Even if university departments know that now SSHRC enables you to apply your doctoral funding for any of the 5 years your PhD is supposed to take you to complete, what safeguards exist to make sure that departments won’t bias internal application choice towards early-stage PhD students, rather than towards students who may be taking longer but may need the funding more?
These are some rough thoughts, and I welcome any and all feedback (please leave in the comments section, as I can Storify your tweets, but I prefer a more permanent record). Thanks to Ian Milligan for sparking this discussion and offering his own thoughts.
When I was a graduate student, I always felt that I had to come to academic conferences to present pretty-much-completed work, or if it was work-in-progress, I always had to present empirical results. This was perhaps the way I was trained during my PhD. I have followed this policy through my scholarly career but in recent years, and now even more encouraged by a recent seminar presentation by Dr. Martha Finnemore (one of the world’s top constructivist scholars in international relations) at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC, I have decided to use academic conferences and invited seminars to request feedback.
Dr. Martha Finnemore at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at The University of British Columbia
At her recent presentation (on “Constructing Statistics for Global Governance“), Dr. Finnemore specifically requested of her audience to help her think through her preliminary analysis and the way her research design was set up. What ensued was a lively discussion that I’m sure enabled Dr. Finnemore to gain insight into other ways of looking at the problem she was specifically looking at.
My experience using this method of requesting feedback on newly-launched projects has been nothing short of superb. At CALACS and CAG, I outlined the rationale for comparing waste pickers in Sao Paulo (Brazil), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Mexico City (Mexico). I specified the research questions that drove my interest and provided some preliminary comparative data on solid waste production, number of waste pickers at the national and city-level. I also offered a preliminary theoretical and analytical framework that would guide my project.
Feedback I received was great, and I think that a number of scholars shun the opportunity to present very-early-stages research for fear of criticism. I also made a not-so-in-jest joke that I was paying for attending the conference (registration fees) so I was going to put my fellow scholars to work. And in a way, I kind of think so. I think that since we are (in some cases) paying exorbitant fees to attend conferences where we present our work, we might as well get as much from the conference as possible.
I have taken the same approach with departmental seminars. I don’t really favour this approach when giving an invited talk, as I believe that invited seminars are mostly an opportunity for the host university/department to learn about my completed or almost-finished research projects. But if the host university specifically asks me to discuss either my future research agenda or my newer scholarly stuff, then I make it explicit that I am in the early stages of a project.
I have taught doctoral-level, Masters-level and undergraduate level courses before, and in most of these, much to most of my fellow professors’ dismay, I did a lot of lecturing and less seminar-style discussions (though my undergraduate students thought I did a little bit too much seminar-style teaching! – what a paradox). I am currently designing two doctoral-level courses and I want them to be taught as seminars, rather than me lecturing most of the time. Both courses would be surveys of the field (with reading lists similar to a PhD field comprehensive exam). I did not provide much context for my request, for which I apologize.
One of the seminars would be more than a survey of the field (Doctoral Seminar on Frontiers in Water Research) and thus I would need to increase the breadth (so that my students would read in the humanities, engineering and social sciences). Regardless, because of the fact that I speed-read and I have a photographic memory, I often feel out of touch with how much reading is appropriate. I have read very widely simply because (a) I love scholarship and (b) I have the physical capability to read a lot and understand and absorb it. Not everyone reads and comprehends at my speed.
So I turned to my Twitter following (which includes many fellow professors, graduate students and folks who have been touched by academia in one way or another) to ask what an appropriate reading load for a PhD level seminar would be. This resulted in an enlightening and lively discussion. For those scholars who shun social media for scholarly applications, THIS is the reason I stay on Twitter: I can have wonderful, fast-paced, interactive conversations with fellow scholars and learn from them. I would not have had the chance to have this discussion in an asynchronous medium like a conference or even a departmental seminar. I encourage scholars who don’t see the value of using social media (and in this case, Twitter) to read the discussions below (which I created using a tool called Storify).
I am designing two new PhD-level seminars. Because I haven’t taught these types of seminars before, I asked on Twitter what would the appropriate reading load (in number of pages) be for a doctoral seminar. I Storified the tweets from our discussions.
Storified by Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega · Sat, Jul 07 2012 08:01:49
While pondering my questions, a few other scholars asked questions that could help them refine their answer, like “will a student require accomodations?”
@raulpacheco Any students with reading or learning disabilities that will need accommodation? Any other courses?P. F. Anderson
@raulpacheco to whom? Eg what field?Sara Goldrick-Rab
The first question (e.g. how many pages is too many) sparked some really great responses, both from graduate students as well as from professors/academics.
@raulpacheco I’m a grad student not a professor. but reading 10+ pages is agony (in applied math). But I spend 30+ hrs/week doing homework.Mike
@raulpacheco Too much. My experience is no more than 1/3 that (though, I taught stats in nursing where students did 4 courses at once).Jennifer Lloyd
@raulpacheco too much.Valerie Irvine
@raulpacheco I always ask myself what I could do and still have a shot at well-being.Valerie Irvine
@_valeriei @raulpacheco Me too. But I’ve learned that what I could do myself as an expert biases my judgem’t about what’s fair for students.Jennifer Lloyd
@JEVLloyd @raulpacheco yes BUT they don’t have the workload we do. So it equals out.Valerie Irvine
@raulpacheco 400-500 pages per week per seminar about right depending on field @pfandersonMichelle S
@cyberslate @raulpacheco That sure wouldn’t be mathematics or computer science. 😉 Humanities? Sure.P. F. Anderson
@raulpacheco then yes 400 pages right on the money @pfandersonMichelle S
@cyberslate @raulpacheco For seminar, with skimming, superficial reading, well structured articles, fast reader can keep up. IMHO. :)P. F. Anderson
@pfanderson um… Both. Depending how much secondary literature expected. @raulpachecoMichelle S
@cyberslate @raulpacheco 2ndary lit is a good point. In grad school, I always dug into the bibs of required articles.P. F. Anderson
@cyberslate @raulpacheco This says 750 pages/week TOTAL for 3 classes http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~stone/GradSchoolGuide.htmlP. F. Anderson
@cyberslate @raulpacheco "2nd year grad student in humanities PhD. For some courses, reading loads >200 pages/wk." http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?action=printpage;topic=85581.0P. F. Anderson
@pfanderson seems light | grad schools vary greatly in course work and load | PhD level shouldn’t skim rather synthesize @raulpachecoMichelle S
@raulpacheco, it’s not the number of pages but the quality and relevance of the assigned readings.Salvador Espinosa
@raulpacheco if u don’t want to spark a revolution: PhD 200-250; MA 100-125. Also, reco modulate volume based on rhythms of the year/term.Josh Greenberg
@raulpacheco Too much. Assign less but have them read "deeper"; assign reading responses or divide the readings as suggested by @_valerieiJenny Shaw
@raulpacheco Number depends on equation density for me. Also, I’m kinda trying to do research as PhD student, coursework takes a backseat.Sarcozona
We also discussed volume of readings across all levels (undergraduate through graduate).
@raulpacheco as a grad student that would have been overly onerous. An undergrad? No waycaparsons
Not 1st year! I vary for course/year. Increases 100+ level of course. @raulpachecojanniaragon
@raulpacheco I’ve got my 4th years at under 100 pages/week. If I gave them more, no way that they’d read anythingcaparsons
@ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon ultimately reading req’s shld reflect objective. I pref volume for comps, depth for class.Josh Greenberg
During our discussions, PhD student Scott Timke made a good point
@raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon @josh_greenberg, When did a book a week per class become unreasonable?Scott Timcke
To which Professor Josh Greenberg (Carleton University) responded
@ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon a) when unis hiked tuition, reduced funding & drove more students into non-acad labourJosh Greenberg
@ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon b) when grad programs started to fill with students who don’t aspire for jobs in academeJosh Greenberg
@ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon c) it has always been unreasonable – students just say so now instead of grin & bear itJosh Greenberg
Chris Parsons is completing his PhD in Political Science at University of Victoria, and he shared his view as well on this particular point. The discussion on one book a week seemed to spart a lot of responses (including Dr. Lenore Newman, Canada Research Chair in Food Studies at University of the Fraser Valley)
@ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @janniaragon @josh_greenberg I’m from a diff discipline, but 1 book a week seems excessive. We did 2-3/termcaparsons
@josh_greenberg @ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon I expect a lot from my student, but don’t judge by # of pages.Lenore Newman
@josh_greenberg @ScottTimcke @raulpacheco @caparsons @janniaragon Density of readings, importance, relevance more important than # of pages.Lenore Newman
From here, responses included the hashtag #PhDCourseReadingLoad
@raulpacheco @josh_greenberg @caparsons @janniaragon @_valeriei @pfanderson, I will reply using #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
I agree that 1) there is alot of posturing "back in my day" with reading loads & 2) conditions have changed. #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
3) Further, its not about pages, but about quality, the discipline, and objectives #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
But controlling for those factors, I think the generation of new knowledge in new venues plays a role #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
eg, wt a course on modern philosophy, a student can buy a second hand copy of the social contract fairly easily #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
A new book on sound studies will be considerably more expensive. Hence profs likely to assign articles over books #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
However, good articles for undergrads are hard to come by, and are not sufficient, hence more articles required #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
That’s me for the moment. Over and out. #PhDCourseReadingLoadScott Timcke
@ScottTimcke I really like your thoughts on #PhDCourseReadingLoad Thanks for continuing conversationP. F. Anderson
Some great suggestions on how to make reading loads for PhD-level courses more manageable were also shared.
@raulpacheco @jevlloyd if you want to squeeze in that much. Divide it up and have them each make summaries to share.Valerie Irvine
Review syll of colleagues for dept norm, too. @raulpachecojanniaragon
I looked for norm across Canada & then faculty of So Sci at UVic. I def assigned too much prior to this. @raulpachecojanniaragon
What became clear from my request for feedback and the discussion it ensued was how much variation there is (and how little consensus) on how much reading is too much. But one thing is for certain: my colleagues made it clear that regardless of amount of reading, one should make sure that the readings are relevant, dense in content and manageable within a 3-4 courses/term courseload.
@cyberslate @raulpacheco I would read the conversation at the Chronicle link I sent, and inform the decision from that. Not a consensusP. F. Anderson
@cyberslate @raulpacheco That Chronicle forum link was fascinating. Huge differences in what was acceptable reading loads per week.P. F. Anderson
To everyone who participated in the #PhDCourseReadingLoad discussion: THANK YOU!
Mexican elections for governors, President, local and federal deputies were held on July 1st, 2012. For the first time in more than 15 years, I was lucky enough to be in Mexico to be able to vote in this election (because I usually live abroad, I am almost never in the country when federal elections are held, let alone state-level or municipal-level elections). My field of specialization is comparative public policy across North America with a focus on environmental issues, and more specifically, I study water governance, solid waste policy and urban/industrial/regional transformation. Thus, I confess I’m not really a scholar of elections, let alone Mexican domestic politics. With that caveat, here are a couple of thoughts and a question for scholars of Mexican domestic politics and/or electoral geography.
I have always been fascinated by electoral geography. Using geography to further our understanding of voting patterns and outcomes is, to me, one of the best interdisciplinary research methods. If we combine electoral geography with domestic voting behavior analysis (I am going to guess most of the work done here is quantitative) we can discern why voting occurred in one way and not in other.
Here are some (non-scholarly) musings on the 2012 Mexican election. I also have to fully disclose that I am not associated with any Mexican political party, nor do I have any particular leaning. I’m just a scholarly observer (even if Mexican domestic politics isn’t really my field).
I expected PAN to be ousted at the federal level. Anecdotally, almost every Mexican I knew was thoroughly disappointed with PAN and were planning to vote either PRI or PRD. Public’s expectations of democracy and high governmental performance were instead met with an increase in domestic violence and increasing security issues. I am thinking that the Mexican electorate punished PAN for poor performance at the federal level by voting PRI or even PRD (see for example Miguel Mancera’s alleged 65% win in Mexico City)
I expected PAN to be ousted in Leon, Guanajuato (the largest city in the state). Again, I am thinking that the Leon electorate were tired of 24 years of PAN and wanted a change. What I did NOT expect was for the state of Guanajuato to remain PANista despite Leon (the city with largest population numbers at 2.2 million people) voting a PRI female municipal president (a first, actually).
I’m still puzzled by some of the results of the 2012 Mexican elections, but I can foresee a lot of change coming for Mexico.
I first met Dr. Elinor Ostrom when she came to The University of British Columbia as a Visiting Professor and stayed at Green College. While at the time, none of my PhD research really had anything to do with neoinstitutionalism or rational choice theory per se, I knew of her work and read much of her scholarly production because I wrote PhD comprehensive exams in Political Science and Comparative Public Policy. She was invited to speak at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (where I did my PhD) and also gave a few other public lectures, several of them at Green College (where I lived as a graduate student). Dr. Ostrom brought along on her trip her husband, Dr. Vincent Ostrom. After giving a brown-bag lecture, I walked them back to Green College and they graciously offered to buy me lunch.
We spent the next 3 hours discussing neoinstitutionalism, rational choice theory, and which Mexican scholars were doing common pool resource theory (CPR). Elinor (or Lin as most people called her) wanted to connect me with a fantastic Mexican scholar who went to become a very close friend of mine, Dr. Leticia Merino-Perez from the Social Research Institute at UNAM. Lin and Leti had done collaborative work on Mexican forest resources management.
Lin and Vincent were incredibly generous with their time during their visit, we spent breakfasts, lunches and dinners at Green College chatting and they were very sweet to me, teaching me about ways of looking at governing natural resources using robust institutions and I can confidently say that they were the reason, and in particular Lin Ostrom, that much of my scholarly work now uses neoinstitutional theory. I feel this loss as a very personal one as I did have a personal albeit brief connection to the Ostroms, but I can’t help but also share in the collective grief of everybody who knew Lin Ostrom. Her work demonstrated that ordinary folks can and often do build robust norms and rules (institutions) to govern resources in a sustainable manner. I became fascinated by the study of institutions when I met Lin Ostrom, and I hope to carry the torch in the future with my own scholarly work.
Rest in peace, Lin. You made your mark in the world, much more beyond the Nobel Prize. And thank you for your teachings.
Making Contact: A Panel Discussion with Eric M. Johnson and Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD.
May 15th, 2012 6:30-9:00pm.
Science World (Telus World of Science)
1455 Quebec St.
Vancouver, BC Canada
I have given dozens of talks on how academics could/should use social media platforms to advance their research, how my own undergraduate students use Twitter for collaborative projects and I have encouraged scholars to share their research on Twitter using the #MyResearch hashtag. But this is the first time I get to share this with the knowledge mobilization and science reporting community, and I’m thrilled to have been invited by my friend and colleague, Dr. Peter Newbury, to speak about using social media for research, teaching and scholarship advancement. I will be sharing the stage with Eric M. Johnson, a doctoral student at The University of British Columbia and the acclaimed writer behind Primate Dairies. I hope to see many of you there. The event has no cover charge.
From the ScienceOnlineVancouver website event:
Do you have facts that could could clear up confusion or an informed opinion to share? Do you know the question whose answer would help you and others better understand the issue? How do you contribute your knowledge and expertise to your community? Social media is supposed to make it easy but how to you pick between Facebook friends, twitter hashtags, google circles, blog posts and countless other online options?
In the 2nd ScienceOnlineVancouver event on Tuesday, May 15, [updated — it’s on the 15th, not the 17th] you’ll meet people who successfully use social media to communicate with their professional communities, Eric Michael Johnson (@ericmjohnson, primatediaries.com) and Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco, raulpacheco.org) They’ll describe what they do, what works (and what doesn’t.) You’ll have a chance to ask questions and share what you know, whether you’re a professional blogger or just-got-a-twitter-account-now-what-do-I-do?
By popular demand, the event will start at 6:30 pm with a chance to mingle with your friends, new and old and we are investigating ways to have alcohol available. The discussion will begin at 7:00 pm. In accordance with the liquor license, please RSVP for the event, even right up to the last minute.
This month’s raffle: your very own Galileoscope telescope, complete with tripod and carrying case. For the price of a ticket, you could see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter!
All proceeds from drink sales and raffle tickets are used to run ScienceOnlineVancouver events, including materials and the licenses.
I am a Full Professor with the Methods Lab at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) Sede Mexico. My research is interdisciplinary by nature, although I consider myself both a political scientist and human geographer, as those are the two major fields I studied during my doctorate. My research lies at the intersection of […]more →
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