Nothing subtle or complicated about what's happening. Did I mention the only refugees we're taking from the entire world are white people from South Africa?

Fantastic work, Xavier!

GitHub - xmarquez/democracyData: Access and manipulate most standard scholarly measures of democracy Access and manipulate most standard scholarly measures of democracy - xmarquez/democracyData

New version of my R package {democracyData} available: github.com/xmarquez/dem...

Comparative Political Studies - Volume 59, Number 6 Table of contents for Comparative Political Studies, 59, 6

The special issue of @cpsjournal.bsky.social “Back from the Brink: Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies”, co-edited by myself and Isabela Mares, was just published. The issue includes 8 articles, many of which set new research agendas. A🧵w/overview 1/10
journals.sagepub.com/toc/CPS/curr...

Is it true that WAPOR is in Mexico City this year? Who all y’all are coming?

I didn’t learn qualitative methods within political science nor within human geography.

I learned qualitative methods from the disciplines of nursing and social work. The University of British Columbia, where I did my PhD, has amazing schools of nursing and of social work.

I read a ton of books and articles and book chapters across multiple disciplines.This doesn’t make me unfocused. It broadens my horizons and enables me to create connections across disparate fields, disciplines and methods.

“Eating in Theory” is a great book. Despite the fact that it’s STS (and I’m not really an STS scholar), I found compelling as someone not only who studies food insecurity but also someone who loves eating. More focused on eating as material accomplishment.

#RPVBooks

10/10

Yes! Though Delpierre does not delve into the interracial dynamics that Rollins does. I need to get Farrell’s book!

Annie! I need both your books YESTERDAY!!!! I’ve been looking forward to your gig work book for a while!

What did you think about it, Gina? It felt… daring. But if someone wants to understand the gendered and racial dynamics of household head and domestic worker interactions this is the book (Alizée’s is also great but she’s definitely white and the racial dimension is absent from her ethnography).

Definitely worth the read, 10/10 recommend.

For whatever reason it took more than 6 months between when I ordered it and when I got it (last night), but I am so glad I waited it out and didn’t cancel my order. This is a book worth reading well before you read Alizeé Delpierre’s (not saying you shouldn’t read AD’s, but read BOTH books).

I think there’s a lot more concern now about doing covert ethnography than there was in 1985 (it’s literally 41 years ago!) but the reflections are there. There was already a discussion being had and scholars in the social sciences were already thinking seriously about the ethics of fieldwork.

1985 is JUST 6 years after the Belmont Report was published. While Rollins is quite clear about her qualms regarding doing a covert ethnography, she also seems clear about how it was necessary to achieve her stated research objectives. Her ethics section is worth reading because of its wording.

Obviously this approach is fraught. If you really want to do ethnographic fieldwork to understand the dynamics between employees and employers within a household, the most workable and effective approach is becoming a worker (or an employer) yourself. This strategy has ethical implications.

Rollins is extremely good at describing her methodological approach. Without calling it an ethnographic study, she reveals that she undertook ethnographic fieldwork, becoming a domestic worker too, across a number of different sites and employers.

#RPVBooks

“Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers” by Judith Rollins, is an ethnographic examination of the domestic worker-employer dynamics. It is a 1985 book so you have to understand that how we saw ethics in fieldwork is very different from the current standards.

Professor Pacheco-Vega's website is one of the best places to access academic writing resources. Highly recommended for early career scholars, and oldtimers like me, too!

a cartoon of lisa simpson says writing is the hardest thing ever ALT: a cartoon of lisa simpson says writing is the hardest thing ever

Writer’s block, for me, is not the result of an absence of ideas or lack of rigorous discipline.

I see writer's block as the accumulation of friction in the processes that connect reading, thinking, and the actual process of putting words into a document.

#AcademicSky #WritingSky

Mike... 🤣

This should have been a #RPVBooks thread but obviously I am de-caffeinated.

Definitely recommend “Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” by Premilla Nadasen.

... so omnipresent! 😩

Very much recommend Nadasen’s book. As they say, shots and chasers: pair it up with @jessicacalarco.com ‘s Holding It Together and with political scientist Joan Tronto’s “Moral Boundaries”.

This point, in particular, is brutal: “The care economy has benefited ideologically as well as monetarily from hue evisceration of the public sector. First, […] sends a message of personal responsibility by criminalizing and stigmatizing people on public assistance”.

On the importance of reading on the same topic across disciplines:

I am currently reading "Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" by Professor Premilla Nadasen (who is a historian).

Nadasen makes important points that echo the work of sociologist Dr. @jessicacalarco.com in "Holding It Together"

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE "Practical Ethnography" by @sladner.bsky.social

I use it to teach Advanced Ethnography, because my basic course is on the foundations, but the advanced one looks at more sophisticated variations of ethnography, like business ethnography or organizational ethnography.

“Any person who keeps working is not a failure. They may not be great writers, but if they apply the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labour, they’ll eventually make some kind of career for themselves as writers.”
— Ray Bradbury

#WritingSky #AcademicSky

a person is writing in a book that says " palace to share the prisoners " ALT: a person is writing in a book that says " palace to share the prisoners "

I am preparing a new workshop: “Writing Even When You Think You Can’t: Overcoming Writer’s Block and Conquering The Dreaded Blank Page”

a cartoon drawing of a person using a laptop with the words write written around them ALT: a cartoon drawing of a person using a laptop with the words write written around them

I love teaching how to write.

I love having written.

While most people think writing comes naturally to me, I find writing quite challenging, but I enjoy the struggle, the friction, the hardship.

The grunt work.

The drafts.

The revision process.

And finally, the feeling of “Submitted”.