Thursday, July 12, 2007

0.5 hours writing, 3.5 hours reading/researching, 0.5 hours emailing

Worked on two of the three regions I'm looking at in the subnational comparison: finished analyzing 1938 census data for Tolima, and went through cites for Santander history to cull the most interesting pieces. On the latter front, the NYPL has an annual state statistical abstract for most of the 1940s, which is just the time period I need. They seemed to have kept pretty decent records; it'll be interesting to see how these compare with what's available for Tolima and Atlantico/Bolivar/Magdalena (whichever of those three I end up picking).

Continued reading in the two books I worked on earlier this week, on militarization in Latin America, and on police reform in the Americas. The whole idea of decentralized and community-based police keeps coming up in the latter, and I'm hoping that as part of this work, I can find a way to comment on those contemporary issues from the historical perspective I'm adapting in looking at early and mid-20th century trends. I'm just leery about putting police control in the hands of politicians.... My argument is that 100 years ago, the choice was between Scylla and Charybdis: militarize the security forces and be susceptible to coup, or politicize them and be susceptible to insurrection - soldiers or politicians in charge. The third option, not really available at the time, is to have citizens in control of the security forces. At some point, I'll need to be able to connect my story to that unexplored/unavailable third option of citizen control of the security forces. That's clearly the hope behind decentralizing police reforms, but my spidey sense continues to tingle about those. We'll see....

Had lunch with a former co-worker who's moving to New York for graduate school next month. She's also been blogging lately, and as you can see here, I'd much rather have her material to work with! It was great to catch up and see someone in a different context after having known them through work.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Chris:

You are making such progress and writing everyday!

I am fascinated by the decentralized police force and imagining how that would look in a 1940s context of the small towns in Tolima and the surrounding rural areas.

It's Friday, as they say in running during when you can see the finish line ... bring it home!

Laura

Laura said...

no during in that last sentence