When 1 = 12

1 hour writing, 2.5 hours reading / researching, 2 hours emailing / administrivia, page count = 112

I'm an obsessive travel planner, so I spent some administrivia time today finalizing my itinerary while in Chicago, including, oh yeah, figuring out where I need to be and when, not just whom I'm meeting with. I was also able to set up a phone meeting with one of my committee members for next Friday. Given that she's a historian, this will be very helpful for deciding on fieldwork next month.

On the writing front, I began working on one of the pieces of feedback from my meeting with my advisor: figuring out the story for one state where there's a lot of secondary documentation already in place. In this case, that means Antioquia, the state of which Medellin is the capital (Pet peeve #40: the Pablo Escobar fat suit on Entourage). Working with the wonderful Blood and Fire, as well as the historical accounts of Jorge Orlando Melo, an incredibly sophisticated historian who was until recently the rough equivalent of the Librarian of Congress in Colombia, I'm piecing together the political and military/police power structure that existed in Antioquia during the 1940s and '50s. As my advisor pointed out, there are a lot of moving parts: The president, elected by popular vote, appoints governors, each of whom appoints the state police chief and mayors, the latter of whom appoint local police chiefs.

The more I look into it, the more the state is really the relevant unit of analysis, rather than the town: municipalities are embedded in relationships with the state government that involve wheedling for resources, asking for reinforcements, and currying political favor. What's exciting about that is that it opens up my case study of Colombia into (theoretically) 12-15 case studies of individual states, provinces, and dependencies. Of course, I'll only choose one or two of those, and it's in the spirit of identifying what data I need to make the most informed choice that my advisor suggested starting with one well-documented one.

I don't regret the time I spent making an earlier selection of three states, because it forced me to articulate a number of my assumptions, and I learned a lot about the data available at the state and local level, which can easily translate to another state. Besides, Santander and Tolima are both central to La Violencia, so knowing them better will only help make my account richer.

All right! Time to take this act on the road. Tomorrow I blog from Chicago and the American Political Science Association conference.