Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy

1.5 hours writing, 3 hours reading, 1 hour emailing, 1 hour planning, page count = 130

The tailor's week continues on It Takes a Village. I took the scissors and measuring tape to the methodology chapter and removed the billowy extra cloth of the erstwhile 3-state comparison. Like on those exercise-machine infomercials where they show what a pound of fat physically looks like, I have a trophy/memento mori of my own, a file called "Cut from Dissertation," that's now up to about 19 pages. Which means, given that I was at 142 not so long ago, that I've put back in about 7 new, better pages. So the integration proceeds apace. Tomorrow I move on to the empirical chapters.

In terms of reading, I went back to one of the texts that first got me onto this topic, Fernando Lopez-Alves's State Formation and Democracy in Latin America. Lot of food for thought in there, as well as a few things with which to disagree. His chapter on Colombia covers a lot of ground, synthesizes a good deal of literature, and provides many useful insights. I hadn't read it in many years, so it was good to return to one of the sources of my thinking on this project. (Though in truth it's been more than a decade that I've been trying in one way or another to write about La Violencia....)

Continued planning for my upcoming travels, including Colombia, Princeton (looking a little iffy, depends on who's available), and Berkeley. Lots of frequent-flyer miles to be had!