September 21, 2009
Political Scientists Get Their Hands Dirty
Scholars in the discipline, taking their cue from anthropologists, try fieldwork
Kent Sievers, The New York Times
An employee washes cow carcasses at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Lexington, Neb.
Enlarge Photo
Kent Sievers, The New York Times
An employee washes cow carcasses at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Lexington, Neb.
Several years ago, Timothy S. Pachirat, then a graduate student in political science at Yale University, decided to write his dissertation on the "politics of sight." Modern societies had blinded themselves to certain social practices, he believed, and he wanted to describe how that myopia was generated.
To prepare for his work, Pachirat spent the usual semesters in political-theory seminars, poring over Hobbes and Foucault. And then he spent five and a half months laboring in a
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