riots and the breakdown of order

Because no one else is saying anything on the internet about the riots in Baltimore (ha), I thought I would fill the void for you.

Coates writes: "When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con." This is basically the same story that people tell about failed states. Robert Bates says:

"Order prevails...when rulers choose to employ the means of coercion to protect the creation of wealth rather than to prey upon it and when private citizens choose to set weapons aside and to devote their time to the production of wealth and to the consumption of leisure. And a state is said to exist when the choices that characterize political order form an equilibrium."

So, lol political economy jargon, but basically two things have to happen for order to break down: the state begins preying on its own citizens, and the citizens revolt. If only the first happens, we might just call it a good, old-fashioned authoritarian regime. If only the second, then it's a revolution, or perhaps civil war. Regarding the first -- the state preying on its citizens -- Tilly (1985) famously describes the blurry line between governments and organized criminal rackets:

"Apologists for particular governments and for government in general commonly argue, precisely, that they offer protection from local and external violence. They claim that the prices they charge barely cover the costs of protection. They call people who complain about the price of protection 'anarchists,' 'subversives,' or both at once. But consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments' provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering."

In the breakdown of order in Baltimore, we see traces of both of these things: unchecked police violence (against taxpaying citizens, lest the protection racket analogy was unclear!), and then, by way of response, civil disorder and destruction of wealth.

Lots of people seem to be arguing about whether the riots "should" be happening or not. That is a vague question, and to make sense of it at all in my pea-brain, I have to break it down into at least three questions:

1. Are the riots understandable? (Can we explain them?)
2. Are the riots justified?
3. Are they likely to be productive or effective? 

My gut responses to those questions, in order, are "yes", "ehhh, don't know, that word makes my brain explode", and "not really."

I find myself really wondering about #3, though. If, rather than producing wealth and consuming leisure, enough people decide to allocate more of their time to arming themselves and destroying wealth -- if enough people, in Coates's words, come out to demonstrate "disrespect for the hollow law and failed order" -- then, one presumes, either the state and its leaders will be forced to reform or we will end up with a failed state (or city). In the US context, fortunately, some kind of reform seems more likely.

So, might the riots be effective? Only if they destroy enough wealth and productivity to force such reforms. It seems that the number of people taking part in the Baltimore riots and the scale of the destruction might not have reached that point yet. But perhaps the threat of violence on such a scale seems a bit more credible this Tuesday morning. And if seemingly "senseless" destruction of wealth can bring about serious change, then (returning to question #2) might the riots eventually be "justified"? For this, I would need to go properly read more Fanon and Arendt and loads of others.

Honestly, I haven't got the faintest clue. And even if there is some positive change on the horizon, I still seem to feel very sad.

P.S. The photo above is the first thing that came up when I did a Google Image search for Baltimore riots. It is from the Baltimore riot of 1861, which you can read about here. Plus ça change... [OK, it is quite reductionist to imply that this riot was similar in any meaningful way to what we are experiencing today, but, you know, some similar themes. Hand wave, hand wave.]
[P.P.S. Some other people have emphasized the valid distinction between violence against property and violence against human life, i.e. MLK Jr. here (h/t Bonnie Washick). I think this is important, and something that is largely black-boxed in the political economy model of state failure.]

on being "in the field" (and that pesky task of rationalizing one's existence)

I have been spending the past six weeks 9,499 miles away from Ann Arbor in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste (East Timor). I have another six weeks to go, so it seemed like a good time to reflect on some of the challenges I am facing as a researcher "in the field." (I put that in quotations because I am lukewarm about the phrase, in part due to its various negative connotations. See for example this recent post on the subject by a political science PhD student doing work in sub-Saharan Africa. My post here is meant to speak to some of these issues of researcher-subject / outsider-insider dynamics that are raised by those who suggest that "fieldwork" is an outdated and potentially harmful concept. Insert the usual disclaimer about how this post is only scratching the surface of points that others have made more thoughtfully elsewhere, and you probably won't ever learn anything from my blog, ever, but hey, you are here anyway so you might as well keep reading.)

Anyway, as an American social science PhD student trying to do dissertation research in Timor, I feel subject to competing expectations:

1. Sample, collect (and eventually analyze) your data in ways that minimize the role of your own subjective biases as a researcher.
2. Convince your (future) audience that you, as a scholar, have some knowledgeable insight into a place or community that your audience does not have.

Maybe it isn't obvious how these expectations are in competition with one another. I find that it becomes especially difficult with one, particular form of qualitative data collection: the semi-structured interview. I'll clarify. First, note that we all experience things subjectively. Everyone is in on the joke that complete objectivity is impossible, so let's just get that over with. Of course, there are ways to minimize (or at least estimate and correct for) ways in which subjectivity (a.k.a. bias) may be influencing our research. With a semi-structured elite interview, this is really hard. For example, what if  we wanted to know whether having a "knowledgeable" interviewer affected an interview subject's responses? (I'll elaborate on "knowledgeable" in a minute but, for now, say someone who has been reading up quite a bit on state revenue mobilization strategies in Timor-Leste interviewing a public finance expert in Timor-Leste, just as a random example.) What if they had been interviewed by someone who was handed the same list of guiding questions for the interview, but who had no knowledge of the topic? This counterfactual is almost always nearly impossible to achieve: you can't go back and interview the same elite twice (within a practical timeframe), and even if you outsource your interviews to local research assistants, for example, they are almost certainly going to be at least as knowledgeable as you.

There is a specific reason I raise the issue of the knowledgeable interviewer. Namely, I think that this is the basic question (or doubt) that floats around in the head of many more quantitatively-oriented (or less human subject data-oriented) scholars that may be the eventual audience for the research: "What if I had gone to do these interviews in East Timor, would the subjects have told me the same thing?" In this sense, your relative knowledge about a place or topic -- a quality that is generally held in positive regard and is used as the main justification for investing in fieldwork in the first place -- may make some people trust your work less, not more.

This is of course why there is a large literature on interviewer effects (and, errr, writing this post is making me realize that I should read more of it). There are ways to address some of these issues in interview question design, subject selection, and in the analysis and presentation of your findings. However, in general, semi-structured interviews are not as popular a form of data collection in comparative politics as they once were. Seemingly "cleaner" methods such as experiments and surveys are far more popular. Other comparativists avoid these problems by foregoing the use of human subject data altogether (a decision that is often motivated by the particular research question they are pursuing). Indeed, my own work will use a combination of human and non-human subject data.  Although I am not an experimenter, I reckon that well-planned experiments do require at least several visits to the field site by the researcher, but perhaps not an extended stay. Surveys can be conducted almost entirely from a distance. (Although, I came into town with a prepared survey instrument, and after two weeks I realized about one-third of the questions I was hoping to ask would be ridiculous or irrelevant. Some of this could have been obviated by more extensive outreach and preparation before I left for Timor, but I promise that I did a fair amount of that, and there really is no substitute for getting to the country, testing out one of your questions on an acquaintance, and being met with a blank stare.) And finally, non-human-subject data is often available electronically and may not require a trip to the research site at all (although, importantly, historical data and archival records are often an exception). Ergo, the decline of extended periods of field research in comparative politics?

So, I don't know if it should be reassuring or worrisome, but I think some of the difficulties I am experiencing are due to an overall uncertain relationship between fieldwork and social science these days. Perhaps less so than before, but it seems that departments still demand comparativists with country (or regional) expertise and knowledge. Presumably this means having spent a fair amount of time there, knowing a local language, having connections with local researchers, and/or being able to teach a class on the country or region. One's value-added is one's knowledge of a region or place that other scholars don't necessarily possess. But in order to make this valuable, one has to translate that knowledge into objective, replicable, unbiased findings. Scholars who are able to conquer both of these beasts are a rare breed worthy, in my opinion, of admiration and emulation.