Please join the Comparative Politics Workshop on Wednesday, November 1st from 4:15-6:15pm at the Political Science Thesis Room (5th floor). Professor Jillian Schwedler (GC) will be presenting her paper, “Encompassing Comparisons of Protests in Jordan.” The paper is attached and the abstract is below. Come to support your peer, engage in a lively discussion, share free wine and snacks, and network with your department.  To download the copy of the paper, click here

Abstract:

In my recent work, I have been particularly interested in comparisons of micro-practices: fine-grained analyses of individual protests utilizing an ethnographic sensibility to bring to light what protesters and security agencies understand to be happening as a protest unfolds.  But analysis at the micro level is not inherently better than any other in producing theoretical insights.  It brings different practices and understandings into view, but necessarily at the expense of insights that might emerge from meso- or macro-level analyses.  One colleague described this analytic problem as the “Google Earth” tradeoff: one can zoom in so close that one can see gum on a sidewalk, but in doing so it becomes easy to miss (or forget) the larger picture.  Every level of zoom in or out brings certain details into focus at the expense of others, with no particular “view” more accurate than another.

But perhaps more importantly, levels of analysis are never entirely separate from each other.  Micro dynamics are always present in the macro, as macro are in the micro, even if only one level at a time can be brought into sharp focus.  Analyses pitched at any level of analysis would do well to identify connections with levels of analysis and, even more than mere consideration, seek to understand their dialectic relationship.  In my current work on protests, I aim to present such an analysis, leveraging ethnographic and micro-level insights to advance our understanding of more macro-level political dynamics, and vice versa.

To wit, I identify competing narratives about the Hashemite regime’s authority and explore how they shape some of the micro-practices of protests, and in turn examine how some of the micro practices of protests help construct narratives about (and challenges to) the Hashemite regime and its authority to rule.