^ Okay Jethro, you've made your point several times, time to move on.
Canadian Politics Placements 2011/12, The Queen's Ascendancy
(64 posts) (1 voice)-
Posted 1 year ago #
-
People familiar with the UofT (sounds like OP is) know that however brave a face UofTers put on this there is already an internal debate in the department and the view among the younger faculty is that the curriculum changes Vipond bragged about in The Comparative Turn book have had the unexpected outcome of handicapping job candidates in Canadian searches. The feeling is that the failures discussed here simply cannot continue for Canada's largest department. The only question now is when they will return to a more Canada-centred graduate curriculum.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^ Sad, if true. Parochialism wins again! Canada continues to imitate the dumbest trends from the south.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"So claiming a weak field because APs get shortlisted is nonsense. "
Um, not sure anyone did this. What someone (you?) did, however, is claim that APs being shortlisted means that the field isn't weak (i.e., "failed searches have involved shortlists with established APs trying to move. Rather than weak candidates").
My question, again, is whether you really think that the decision to interview an AP is uncorrelated with the quality of the rest of the applicant pool. Your point regarding the relative records of APs and ABDs is well taken, and is something that search committees know very well. We know that an AP will have a longer record than an ABD. The fact that ABDs in the Canadian politics field aren't getting a second look actually says something about their quality.
APs apply in every subfield. Given this, there are two states of the world, one in which interviews/offers go to APs and one in which interviews/offers go to ABDs. Which one is more consistent with the claim "ABDs are a weak bunch"? Notice the "consistent with" claim. You know logic as well as I do, so you know what that implies.
Posted 1 year ago # -
What has Canadian politics taught the rest of the discipline? The meaning of "brokerage parties"? How to set up a rolling cross-sectional design survey? How decentralization provides a boundary condition to Duverger's law?
Posted 1 year ago # -
The Victors
http://www.sciencessociales.uottawa.ca/crfpp/fra/presentation.asp?rech=rleger
http://www.emmettmacfarlane.com/
http://www.queensu.ca/politics/graduate/gradstudents/tolley.html
http://www.ufv.ca/politicalscience/Faculty_and_Staff/Faculty_Members/Rita_Dhamoon.htm
http://www.sfu.ca/mpp/about/faculty_and_associates/royce_koop/
http://www.queensu.ca/politics/faculty/postdoc/thomas.html
http://www.mun.ca/posc/people/carter.php
http://www.mta.ca/faculty/socsci/ps_ir/faculty/cbhattacharya.htmlPosted 1 year ago # -
^^^ Does your argument also apply to visiting assistant profs?
Posted 1 year ago # -
I see no evidence whatsoever that Canadian politics searches fail more often than searches in other subfields and that Canadian shortlists contain more APs on average than shortlists in other subfields. Either produce some evidence that isn't extracted from your **** or GTFO, pest.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^ Relax, I was just responding to the poster who claimed that because APs were being shortlisted, this meant that ABDs weren't weak. I'm not the one who claimed that.
Of course, his claim (whether true or not) did nothing to counter the claim that ABDs are weak. That's what was being pointed out.
Posted 1 year ago # -
So what the rate of APs among the "victors"? Adding Matthews we get what, 4 out of 9? I know a bit of the IR market, and I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near that proportion.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^^^^ For such a weak field that's a strong bunch of newly employed people...
Posted 1 year ago # -
I count 4 out of 8. Was Matthews also TT? Then 5 out of 9?
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm not impressed by the direction UofT has taken, but I don't see anything interesting being done by The Victors linked above either. I'm sort of mystified by how boring the Canadian sub-field has become, and it seems wrong to pin the blame on any one department.
Posted 1 year ago # -
When was it not boring? When we were talking about brokerage parties? Or about executive federalism?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Since we're talking about Queen's, I have a question: why did Mendelsohn leave academia? Was it simply that he could make a shitload of money being a consultant?
Posted 1 year ago # -
^^ what sub field do you publish in, assuming you do publish?
Posted 1 year ago # -
*crickets* guess that answers your question
Posted 1 year ago # -
Should ^^ have indicated "^^^" rather than "^^"?
Does ^ normally assume that questions which go unanswered in a space of 17 minutes on PSJR are unanswerable?
And what exactly is the point of these questions from anonymous posters on an anonymous message board anyway?
Posted 1 year ago # -
^^^^^^ here.
In answer to ^^^: I.R.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^^^ has published extensively on PSJR. Also has a co-authored chapter in a co-edited volume forthcoming.
Posted 1 year ago # -
At least there's hope for UofT. OP is right that McGill is clueless.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm sort of mystified by how boring the Canadian sub-field has become
I'm not. Studying one country in isolation is an intellectual dead end, and it's pretty well played out.Posted 1 year ago # -
^ Yeah, you're right. Everything that can be known about Canada already is known.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^ There's plenty left to learn about Canada. The problem is that studying Canada in isolation will likely not lead to discovering anything interesting. Look at the nightmare to our south: Americanists are attracted to excessively fancy methods because they've got very little left to say about content.
Rejecting the comparative turn is the path to an intellectually moribund field. Learn from Americans rather blindly emulating them!
Posted 1 year ago # -
God. The options are not: we should always study Canada in isolation OR we should only study Canada in comparative context. Single case studies remain extremely useful and illuminating. Understanding other jurisdictions is key to truly understanding how many elements of the Canadian system operate. Anyone who shuns either approach is an idiot.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Cool story, bro
Posted 1 year ago # -
Troll failed methods. Should have come to UBC.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"Look at the nightmare to our south: Americanists are attracted to excessively fancy methods because they've got very little left to say about content."
The U.S., because of its size, power, wealth, and unique institutional design, does not lend itself easily to cross-country comparison.
That doesn't mean cross-country comparisons can't be done using the U.S. as a case. But there are plenty of reasons to examine the U.S. on its own.
There are also plenty of reasons to examine Canada on its own. Because of Canada's regional, resource, and linguistic diversity, within-country comparisons can be fruitful.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I also think that the dichotomy "single country study" vs "comparative study" is a little bit off. The best single-country studies speak to larger theoretical debates. So the question isn't just "Do you compare Canada to other countries?"
So for instance, studies of strategic voting in Canada can be interesting because of the leverage it gives us to understand strategic voting more generally. The inter-provincial variation in partisan choices, for instance, makes it a much more interesting case than, say, the US. And that added leverage is what makes the Canadian case interesting to study.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^ You can almost hear the wheels turning...
Posted 1 year ago #