Category: Daily updates

Despite still not being at 100% physically or mentally, I am working through a four-step process for getting through all dissertation-related to-do lists, including emails to self, project tracking spreadsheets, and tasks written on physical notecards:

1. Is there anything essential to successfully defending the dissertation still unfinished?
2. Create final MS Word version for the LaTeX conversion. Accept all tracked changes.
3. Convert Word manuscript into LaTeX, including complete footnotes.
4. Re-write the final ten pages of the conclusion to better serve as a summary of the overall argument and statement about the work’s contribution to the literature.

The target date for the LaTeX version, ready for external examiners, and the new closing pages is the end of August.

This weekend I have been working through a complete draft of my dissertation, with two tasks in mind. Now that the big pieces are in place, I can work on making sure the whole thing is as well-written as possible and flows smoothly. Also, I am incorporating comments from my third committee member on chapters 2-4, most of which are either requests for more substantiation, objections to excessive substantiation, and requests for clearer storytelling.

The aim is to have this next draft finished tomorrow, essentially completing the project of having a draft ready for the internal external examiner by the end of July.

I haven’t done much of anything lately, aside from the bare necessities of life, other than work toward a version of my dissertation that will be ready for the external examiners.

It has been very hard for me not to have final control over the document, which I have had in every other context since leaving the government.

I suppose the PhD dissertation is the pinacle of scrutiny for a piece of writing — totally different from all the research papers I have written during the program, which just get a grade and some comments from one person. It’s weird for me to have authorship and responsibility for the content of a document, but not the final say about what I can actually put in it and how. I know this is all to make it conform to the norms and standards of a particular and esoteric style of writing, but it’s still a command structure that I keep grating against.

No doubt, the way I keep bumping up against this approach partly explains the delays and frustration on all sides.

I am still fighting toward a complete draft of my dissertation, to go to the external examiners by the end of the month.

The three central chapters — political opportunity, mobilizing structures, and repertoires — have gone to my 3rd committee member, but the other two don’t want to share his comments until we have finished going back and forth on the introduction and conclusion.

I sent a revised conclusion on Monday and am working on the latest comments on the introduction before I switch back. Today I went to the libraries on campus to have another look at Jennifer Hadden’s Networks in Contention, which we are using to situate the project in the scholarly literature.

The next version of the introduction is due at the end of the day tomorrow.

They’re not 100% finished, but tonight I was able to send 2 of my 4 core chapters to my third committee member.

Some things which I am still looking for more evidence about:

• The salience of climate change as a political issue had risen before the divestment movement began in 2012
• Climate change is especially salient to young people
• 350.org encouraged campus fossil fuel divestment campaigns to use informal, non-hierarchical forms of organizing

I am working on incorporating corrections to chapter 2/4 (on mobilizing structures) within the next day or so. Then I can move on to wrapping up chapter 4/4 (framing) with more rounds of comments and changes with committee members. Then I can re-write the introduction and conclusion, fill in any remaining important gaps, and get the whole dissertation to the internal external and external external examiners.

Four substantive chapters make up the argument of my dissertation, covering metaphors or categories from the academic literature on contentious politics: the political opportunity structure where activists develop approaches to advance their goals; the mobilizing structures they use to choose priorities and make decisions; the repertoires of contentious actions they perform; and the framing which comprises their world view and theory of how to achieve political change.

I have written many versions of each, in drafts going back for at least a couple of years now. Continuous interaction with my advisory committee is making them more concise and focused on defending specific claims.

I had a fourth version (v4) of the thesis a couple of years ago, but it was an intolerable 700 pages and my committee members had many other comments on what was important to conclude and how to structure the argument.

A few months ago I had a sixth version (v6) available for the committee (the fifth was clean sheet rewrite which I never got far into). It was cut to about 50 pages per chapter to leave room in a standard 300 page dissertation for an introduction and conclusion.

Since then and in close consultation with my committee I have been revising the introductions to each substantive chapter — which lay out a structure and argument and explain how the content of the chapter relates to the through story of the dissertation. With a round or two of meetings or comments we revise an introduction, then I redraft the rest of the chapter based on the largely-formed raw material of v6.

Tonight I sent the revised version of the repertoires chapter, which along with political opportunity and mobilizing structures (which they have already seen and told me to proceed from) will comprise 3/4 of the main text.

I have been very grateful for an enormous amount of sympathy, aid, and support from family members and friends. The whole PhD experience has been shaped by the people who I have been fortunate enough to be close with over these years. Your aid has been indispensable throughout this process of coming up with a book-size idea… and then wrenching it out of my brain as an actual book.