Countdown: 293 days until submission

Ever since I passed my First Exam in January 2006, I have been collecting journal articles and dissertations thaat I thought were relevant to my topics of interest: Social Capital, Asia, Ethnic Lobbies, US Foreign Policy, etc. Once I passed my Second Exam (my proposal was approved), I slowed down on collecting articles and dissertations as I focused on actually doing interviews. Over the past year I have interviewed three types of people: Taiwanese Independence Activists, who may or may not have been associated with the Formosan Association for Public Affairs; People associated with the Gang of Four (Rep. Leach, Rep. Solarz, Sen. Kennedy, Sen. Pell); Academics who study the topics of interest I mentioned above. The problem I have been having is the problem every researcher has: How do you know when you have accumulated enough information from the "right" people, and what constitutes the "right"people? Should one emphasize quantity (interviewing people even if they are only tangentially related to the topic) or quality (people who are directly related to the topic)? My wife has been emphasizing the quantity ever since a friend of mine from the same program (who now teaches as a tenure-track professor in the CUNY system) told me about the 25 people threshold. So, I have been trying to get to that number, regardless of the precise relationship to my topic. However, over this weekend I compiled the dissertations I collected over the past 3 years, and most of them over the past couple weeks. I have found some critical dissertations that now point me in the right direction in terms of quality. Specifically, I found this dissertation: "Transforming National Identity in the Diaspora." It is a collection of biographies of the key Taiwan Independence Activists, including those who were critical in the formation of FAPA, serving as the president of FAPA in the first few years that I am studying. Now I don't have to be blind as I search for interview subjects.

My question, as I have explained it to novices a few times, is this: How did the Taiwan Independence Movement, which is a transnational movement with activists in different parts of the world, manage to create a grassroots lobby in the United States that in a short period of time (10 years) overcame the obstacles of limited financial power and voting power to become the #2 lobby in Congress (after AIPAC, the Jewish American Lobby)? This question is important because the model it represents is becoming very important for people in domestic politics and international relations. People from country A (The Republic of China on Taiwan, in this case) settle in the US (country B), and, after a few decades manage to accumulate enough money and followers to place pressure on the United States Congress to, in turn, place pressure on the government of country A to change in some fundamental way (in this case, Taiwan liberalized politically, ending 4 decades of martial law and no opposition parties). The people leaving are usually exiles who intend to go back to country A once the changes are made, and that is true in this case as well. But the key issue I am examining is: How do these people even get to the point of organizing sufficiently to create a lobby that successfully applies pressure to American leaders? More precisely, why do some groups succeed (Jewish Americans, Cuban Americans, Taiwanese Americans) while others fail? Are there lessons that American-born citizens can learn from this process?

After counting all the pages of 28 dissertations (19 of which are relevant to my topic, the others are written by people I know, like my adviser, and thus serve as models for my dissertation, or written by famous authors) I have calculated that I have 7,893 pages to read. if I read 50 pages per day, I will be finished by January, giving me enough time to use the information to structure my research. So, I am looking at a much smoother path to completion and submission by April 30. That should excite me but, as I have been telling my mother and other people recently, this actually scares me a great deal. First, I am confronted with the probability that no one will read my dissertation unless I publish it as books and journal articles, and, even if I do that, I will never reach the thousands, or millions of people, that I want to reach. Second, I am confronted with the lack of connection between my dissertation topic and any career moves I make. If I had gone to law school, medical school, or business school I know that there would be a direct connection between what I studied and what I will do in my career. That connection seems to be absent in academia. I have never once heard a professor talk about his or her dissertation topic, and I have never seen a CV for a professor that showed a connection between dissertation topic and their job 10, 20, or 30 years later. I want a connection, and I know that will not happen. Finally, and most dreadfully, the structure of academia turns me off. What I want most in a career is to work on creative, collaborative teams, ideally in the same office, or at least in the same general location. The teams should also, ideally, consist of people who understand me as well as I understand them. But academia consists of lone academics who are specialists in their field. I don't want to be a specialist. I want to be on a team that specializes. Teams exist in the sciences, in law firms, in corporations, in sports, and in the military, but not in the social sciences or the humanities. As a result of these three problems, I am leaning more toward creating my own organizations, structured around important causes, using the knowledge I gather from the dissertation writing process, and developing teams that I work with daily.