Wednesday, February 25, 2009

In search of thesis

Okay, enough with the personal posts and back to the usual writings of politics and culture. I need to get my mind back on track to what matters the most to me right now: my academic life and the pursuit of knowledge. Right now I'm in the process of applying to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra since the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang is likely to sponsor me under its Academic Staff Training Scheme (ASTS). The catch is that I'll have to teach at USM for certain number of years after I finish my PhD. My former advisor at the University of Wisconsin, Paul Hutchcroft, is currently the head of the Political Science Department at ANU. He suggested to me last year to consider ANU for my doctoral study and I told him I'd think about it first. It's not that I didn't want to go Australia at that time; I felt that I still had a lot of unfinished business in the US and wanted to stay there for a while longer. Now that most of my business in the US had been accomplished and I'm permanently back in Malaysia I feel the urge of going to the Down Under for my PhD. Like Malaysians would say, tukar angin!

There are at least four reasons for this: first, most Indonesia specialists are based in Australia and only a handful in the US, so Australia is definitely a better choice for me in terms of resources and finding intellectual kindred spirits; second, I don't plan on settling down and getting a university teaching job in the US, which means that I have more flexibility as to where I get my doctorate degree; third, I want to make my mom happy by staying near her since Australia is so much closer to Malaysia and Indonesia than the US - well, duh! - so I can easily fly there for research or if there's a family emergency; and fourth, PhD program in the US takes on the average 6 years to finish, as opposed to 3 years in Australia due to the 2-year mandatory coursework and preliminary exams in the American PhD programs, and at this point in my life I just want to get to the top of the education ladder as soon as possible.

I'm currently stuck at coming up with good research question/puzzle. A good thesis needs to be framed and designed like a puzzle that can only be solved through rigorous field research. So far I have three possible research questions and I might end up using one or combining two of them to form the puzzle of my research.

The first topic is about transitional justice in the post-peace agreement Aceh and what kind legal mechanism and process are being used now to address past human right violations during the decades long conflict between the Indonesian military and the separatist GAM. This topic had been my first choice but after talking to one professor at ANU who has done a lot of work in Aceh there are actually little data or activity on the ground that can be analyzed regarding the transitional justice issue in Aceh.

The second topic is about pesantren education in Indonesia and how it contributes to the political development of its surrounding area, or vice-versa. As we all know, pesantren typically forms the bedrock of the local community, so the question is what kind of influence the ideological bent of a pesantren has on its immediate surroundings, or do the religious and political norms of the local community in fact that influence the ideological makeup of a pesantren?

My third topic, which has now become my topic of choice, concerns about the role of youth wing in a political party acting as the ideological enforcer and the public manifestation of what the political party really stands for. Is the youth wing acting somewhat independently of the party's senior leadership or is there a directive from the top that allows the youth wing to promote a more radical platform of the party as part of the party's multi-pronged message dissemination? In studying the political youth wing I plan to do a comparative study between Malaysia and Indonesia, which will be the exciting part of this research, by looking in the context of race and religion.

The hardest part of writing a thesis is coming up with a good research puzzle that is novel and can positively contribute to the larger body of literature in the field. I remember when it took me more than 1.5 years of retooling and refining before I finally found a decent research puzzle for my Masters thesis. It left me with less than 6 months to write my thesis but I managed to finish and defend it in about 5 months. I almost killed myself during that time but I can still vividly recall the feeling of euphoria and the sheer sense of accomplishment after I successfully defended my thesis in-front of my Masters committee. I'm looking forward to that once-in-a-lifetime feeling again for my PhD dissertation defense. But the first step toward that end-point is coming up with a feasible research question first. At least for now I need one just to get into ANU and once I'm there I can always change or refine it to something better. How I could use an inspiration right now...

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