Thread by @raulpacheco

Good morning and happy Monday! I have to finish 2 book chapters and 1 journal article today so I am going to pre-program most of my tweets.

HOWEVER...

There's something I want to talk about that is important both for pre- and post-doctoral students, undergrads and grads alike.

This is something that Dr. Pat Thomson (@thomsonpat) and I have talked about: The Red Thread (or as Dr. @WmGermano suggests, the Throughline).

The Red Thread is (from what I've read everywhere) a Nordic concept. The intellectual trajectory of a paper or a book, usually book.

My Mom is a social scientist (a retired professor of political science and public administration, with a PhD in government). I remember when she used to tell her students: "you need to find the conductive thread ("hilo conductor", in Spanish). I was a chemical engineer, so...

... I was like "well, unless you're talking electricity, I have no idea why you would want a conductive thread". Once I started taking business strategy and later, social science (political science, human geography, history, economics) courses, I realized what she meant).

Professor Thomson wrote a blog post on how the thesis can get coherence through The Red Thread patthomson.net/2018/04/02/the….

Professor Germano did the same in his "From Dissertation to Book" volume raulpacheco.org/2018/04/from-d… (he calls it "The Throughline").

Interestingly, I suspect...

That in addition to Dr. Thomson and Dr. Germano's suggestions on The Red Thread and The Throughline, I could glean some insight as to how OTHER scholars develop their own red threads and throughlines.

I imagine it's a similar process to the one I develop with the GDN.

The Global Dissertation Narrative (GDN) template I created helps my students develop their narrative. raulpacheco.org/2020/01/the-gl…

HOWEVER...

I think that there's value to using a similar exercise to what I've done elsewhere on my blog and draw the Red Threads and Throughlines of

... other books.

There's a number of books that I've read in enough depth that I could quickly glean their Red Threads/Throughlines. I am super, super, super busy this week, but I'm going to try to carve some time to go over those and see if I can offer some pointers.

I am going to aim to offer these generally-applicable pointers for book-manuscript-style dissertation writers, 3-papers thesis writers, undergrad/masters, and post-PhD book writers.

To be honest, I feel that reading Thomson, Germano and Pacheco-Vega would suffice, but...

... it never hurts to have the general patterns drawn out and spelled out as much as possible.

(TO BE CONTINUED).

Ok, this is going to be interesting, writing threads in both English and Spanish (I was going to attempt French too, but I'm too pressed for time so this will have to suffice).

Anyway, remember I have a full page of Reading Strategies? raulpacheco.org/resources/read… well, I have two

... posts on "how to read a single author/multiple authors book" raulpacheco.org/2017/09/strate… and on "how to read an edited volume" raulpacheco.org/2017/09/strate…

Well, a key trick of the research trade, especifically of reading academic books, is knowing where to find information you seek.

So, where are the sources of the Red Thread (Thomson)? Where can I find the Throughline (Germano)? Where is the "conductive thread" (Vega-Lopez, in honor of my mother, who IS also a professor of political science). Anyways, two key initial sources: the table of contents and...

... the introductory chapter.

If you read a book's table of contents and you interpret it the same way you would a research paper outline (key topics I'm going to cover), it should yield The Red Thread/Throughline raulpacheco.org/2018/03/two-me…

Makes sense, right? Let me show you.

My underlying rationale for searching table of contents and introductory chapter (& concluding chapter) is the Rule of Threes in Writing:

a) Tell me what you're going to say (introductory chapter)
b) Say it (full manuscript)
c) Tell me what you said (concluding chapter)

From the above, it should follow that reading a book's table of content, introductory and concluding chapters should give you at the very least AN IDEA of what the Red Thread/Throughline is.

Remember, this is the MAJOR argument. If your book were a fish, the Throughline is...

... the fishbone. If you were to antropomorphize your book, the Throughline or Red Thread is the spine. The one thing keeping everything together, tying everything together.

I'm awake past my bed time and I still want to pre-schedule 10 tweets, so I'm going to leave it at this.

I'll do my best to go through the three books I brought home to show you their Red Threads/Throughlines before heading to campus and after getting some of my own writing done. No promises, though! This thread should at least give you foundations to find Red Threads yourselves

Continuing with my thread in English on the Red Thread/Throughline. I could have tweeted this book in Spanish since 3 of the editors speak and reas that language but I prefer English. This is useful as this book is newly out and I’m finishing a chapter on policy transfer.

This is the table of contents for @OsmanyPorto @ceciliaosoriog @sergemont and Da Silva Leite’s edited volume. Reading the table of contents we can infer that the book is about non-orthodox transfer. Usually we think of policy transfer as from countries from North to South

Osmany, Cecilia, Sergio and Cristina make it clear in their introductory chapter that the book speaks more to the issue of policy export from non-traditional countries (Latin America) to countries of the north or even south-south. THAT is part of the Red Thread, the Throughline.

Luckily, the editors give us the main argument of the book (the Red Thread or Throughline) right in the introductory chapter under (you guessed) the heading: “The main argument” (thanks, y’all!)

This makes my life and yours easier. From the table of contents and introduction

(Side note: oh look! Who blurbed and endorsed this book?)

Not every book is designed in the way Osmany, Cecilia, Sergio and Cristiane designed theirs, making the Red Thread/Throughline very, very, very clearly explicit. Others need you go to on a fishing expedition and read more of the book. But in this case, you can read the intro.

I'll continue this thread with two other examples, but I strongly believe that this particular book is a great example of how you clearly present your Red Thread (your argument) to your reader, even as an edited volume (you should read it too!) crcpress.com/Latin-America-…