Introduction  1
1. Empiricist Causal Thinking  3
     Empirical Objectivity  4
     Operationalized Concepts  5
     Facts  6
     Theorizing  7
     Explanation  10
     Questioning Empiricism  13
     Ducks, Rabbits, and Paradigms  14
     Alternative Facts  16
     Relativism  17

2. Interpretation and Understanding Meaning  18
     Constitutive Meaning  19
     Subjective Meaning  20
     Use in Practice  22
     Intersubjective Meaning  23
     Participant Know-How  27
     Relation Between Subjective and Intersubjective Meanings  28
     Comparison and Limits  30
     Empathy and Conversation  31
     Comparison with Empiricism  34
     Tree Work  36
     Questioning Interpretive Inquiry  42

3. Critical Theory: Structural Violence and the Critique of Ideology  45
     Structural Violence  46
     Comparison with Empiricist Causal Analysis  47
     Structures and Injustice  49
     Structures of Justice  50
     Ideology  52
     The Critique of Ideology  53
     Everyday Political Ideology  54
     Liberal Democratic Capitalism  56
     Critical Race Theory and Affirmative Action  58
     Is Critical Theory Tyrannical?  60
     Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis  61
     Relation to Interpretive Analysis  63
     Structural Change and Opposition  64
     Politics and Political Analysis  66

4. Discourse Analysis The Genealogical Study of Discursive Power  68
     Discourses  69
     Values  71
     Knowledges  72
     Procedures and Methods  73
     Truths and Truth Power  73
     Disciplining Mechanisms  76
     Subjectivities, Subjects, and Discursive Violence  77
     Deconstruction  80
     Politics of Discourse Analysis  81
     Power  82
     Comparison with Other Approaches  84
     Controversy Over Political Analysis  86

5. Postcolonial Subaltern Studies and Decolonizing Political Analysis  90
     The Subaltern  91
     Paradigmatic Examples  92
     Teaching in Political Analysis  94
     Avoiding Imposition  95
     Catachrestic Analysis  96
     Contemporary Immigration Politics and the Subaltern  97
     September 2021 at the Border  99
     Identifying and Reconstructing the Discursive Erasure  100
     Dwelling Within and Re-narrating Events from the Erasure  104
     Attuning to Traces of Subaltern Voices  104
     Examining the Colonial Conditions of Erasure  109
     Receiving Subaltern Teachings in the Silence of the Erasure  112
     Comparison with Other Approaches  114

Conclusion  120
Index  123