Nicholas Rush Smith

Director, Master’s Program in International Affairs

NAC 4/146B

nsmith3@ccny.cuny.edu

Nicholas Rush Smith

Director of the Master’s Program in International Affairs,
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

Nicholas Rush Smith is Director of the Master’s Program in International Affairs, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York, CUNY and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. His research utilizes qualitative methods to examine how democratic states use violence to produce order and why citizens sometimes use violence to challenge that order.

Based on approximately twenty months of ethnographic and archival research, his first book, Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Oxford University Press, 2019), explored these themes through the lens of crime, policing, and vigilantism in South Africa. The book won the Distinguished Book Award from the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association, was co-winner of the Best Book Award from the African Politics Group of the American Political Science Association, and was named an Honorable Mention for the Charles Taylor Book Award of the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods Related Group of the American Political Science Association.

With Erica S. Simmons, he has also written about the intersection of comparative and ethnographic methods, co-editing Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2021), among other publications. For their work, Simmons and Smith were jointly awarded the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award from the Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Section of the American Political Science Association.

Smith’s work has been published in African Affairs, American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Polity, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, among other outlets. He has won fellowship or grant support from Fulbright Hays, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, among other organizations, and was the first recipient of CCNY’s Colin Powell School Faculty Teaching Award.

Currently, he is working on three book projects. The first examines the politics of police violence in democratic states, focusing on South Africa. The second explores the practice of “shadow work,” like ethnography and espionage, through a family history. The final project, with Erica S. Simmons, reconsiders the goal of generalization in political research.

Education

Ph.D., University of Chicago

M.A., University of Chicago

M.A., George Washington University

B.A., College of William and Mary

Website

www.nicholasrushsmith.com

Publications

Books:

Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.). 2021. Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Research. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2019. Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa. New York: Oxford University Press. (Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics series)

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. Forthcoming. “How Cases Speak to One Another: Using Translation to Rethink Generalization in Political Science Research.” American Political Science Review.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. Forthcoming. “Non-Event? Provisional Notes on The Marikana Massacre as a Moment of Failed Transformation.” 20&21: Revue d’Histoire.
Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2023. “Pluralizing Comparison.” In The Oxford Handbook of Engaged Methodological Pluralism in Political Science, Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Dino P. Christenson, and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman (eds.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2022. “The State as Golem: Police Violence in Democratic South Africa.” Everyday State and Democracy in Africa: Ethnographic Encounters, Wale Adebanwi (ed.). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Blake, Jonathan S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2022. “Identifying Violence: Ethics, Representation, and Politics in Lee Ann Fujii’s Showtime.” Violence: An International Journal 3 (1): 109-113.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2021. “Seen Like a State.” Polity 53 (3): 485-491.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2021. “Comparisons with an Ethnographic Sensibility: Studies of Protest and Vigilantism.” In Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Research. Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith with Lisa Wedeen. 2021. “Theory and Imagination in Comparative Politics: An Interview with Lisa Wedeen.” In Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Research. Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Alan M. Jacobs and Tim Büthe with 48 others. 2021. “The Qualitative Transparency Deliberations: Insights and Implications.” Perspectives on Politics 19 (1): 171-208.
Schwedler, Jillian, Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2021. “Ethnography and Participant Observation: Final Report of QTD Working Group III.3.” Perspectives on Politics.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2020. “Member Checking: Lessons from the Dead.” Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 17-18 (1): 60-65.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2019. “The Case for Comparative Ethnography.” Comparative Politics 51 (3): 341-359.
Simmons, Erica S., Nicholas Rush Smith, and Rachel Schwartz. 2018. “Rethinking Comparison in the Social Sciences.” Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 16 (1): 1-7. (Co-organizer of symposium on “Rethinking Comparison in the Social Sciences.”)
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2017. “The Rule of Rights: Comparative Lessons from Twenty Years of South African Democracy.” Comparative Politics 50 (1): 123-141.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2017. “New Times Demand Old Magic: Necklacing Past and Present.” In Global Lynching and Collective Violence: Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Michael Pfeifer, Ed. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2017. “Comparison with an Ethnographic Sensibility.” PS: Political Science and Politics 50 (1): 126-130.
Slater, Dan and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2016. “The Power of Counterrevolution: Elitist Origins of Political Order in Postcolonial Asia and Africa.” American Journal of Sociology. 121 (5): 1472-1516.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2015. “Rejecting Rights: Vigilantism and Violence in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” African Affairs 114(456): 341-360.

Book Reviews:

Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2021. “’The Terrorist Album: Apartheid’s Insurgents, Collaborators, and the Security Police’ by Jacob Dlamini.” Africa Spectrum 0 (0): 1-3.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2020. “’Township Violence and the End of Apartheid: War on the Reef’ by Gary Kynoch.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 52 (3): 485-86.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2018. “’Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa’ by Rita Kesselring.” Anthropological Quarterly 91 (2): 841-845.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2017. “’Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa’ by Stephanie M. Burchard and ‘The Limits
of Democratic Governance in South Africa’ by Louis A. Picard and Thomas Mogale.” Perspectives on Politics 15 (1): 261-262.

Other Publications

Sinwell, Luke and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2022. “Killing the Collective.” Africa Is a Country. July 20.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2020. “What Thirty Percent Unemployment Looks Like.” Boston Review. May 14.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2019. “Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Democracy in Africa. 20 May. (Invited)
Schwedler, Jillian M., Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2019. “Ethnography and Participant Observation.” American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, Qualitative Transparency Deliberations, Working Group Final Reports, Report III.3 (August 2018).
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2018. “Apartheid.” In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy. Bruce Arrigo, Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2018. “South Africa.” In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy. Bruce Arrigo, Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2015. “The Case for Comparative Ethnography.” Qualitative and Multi-Method Research: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 13 (2): 13-18. (Invited)
Smith, Nicholas Rush. “Beyond Pistorius: The Politics of South African Justice.” African Arguments. September 12, 2014.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. “The Struggle Continues: Mandela and His Legacies.” Five Rupees. July 1, 2013. (Invited)
Smith, Nicholas Rush. “The Wonga Coup: Transparency and Conspiracy in Equatorial Guinea.” CSIS Online Africa Policy Forum. January 23, 2008. (Invited)

Additional Information