In 2004, Pachirat conducted undercover fieldwork for nearly six months as a liver hanger, a chute handler, and a quality control worker on the kill floor of an industrialized cattle slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska.  This research is the basis for his book, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (Yale University Press, 2011; paperback, 2013; Korean translation, 2012), a political ethnography of the massive, repetitive killing of animals carried out by a largely immigrant workforce that explores how civilization, violence, and sight are related in surprising and counterintuitive ways.  Pachirat’s writing has been honored by the American Political Science Association's Section on Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, the American Political Science Association's Labor Project, and the American Political Science Association's Working Group on Interpretive Methodologies and Methods.  It has also been the subject of numerous radio shows, academic and popular press reviews, and used as a basis for a graphic arts project and a large-scale sculpture, music, and dance installation.