Tittade igenom Laura Naders ”Up the anthropologist” inför doktorandkurs, fann roligt citat.

I sitt bidrag till antologin Re-inventing Anthropology från 1972 utmanar Nader sina antropologi-kolleger; varför skall vi alltid studera koloniala subjekt (tidig antropologi) eller avvikande subkulturer (Chicago-skolans etnografiska studier)? Varför inte rikta undersökningen ”uppåt”, mot diverse maktinstanser? Hon skriver:

’Studying up’ as well as down would lead us to ask many ’common sense’ questions in reverse. […] How can we explain the fantastic resistance to change among those whose options ’appear to be many?’ How has it come to be, we might ask, that anthropologists are more interested in why peasants don’t change than why the auto industry doesn’t innovate […]? The conservatism of such major institutions and bureaucratic organizations probably has wider implications for the species and for theories of change than does the conservatism of the peasantry. (289)

Lägligt att hon tar upp just dessa exempel: Min avhandling handlade om innovation och politik inom bilindustrin, och Lankaprojektet är inne och rotar lite i frågan om innovationsspridning bland bönder. I den Lankaartikel som publiceras i decembernumret av Geografiska Annaler B (ännu inte tillgängligt) kommenterar  Jonas Lindberg och jag den diffusionism som historiskt sett gjort bönders eventuella ”tröghet” till en forskningsfråga:

The diffusionist view encompasses a pro-innovation bias that leads it to underestimate the role of culture, to which can be added two further aspects. For one, imitative currents move in unpredictable ways because they travel over a landscape that is both human and non-human. The case presented above shows that crops and soils play an active role in the material practices of agricultural extension. Thus, it is not only cultural habits that may impede the spread of innovations; nature also exhibits a certain measure of recalcitrance. The issue is further complicated by the fact that innovations are set in motion through certain practices of propagation, which are premised by and configured according to diffusionist tenets.

Hur som helst, postar nog något när artikeln väl är ute.