AO: This group thinks of how to move away from connections as understood in terms of the functional requirements of capitalism or an integrated world system. They note: “that is precisely how one should not be trying to understand phenomena of connection. Localities—“places,” as geographers call them— are sui generis; some of them are more powerful than others and have the ability to tie the others to them—and some- times to remake the others—in ways the less powerful have little choice over. What are those ways that powerful places have at their disposal, and how do less powerful places re- spond? How do less powerful places get caught up with the more powerful places to begin with?” (399).
AO: The editors argue that counter-experts at the level of the organization recognize how power works - not as brute force but by establishing what counts as a legitimate statement.
AO: The analysts argue that double binds are created and sustained by work within organizations. They define “organization” both as a social body in which intersubjective exchange is materialized and often routinized but other “organizations” can be broad discourses like feminism that constrain and oblige from afar. Such organizational affiliation produces multiple connections and demands.
AO: Analysts argue that socializing and writing in different forms can become a way of both recognizing and reconfiguring how power operates.
The sponsor, Alexander, was obviously financially powerful. She had to be pleased with the project in order to ensure it would continue to receive funding. Grinnell, the scientist, was the highest scientific authority, having the final say about the quality of the data as well as its ultimate significance for scientific theory. The collectors and trappers were powerful in that, without them, the necessary store of data would not be collected. And the UC administrators were powerful in the sense of providing the entire project a sense of institutional value/social significance. They also offered a certain level of assurance that their work would be preserved and utilized well into the future.
AO: The analysts note that increasingly, the only way to identify whether someone is a psychologist or economist is to look at their institutional affiliation.
AO: The authors appear to grow out of a dependency theory mindset arguing: “A closer analysis of the collaborative patterns of individual countries also points to relations of intellectual dependence: One country might be an intellectual center while others are more or less dependent on it.” However, they fail to do an in-depth analysis of micro or macro power relations.
AO: Western funding organizations are said to shape collaborations because they often give funding (and power) to western researchers.