Our work is never over

Today I finished reading the boring boring boring Roper article that I started on Saturday. (I really should do something about my concentration, motivation, time management, sleeping habits, filing system, caffeine addiction... no maybe not that last one.) Unsurprisingly, it was boring.

It was naive, too. Roper managed to write 20 pages on "business political activity" in New Zealand between 1990 and 2005, yet never once mention political activity outside of the mainstream avenues of publishing and lobbying. He didn't mention donations or agreements or cross-pollination or cronyism. He didn't, therefore, draw any conclusion about the relative usefulness of all these activities in influencing policy directions. So far as I can see he didn't really draw a conclusion at all, beyond saying that his theoretical framework is better than everyone else's and he's sad that more people don't use it.

And that was what I would have written in my journal if I had had space. (Did I mention the journal template just barely allows for 30 words per main point per article?)

This morning I also visited Sandra and was told that the three authors I had already picked out were indeed the correct ones to be reading for an essay on political process theorising. She did suggest The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, too, which was helpful as I'd originally decided to disregard it.

I need to read more, faster. Better, harder and stronger would probably be handy too.