| Abstract: | This paper has two purposes: To report the findings of a study of ethnic differences in cognition in a rural West Sumatran area; and to demonstrate the importance of ethnicity—in at least some contexts—for tailoring agricultural research to farmers' needs. A cognitive mapping technique, called a Galileo, was used to measure people's views of soil and its relation to people among three Indonesian ethnic groups living in the same area. Findings from participant observation and from collaborative agricultural fieldwork with farmers of all three ethnic groups are used to evaluate and interpret the Galileo results.Carol J. Pierce Colfer is currently Associate Professor at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman. She is an anthropologist who served first as the farming systems researcher, and later as Team Leader of the Tropsoils-Indonesia project in Sitiung, with the University of Hawaii.Barbara Newton is Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii, West Oahu. She has had extensive experience with Galileo research and analysis. |
