Field methods for assemblage analysis: tracing relations between difference and dominance

This chapter sketches the methodological implications of assemblage thinking, a mode of thought and analytical framework developed by French poststructuralists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. As a non-dualistic technique of thinking, assemblage is especially useful for exploring relationships between the material world and processes of meaning-making. It also refuses to grant a priori explanatory power to particular actors or political economic social structures and thus has been adopted by social researchers as an effective way of avoiding the totalizing and essentializing tendencies of structuralist ontologies. When fully mobilized in research design the focus is on tracing the relationships between what Deleuze and Guattari call the ‘molar’ and the ‘molecular’, or what in diverse economies research might be thought of as dominance and difference. This approach is illustrated through a brief consideration of research on the linkages between Oklahoma’s local food movement and urban redevelopment in Oklahoma City.