Conclusion: Getting It All Together

Abstract

It is not the purpose of this chapter to summarise previous discussions or information and it must be accepted that any single attempt to contribute to knowledge and understanding cannot attend to all the questions, or indeed provide all the answers, which the hopeful reader might expect. Writing in 1964, Krugman noted that,

in fact, the field of adoption seems now to be so characterised by outspokenness, rapid growth and change that new programmes are in existence before old ones have been evaluated; or that while we are engrossed in the struggle to achieve change it has occurred almost without our awareness … we can anticipate that diversity of opinion, variation in theoretical approaches and action programmes, and a high level of community interest will continue to characterise this field.

(Krugman, 1964, p. 268)

To be sure, an ordinary passer-by would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince