Ballantyne discusses how knowledge about colonialism has moved away from being mainly the concern of economists and historians to becoming part of the works of anthropologists, sociologists, and others in the humanities. In this context, the role of culture increasingly occupies an important place in colonial and post-colonial studies. Ballantyne identifies the work of Edward Said on Orientalism as pivotal in considering knowledge as a form of power. Both Michel Foucault and Edward Said ushered in colonial studies the need to study the subaltern. No longer researchers of colonialism focused on the role of elites, but increasingly took the experiences of the marginalized into account in order to understand forms of resistance, or power from below.