Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 199 Document Number: D09931
Notes:
NCR-90 Collection, From Document D09924, "Department of agricultural journalism University of Wisconsin-Madison: Faculty and graduate student research, 1990". Pages 7-8.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (author)
Format:
Book chapter
Publication Date:
1997
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 148 Document Number: C23709
Notes:
In "Management of Agricultural Research: A Training Manual, Module 8, Research-Extension Linkage." Entire book posted at: http://sadl.uleth.ca/nz/cgi-bin/library? {Click on Agricultural Information Modules and search by book title}, 6 p.
The concept of technology adoption (along with its companions, diffusion and scaling) is commonly used to design development interventions, to frame impact evaluations and to inform decision-making about new investments in development-oriented agricultural research. However, adoption simplifies and mischaracterises what happens during processes of technological change. In all but the very simplest cases, it is likely to be inadequate to capture the complex reconfiguration of social and technical components of a technological practice or system. We review the insights of a large and expanding literature, from various disciplines, which has deepened understanding of technological change as an intricate and complex sociotechnical reconfiguration, situated in time and space. We explain the problems arising from the inappropriate use of adoption as a framing concept and propose an alternative conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating technological change. The new approach breaks down technology change programmes into four aspects: propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses. We begin to sketch out how this new framework could be operationalised.
