Diffusion of knowledge and social mobilization as strategies for the adoption of innovations in the project Maria Camponesa

Abstract

This study is part of the developments of a doctoral research, which was carried out between 2014 and 2015 from interventions made by the Bahia state program on the environmental education and social mobilization for sanitation (Programa de Educação Ambiental e Mobilização Social em Saneamento no Estado da Bahia - PEAMSS Bahia). This program is related to the diffusion of knowledge, innovation, and social mobilization as means for implementing public policies through interventions. The main objective was to report the influence of social mobilization and knowledge diffusion as catalyst mechanisms in intervention projects, whose reference is the Maria Camponesa project, in the municipality of Valença, BA, Brazil. The applied methodology was mainly grounded on the theoretical case study model proposed by Robert K. Yin. The theoretical framework was based on Everett Rogers’s theory of innovation, and on the social mobilization theory of José Bernardo Toro and Nísia Maria Duarte. The preliminary results showed the influence of the social mobilization and the diffusion of knowledge in the adoption of new ideas, as well as the acquisition of skills, emancipation, and attitude change of participants, as well as a visible convergence between the theories of social mobilization and innovation diffusion.