CRITICAL ANNOTATIONS ABOUT DIFFUSION OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE IDEOLOGY OF MODERNIZATION

Abstract

A series of critical annotations concerning the current concept of diffusion of technology in rural areas were brought together. Some of the insufficiencies and distortions introduced by the application of the conventional communications research standard, in which questions of persuasion and reception are favored and the conditions of the creation and use of the techniques are not questioned, were emphasized. Various criticisms were made of the modernization principle underlying the extension conception referred to. In particular, its insufficiency from the viewpoint of ecological consciousness, its analytical shortcomings and its normative bias, prejudicial to the neutralism and to the objectivity of scientific investigation. Some directives were pointed out for a different conception in which the questions of dissemination would be more closely related to the creation, to the capacity of knowledge, to popular participation and to the social, cultural and ecological conditions of the context.