Social Constraints in Technology Transfer
The transfer of agricultural technologies is greatly affected and hampered by the social constrains. The social constraints may be classified as follows:
I. Ignorance
- absolute
- knowledge perceived as irrelevant
- no opportunity perceived/ recognized
- no viable ambition or suppressed ambition = Need to achieve
- no problem recognized
- no solution possible to perceived problem
II. Inability
- functional: finance, skills, information
- socio-economic: resources unavailable or inaccessible
- socio-technical (too complex, irrelevant, not suited perceived)
- socio-emotional: within self, in relation to others, interaction of these = tensions, fears, prejudices
III. Social system
- norms, values, culture
- roles and status of the individual
- relationships to other social system
- constraints to provision of awareness, information
- constraints to accuracy, completeness, relevance of information
- personal constraints to intake of information
IV. Social structure
- homophily
- loss of prestige
- victim of criticism
V. Social influence
- compliance
- identification
- internalization
The social constraints have, been diagrammatically shown in Figure. The technology may be treated as inappropriate or irrelevant individual, due to his ignorance about details of the technology and/or financial inability. Ignorance ice and inability thus form a major social / constraint in addition to these, social system, social influence/ and social structure impede the transfer of agricultural technologies to farming communities.
The norms the social system relating to the technology, the roles and, status of the individual within the system, and the relationship of one’s system with other social system may not permit an individual decision-maker to adopt a particular technology. The proposed technical change or technology when confronted by the social influence such as compliance, identification, and internalization tend to be adopted by a potential technology adopter rather very slowly.
The social structure in a system can act as barrier to the transfer of agricultural technologies. In a homophili principle, for example, most individual in a system talk with others who are similar to them a communication structure is thus often created in a system in which homophilous sets of individuals are grouped together in cliques. Consequently in a highly heterophilous situation, as in Bangladesh, technologies tend to diffuse at extremely slower rare. Loss of prestige and victim of criticism lead an individual to reject a particular technology.
In many societies, prestige is measured by two standards: the degree of conformity to accepted standards of behaviour and capital wealth. A wealthy man may be able to experiment with new ideas without endangering his prestige and position. A poorer man, on the other hand, may expose himself to criticism and ridicule from his neighbors.
Social controls are thus very important in determining one’s behaviour. A man’s reputation is derived largely from all the known members or his family, living or dead. If a man is born into a conservative family, he will be conservative because people expect him to be so. Any attempt to escape from this image could meet with resistance mockery and ostracism. Most men, therefore, are content to live their lives confronting to other people’s image in them.
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