Elihu Katz, Martin Levin and Herbert Hamilton, “Traditions of Research on the Diffusion of Innovation,” American Sociological Review 28, no. 2 (April 1963), 237-252.

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The science of colonialism, camouflaged as “diffusion.”

Was a diffusion study performed on the Green Revolution in Mexico?

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Notes

• 237 – “The process of diffusion is defined as the (1) acceptance, (2) over time, (3) of some specific item — an idea or practice, (4) by individuals, groups or other adopting units, linked to (5) specific channels of communication, (6) to a social structure, and (7) to a given system of values, or culture. The elements of this definition are treated as an ‘accounting scheme’ in terms of which diffusion studies in the fields of sociology, anthropology, rural sociology, mass communications, etc., are reviewed and problems of research design are explicated.”
• “In sharp contrast to the European diffusionists, however, the Americans avoided grand, all-embracing theories of cultural development. Instead they worked modestly, investigating rather specific items — elements of the maize-complex, the horse-complex, the sundance — tracing their distribution in space and, insofar as possible, in time.”
• 238 – “Influenced in part by these anthropologists, several empirically minded sociologists of the 20’s and 30’s also demonstrated an interest in diffusion. . . . The guiding theoretical concerns had to do with the influence of the metropolis on its satellites, the effectiveness of natural and legal boundaries as barriers to diffusion, the flow of innovation from region to region across the country, as well as the hypothesis of a ‘concentric circle’ pattern of diffusion which was shared with the anthropologists. The underlying assumption was always that informal communication among adopters was the key to diffusion.”
• “Like sociology, anthropology has also experienced something of a return to some of the interests of the more sober schools of diffusion, as a by-product of the current effort to evaluate the progress of the varied programs for planned change in underdeveloped areas of the world.”
• 240 – “(1) Acceptance. Acceptance is the dependent variable in most studies of diffusion though, strictly speaking it is time-of-acceptance that is really of interest. Ideally, in other words, diffusion studies seek to classify acceptors in terms of the timing of their acceptance of an item or to compare the relative rate of acceptance in one community with another. More often than not, however, information about time is lacking and, in stead, one learns — for a given point in time — which individuals have and have not accepted an innovation or what proportion of community members in different communities have accepted.”
  • Is there an assumption here of the inherent virtue of acceptance. Is diffusion studies disinterestedly attempting to understand diffusion, or is it attempting to promote it?

 

• 241 – “Indeed, writing in a very similar vein, Gabriel Tarde — the social theorist of diffusion par excellence — suggested that ‘inner’ changes precede ‘outer’ changes in the sense that the diffusion of an idea precedes the diffusion of the tangible manifestation of that idea or, in other words, that there is a ‘material lag’ rather than a ‘cultural lag’ in the transfer of items across societal boundaries.”

 

• (2) Time. If any one of the elements may be said ot be more characteristic of the diffusion process than the others, it is time. It is the element of time that differentiates the study of diffusion both from the study of mass communication ‘campaigns’ with their assumed immediacy of impact and from traditional distributional studies. Diffusion takes time; for example, it took ten years for hybrid corn — an unusually successful innovation — to reach near-complete acceptance in Iowa communities. Nevertheless, there are very few studies, so far, that have taken systematic account of time in the study of diffusion.”
• 242-3 – “Time is a crucial ingredient in the diffusion process, however, not simply because it enables the researcher to identify the characteristics of early-adopting individuals or to establish the direction of the flow of influence. It is also important because it provides a basis for the charting of diffusion curves, thus making possible the development of mathematical descriptions of variations in the diffusion process. Time, and the number of adopters at a given time, are continuous and easily quantified variables; hence, the study of diffusion is one of the areas of social science which lends itself immediately to the construction of mathematical models. For example, one can construct theoretical models of the diffusion process given certain assumption and compare the results with those actually observed in the real world. On the basis of such a comparison, one can infer whether a given item is ‘contagious’ or not, that is, whether the item spread as a function of the extent of previous adoptions or the character of contracts with previous adopters.”
  • THE SCIENCE OF COLONIALISM

 

 

• 243 – “Hagerstrand, a geographer, was able to demonstrate that the most probable adopter of a new farm practice is the farmer living in the vicinity of someone who has just adopted it; and on the macro-level an innovation spreads from primary centers until the original source of influence is exhausted, whereupon some new center springs up.”
• (3) A Specific Item. The discussion of acceptance has already made clear part of the problem of specifying the particular item under study. Obviously, one would like to ascertain whether the meaning of a given item for one individual, or for one society, is the same as it is for another. In a related sense, one would also like to know whether or not a given item is part of a larger ‘complex’ of items to which it adheres. On the other hand, this does not preclude — as some people seem to think — the legitimacy of studying the diffusion of an isolated item, concentrating on form alone regardless of possible ‘adhesions’ and regardless of possible variations in function.”

 

• “The major problem of specifying the item in diffusion research derives from these considerations. It is the problem of how to classify items so that the results obtained are generalizable to other items. This problem is not unique to diffusion research, of course, but it is perhaps particularly obvious in this context. Suppose one studies the diffusion of hybrid corn, or of fluoridation, or of 2-4-D weed spray. Unless some scheme of classification exists which would make it possible to say that a given new item is rather more like a 2-4-D weed spray than it is like hybrid corn, each study simply becomes a discrete case which cannot be generalized.”

 

• 244 – “(4) Units of Adoption. Another way in which items can be usefully classified is in terms of the unites of adoption for which they are intended. Most studies in sociology, rural sociology and marketing have considered only consumer-type items, those intended for adoption by an individual. But some innovations are intended for —  indeed, the may ‘require’ — groups . . .. And among such group-oriented innovations, a further distinction seems useful. There are items which require collective adoptions but permit an given individual to adopt or not . . .; there are other items, however, where the group adopts as a single unit leaving no room for individual options.”
• 245 – “(5) Channels. So far, almost nothing has been said about the channels which transmit information and influence concerning an innovation.”
• “This contrasts sharply with the rural sociologists who have long been aware — though they have not formulated it systematically until rather recently — that there is a ‘two-step flow’ from the county agent to an influential farmer and thence to other farms.”
• 246 – “More recent anthropological studies of acculturation of technical assistance campaigns have given close attention to the character of the contacts between donor and recipient societies, a subject to which we shall return in the section on social structure below.”
• 247 – “In short, what is needed is a wedding of studies of the channels of decision-making and the social-structural approach to the study of diffusion so that influence and innovation can be traced as to how they make their way into a social structure from ‘outside’ and as they diffuse through the networks of communication ‘inside.’”
• “(6) Social Structure. From the point of view of diffusion research, then, the social structure functions in several different ways. First of all, it constitutes a set of boundaries within which items diffuse. Secondly, as has already been demonstrated, the social structure describes the major channels of person-to-person communication through which diffusion flows. Additionally, social structure has to do with the distribution and differentiation of statuses and roles and the characteristic patterns of interaction among the occupants of varying positions.”
• 249 – “(7) Value Systems. Social structures function, too, as anchorages for shared attitudes and values or, in other words, for culture, by the same token, role are anchorages for certain individual differences in outlook and personality, though roles are not the only factor associated with personality. Attitudes, values and personality represent one of the major sets of variables that have been related to the acceptance of innovation and, if we consider them both at the level of the individual and of the group, it becomes possible to point out some interesting parallels between ostensibly unrelated traditions of research.”
• 249-50 – “The central idea is that of ‘compatability’ [sic] or ‘fit’ between the culture of a group or the personality of the individual and the elements of a proposed innovation.”
• 250 – “Furthermore, resistance to proposed innovations as well as acceptance has often been explained in terms of this conception; in such cases, of course, the emphasis is upon the incompatibility between the receiving culture and the innovation.”
• 251 – “Indeed, it may be said that this entire line of work requires that a distinction be made between the potential adopter’s perception of the compatibility of an item and some objective evaluation of tis compatibility, particularly over a longer period. This distinction parallels, to some extent, the earlier allusions to the difference between the first use of an item and continued use. The item may be perceived as attractive to begin with, but experience with the item may involve unanticipated consequences which prove the longer-run incompatibility.”
  • How does this relate to initial adoption of Green Revolution programs, soured by the eventual discovery of their unintended deleterious environmental and economic side effects?
• “Thus, there is a set of ideas, both on the group and on the individual level, which would seem to have more to do with a general orientation toward innovation than with the specific compatibility between certain innovations and certain values. Rural sociologists have conducted several studies of variations in ethnic attitudes toward innovation. On the individual level, too, early vs. late adopters, or adopters vs. non-adopters, have been studied in terms of orientations such as sacred-spiritual, scientific-traditional, cosmopolitan-local and the like.”