From Extension to Communication for Innovation 223interventions, and such interventions have consequences, which usually bring
about other communicative interventions.
5 Extension takes place amid other interactions, which indicates that there are
many other interactions going on between people that do not involve exten-
sion and/or change agents, but which are still very relevant to the process.
Farmers in a village, for example, interact a lot with each other, with other
service providers and with community and/or religious leaders, and this is
bound to have an impact on innovation processes.
6 Although communication workers are usually interested, albeit with different
degrees of intensity, in bringing about change and innovation of some kind,
we cannot explain the dynamics of the process by just looking at such inten-
tions. Whenever people interact, multiple goals and intentions play a role.
Change agents too may have other aspirations, some very mundane, that
impinge on the way they go about their work; these may include pleasing their
boss, aquiring social status, enhancing control over farmers, reserving time for
side-line activities, visiting home regularly etc.
7 The statement that extension aims to ‘develop and/or induce’ innovation
emphasizes that we cannot simply look at extension as ‘dissemination of inno-
vations’. Frequently, extension activities are, or need to be, geared towards
designing new innovations. And even if extension activities aim at the ‘diffu-
sion’ of existing innovation packages, this can often not be effective without
including elements of ‘redesign’. The term ‘to induce’ is chosen here to capture
this mixture of dissemination and adaptation. The definition does not further
specify what kind of processes are involved in ‘developing’ and ‘inducing’, thus
leaving space for all sorts of social processes, including social learning, network
building, decision-making, negotiation and human capacity building.
8 The ‘innovations’ that extension seeks to contribute to are regarded as ‘novel
patterns of co-ordination and adjustment between people, technical devices and
natural phenomena’. The latter phrase is used to convey that effective innova-
tions – especially in the field of agriculture and resource management – include
a balanced mixture of social, technical and natural elements and processes.
9 Extension activities are usually legitimized by referring to the need for solving
a problematic situation. Whether or not this problematic situation is resolved,
and to what extent, is of course something that remains to be seen as the proc-
ess unfolds. Hence, the use of the term ‘supposedly’ in the definition.
10 The term ‘supposedly’ is used to point to a different issue as well. Although in
an extension process solutions and innovations are often presented as contrib-
uting to problem solving, this does not mean that they are promoted by exten-
sionists or others solely or mainly for this purpose. In an extension process,
change agents may have various aspirations (see also point 6). Thus they may,
for example, induce Integrated Pest Management innovations mainly in order
to improve their own experience and job opportunities.
11 Finally, the definition mentions ‘multi-actor problematic situations’ (rather than
of problem situations) in order to indicate that the solving of such situations