Social and Cultural Contexts

The training and visit method of extension that accompanied the green revolution is, as such, not a bad system of extension, partly because there is room to include social and cultural issues. But whenever this system uses only a technical approach, promoting green revolution farming without considering the ecological, social and cultural context of rural families, the developmental effect is very limited. Or even worse, it makes farmers dependent on the fertiliser... 

In Smits perspective, Walter G. Vincenti, American engineer and historian of engineering, steps forward as a monster adapter. In his What Engineers Know and How They Know It Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (1990), Vincenti tries to cope in a rational and analytical way with the uncertainties, values, interests, and beliefs of the social and cultural context. 

When mentioning the content and research method of context, Andrew Jamision (2009) indicated that the context of engineering includes economic, social, and cultural contexts, and Sylvain Lavelle (2009) pointed out that context may be studied from analytic, phenomenological, and pragmatic perspectives. The Hawthorne experiments do not mean that only humanity or morale is important while context is unimportant for practitioner s activities. From the contextualist point of view, the Hawthorne experiments have two important theoretical implications ... 

Appropriate Technology that is Adapted to the social, political, and cultural Context. 

Focus on Technologies Adapted and Integrated into the Local Social, Political, and Cultural Contexts as well as meeting the Physical Constraints while not Relying on Prolonged Outside Involvement. 

Social impact assessment can be defined as the process of assessing or estimating the social consequences that are likely to follow from specific policy actions or project development, particularly in the context of appropriate national, state, or provincial environmental policy legislation (Vanclay 2003 Burdge 2004). It includes all social and cultural consequences to human populations of any public or private actions that alter the ways in which people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs, and generally cope as members of society... 

In addition, feelings of depression can often be overstated or understated because they reflect the definition and standards of normalcy within an individual s unique social and environmental context. As a first step toward acquiring effective treatment, a clear, concise, psychosocial-criteria-based diagnostic standard must be applied. All diagnostic interpretations must be sensitive to the influence of cultural and stress-related environmental and social factors. 

The term duty in this context refers to more than simply a statement that a given task should be completed. It also encompasses aspects of accoimtabihty. The phrase organisational, social and cultural norms relates to the inherent nature of responsibilities that systems are adapted to fit the culture they operate in, that processes have to work within the social framework of both legal and domain standards. Responsibilities are rarely broken down to individual instructions, as they represent higher level constructs encompassing a remit for initiative. Initiative is boimded by professional conduct, from an organisational perspective as well as the wider social and cultural ones. 

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