Challenging the populist perspective : rural peoples knowledge, agricultural research and extension practice.

The authors view knowledge as a social process, and knowledge systems in terms of multiple actors and networks through which the communication and negotiation of information takes place, and not as unitary cohesive structures. The purpose of this paper is to challenge æFarmer FirstÆ unitary populist approaches to knowledge to reassess how people in different agroecological and sociocultural contexts understand and deal with research and extension processes, engage each other in different endeavours, and assert power relations for social and political purposes.