ESEARCH INTO AGRICULTURAL extension has been guided by theories R which either take an individualistic perspective or express social relationships in terms of communication. Such models have been deemed inadequate as they fail to take sufficient account of power relations. Calls for the extension of sustainable agriculture bring this problem to the fore, as the nature of sustainability remains contested and its definition and application are persistent sources of conflict. Meanings of sustainability are negotiated in political arenas and the institutions of everyday life. The outcomes of such contests have real impacts on all people involved in agriculture. While this has been recognized, the relevance of power to the social relations implicated in extension has started to be addressed theoretically. This demands application of concepts which will help to clarify power relationships. Central among those concepts is the notion of interests.While participatory models of agricultural research and extension, including those which acknowledge power relations, have moved extension away from 'top-down' approaches, those so far developed take insufficient account of farmers' interests. This argument is offered on the grounds that extension theory and practice which do not account for the interests of all participants remain unaware of its impacts. Merely giving farmers' perspectives recognition by offering them participation in research and extension will not ensure that their interests are addressed. This failure arises because participation is inherently a political process in which the interests of some participants may be served more readily than others. The concept of extension is itself contested among those who implicitly define the interests of its participants. A model of extension which is effective for both farmers and researchers will only be developed when interests are conceptualized in ways which enable their identification and entry into extension discourse. This paper seeks to provide an approach to 98 Gray, Dunn and Phillips analysing farmers' interests to guide the development of participatory extension practice, based largely on Australian research and the need to foster sustainable agricultural practices. While addressing the specification of the interests of farmers, the paper acknowledges that other parties involved in extension, primarily researchers, extension agents and agents of agribusiness, also have interests in the extension relationship. Extension and powerThe problematic nature of the social relationships implied in extension became apparent to theorists in the 1980s as earlier models were found to be failing to facilitate the rapid diffusion of the innovative products of scientific research. The entry of a diverse range of interest groups into the extension discourse during a period of rapid social and economic change, accompanied by rising awareness of environmental problems, had made the extension relationship more complex than a matter of concern for just farmers, extension agents and...
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Artibus Asiae Publishers is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Artibus Asiae.In the second book of Paradise Lost Milton's Satan struggles through Chaos to reach Earth, 'As when a gryphon through the wilderness Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold'.'Milton found this curious piece of Greek lore about gold-guarding griffins and thieving Arimaspians in the History of Herodotus, who in the middle of the fifth century B. C. mentions it in allusive fashion as something long known. In fact the Arimaspians and the griffins belong to a persistent body of Greek tradition concerning the extreme north or north-east of the world, regarded from Greece, which is better worth examining than it may seem. The search for them has from time to time been carried on by eminent scholars, historians and ethnologists, who have found much of interest. It is an excellent example of the use of fable for discovering unexpected facts of history. Since most of these investigators have written in German, and no full summary of their work has appeared in English,2 the time seems ripe for a short account of the matter as it stands. Herodotus introduces the Arimaspians and griffins into his descriptions of Scythia and the neighbouring countries to the north and east, that is to say of the South Russian or Pontic steppe from the Danube to the Caucasus, and of the remoter regions beyond in Central Russia and Siberia, as vaguely known to theGreek colonists on the northern shores of the Black Sea. He reports that Aristeas, a citizen of Proconnesus on the island now called Marmora, and an epic poet, claimed in his poem that once he became phoibolamptos that is, 'seized or possessed by Phoebus Apollo', and in that state reached the people called Issedones beyond Scythia. Beyond the Issedones lived the Arismaspians, one-eyed men, and beyond these the griffins from whom they snatched the guarded gold. Beyond the griffins lived the Hyperboreans who reached down to the sea. All these, except the Hyperboreans, attacked their southern neighbours. The Arimaspians began by driving the Issedones from their land, the Issedones drove out the Scythians, and the Scythians in turn drove out the Cimmerians from their homes on the coast of the southern sea, that is, the Black Sea.3According to Herodotus Aristeas did not claim to have gone further than the Issedones. These are described as a righteous race who gave their women equal rights, but ate their deceased fathers as an act of piety. They mixed their flesh with that of slaughtered animals at funeral feasts and preserved their skulls, which they gilded, and honoured as sacred objects with gr...
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