Indigenous Knowledge Systems for Appropriate Technology Development

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) comprises knowledge developed within indigenous societies, independent of, and prior to, the advent of the modern scientiic knowledge system (MSKS). Examples of IKS such as Ayurveda from India and Acupuncture from China are well known. IK covers diverse areas of importance for society, spanning issues concerned with the quality of life -from agriculture and water to health. The IK resident in India and China have high relevance to rural life, especially given the level of engagement with agricultural and health technologies. The goal is to establish a heuristic whereby IK can be reviewed and evaluated within particular contexts to determine if the IKS can lead to the development of appropriate technology (AT) addressing that need sustainably. Although much work on cataloguing and documenting IKS has been completed in these two countries, a paucity of atention has been paid to the scientiic rationale and technological content of these IKS. Evaluation of many indigenous technologies reveal that many of these technologies can be classiied as 'appropriate', focused on basic needs of water, sanitation and agriculture, and many have origins in IKS that survived. Thus, IKS must be validated, exploited and integrated into AT innovation and development.

The Future of Yoruba Indigeneous Knowledge: Acquisition, Preservation and Transmission

“…Terms like "traditional", "local", "community" and "rural people"s knowledge" are used interchangeably with IK. Tharakan (2017) submitted that IK is the sum total of knowledge and skills possessed by people belonging to a particular geographic area, which enables them to benefit from their natural environment. Such knowledge and skills are shared over generations, and each new generation adds and adapts in response to changing circumstances and environmental conditions.…”

Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Ecological Pest Control and Post-Harvest Rice Conservation Techniques: Sustainability Lessons from Baduy Communities

“…Indigenous knowledge (sometimes referred to as traditional knowledge) is therefore understood as a process of social construction developed through the experiences of communities interacting with their surrounding ecosystems on the basis of shared symbolic representations, epistemology, norms, values and practices [12,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. One of the main characteristics of indigenous knowledge is its localisation and its grounding in a particular culture of distinct communities whose members share the worldview that carries this knowledge [21,24]. Indigenous people (who are the depository of indigenous knowledge) can be defined as communities of people living in geographically identifiable areas within modern nation-states whose settlement is often anterior to the formation of the corresponding nation-state and who have maintained their distinct linguistic, cultural, social and organizational characteristics to a large extent [21,22].…”

“…Because its foundational values are based on observation and practice, indigenous knowledge is very dynamic and highly adaptive as it co-evolves with the changing elements of the environment [22,24,26,27]. Members of each new generation adapt the knowledge handed down by their preceding generations by incorporating their own observations and interpretations before transmitting it to the next generation.…”

“…This transmission is usually structured through oral tradition, shared observations, practices and cultural rituals. The conservation and propagation of indigenous knowledge throughout the community is often entrusted to individuals and families who are recognized for this role by community members because of their distinctive skills and competence [22,24].…”

“…It is through these multiple experiments of interplay between society and environment that indigenous knowledge systems have developed diverse structures, complexity, versatility and pragmatism [41]. They encompass knowledge and practices related to agriculture and animal husbandry, hunting, fishing and gathering; struggles against disease, injury and accidents; naming and explaining natural phenomena; and strategies for coping with sizeable changes in their environments [21,22,24,34,42]. They also include types of knowledge about traditional technologies of agriculture, climate, subsistence, midwifery, ethnobotany, traditional ecological knowledge, traditional medicine, celestial navigation, ethno-astronomy and natural disaster risk mitigation [21,24,27].…”