IK Monitor Articles (8-2)

Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, July 2000

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Column

Mediums and messages: developing database systems for indigenous knowledge

by Landon Myer

Landon Myer is a senior scientist at the South African Medical Research Council and the Africa Centre for Population Studies and Reproductive Health (Wellcome Trust, UK). With a background in socio-cultural anthropology, his research interests are traditional subsistence systems and nutrition, ethnobotany and public health, and the role of local knowledge in the epidemiology of communicable diseases.

As the pressures on traditional and indigenous communities mount, the search for effective forms of documentation to support the conservation and transmission of indigenous knowledge (IK) is becoming increasingly urgent. Fortunately, the emergence of computerized databases for the recording, storage and communication of IK offers exciting possibilities.

Many different approaches to using databases for IK documentation have been developed over the past decade. The range of scientific topics concerned with the documentation of local knowledge is rich and varied, from GIS applications recording the agronomic practices of a single group of subsistence farmers in east Africa, to the sum of all ethnobotanical knowledge associated with a particular cosmopolitan family of useful plants. This growing diversity also represents different attempts to negotiate a series of complex issues pertaining to the documentation of IK. These range from technical issues in creating databases to suit the inherent nature of IK, to ethical issues related to recording and applying locally generated knowledge elsewhere.

Technical formats must combine simplicity of operation with the capacity to disaggregate information in analysis. The software employed must reflect the largely text-based nature of IK - often a problem for traditional database approaches. What is more, it must also reflect the local settings in which IK is used and communicated, which represent a significant aspect of IK for local communities. Unfortunately, the extraction of locally held knowledge often fails to capture such associations, especially when database formats are being used. Databases are largely static platforms for documenting knowledge, whereas IK and its local contexts are both in a constant state of flux.

Computerized IK databases are most easily organized via centralized locations with access to high technology. However, ethical and legal demands associated with intellectual property rights (IPR) require that the creators of such knowledge have final control over the understandings that are recorded. The issues surrounding access to and control over a database also have important scientific implications. Database systems can only be effective in the conservation of IK if they are able to interact with the local communities whose knowledge is being documented: extractive databases which remove knowledge from its changing social and cultural settings are unlikely to promote the continuation of indigenous knowledge systems.

The connectivity afforded by the Internet presents interesting potential solutions to many of these problems. By allowing real-time links between distant locations, a rural community may be able to access, record and alter the local knowledge stored on a server thousands of kilometres away. But there are significant constraints here as well, notably the hurdles surrounding local capacity (both human training and systems infrastructure) which have hindered such attempts to date.

In the design and implementation of databases to document IK, it is impossible to separate the medium from the message. The medium of IK documentation-the technical details of database format and structure-plays an important role in portraying the message involved, i.e., the content of the IK itself, and how it is conserved and used for the welfare of future generations. With this in mind, local communities, researchers, policy makers, and programmers can explore the best approaches to using database systems to document local knowledge. In that process it is important to share our successes, shortcomings, and lessons learned. I hope that a future special issue of the IK&DM can be devoted to the topic of experiences with databases and IK from around the globe.