It should not be understood that the tribes such as Azande, Argonaut, Tellansi, Tiv, Tikopia, or Gond, Santhal and Bhil are still at the age of subsistence economy.
Clifford Geertz has recently declared that the tribals have also crossed the stage of modernity. He very elaborately writes on the post-modernist trends of anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s.
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He has also strongly influenced the prevailing trends in the study of tribals. His approach to tribals is from the perspective of symbolic systems.
He has compared the study of culture with the study of texts, and argues that a cultural system can be ‘read’ in a manner analogous with the reading of a novel. It is in this context that technology is considered to be information technology (IT).
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With the coming of money as a medium of exchange, the tribal traditional economy lost its moral character and gradually disengaged itself from the cultural values which had originally constituted it. Pure market principles of supply and demand replaced the rules of right and wrong as well as distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ values.
With the monetization in operation among the Bhils of western India, the progressive sections now give cash gifts on occasions of death or marriage. Reciprocity is also experienced in the return of these gifts. Thus, the introduction of money has challenged the traditional value hierarchy among the tribals.
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Eriksen, commenting on the African tribes, says that “money may be regarded as a form of information technology money is impersonal and anonymous. It can be accumulated and invested.
It makes communication and exchange on a vast scale possible. It is certainly no coincidence that the spread of the monetary economy has usually been concomitant with the spread of state institutions, literacy and quantified liner time, all of which can be seen as standardizing devices accompanying the transition from small-scale to large-scale integration.”
Perhaps markets are the most vulnerable places to be covered by information technology. Today, the moment a commodity is launched; it is on the website and informs the audiences at the earliest time possible.
Television is the most common and popular mode of information technology. Monetization among tribals has brought them closer to the current market trends. All this is due to information technology.
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There has been some tendency among social anthropologists to deal with technology. They have discussed at length the indigenous knowledge of the tribals in curing ailments, using irrigation facilities and technologically managing animal husbandry issues.
Technology, in a very general meaning of the term, consists of the systematized acquired skills and man-made material implements humans reproduce and apply in their dealings with nature.
The Gonds and Santhals prepare an umbrella of tea leaves to protect themselves from the rains. In the field of irrigation they make small bunds in of the village nallab for irrigating their fields. They have their own herbs which they use for termination of pregnancy. All these are examples of little technologies used by tribals.
Tim In gold has defined technology as a “corpus of culturally transmitted knowledge, expressed in manufacture and use”. He lays stress on its socio-cultural character and links it to the superstructure in a Marxian sense, along with other kinds of culturally transmitted knowledge.
It should also be noted that technology literally means “knowledge about techniques” and, therefore, technology is to techniques what linguistics is to language, for instance, or ethnology to behaviour. In short, technology thus is a theory about techniques, or as we might say, techniques.
Among the tribes, technology is considered to be an ordinary way of life. It forms a legacy which is learnt by the younger generations. For instance, according to this view, technical implements are simply made and put to use. It has very little influence on what people think.
A Bhil manufactures his own plough. He cannot explain the technology behind preparing a plough. He has learnt to do it and he thinks little about the technology. He simply knows the mode.
Similarly, he constructs his own house. He is a novice in constructing a house in terms of archaeology but he knows how to provide ventilators and doors to his house. He has learnt this technology from his forefathers.
Thus, technology has come to the tribals through cultural heritage. Viewed from this perspective, techniques are of paramount importance for culture, and social organization as powerful and autonomous agent that dictates the problems of human social and cultural life. Eriksen has interpreted technology in terms of culture. He says:
Technologies and techniques are cultural products which form part of ongoing processes in society and can, therefore, not be studied separately from those relationships.
Not only techniques shape our relationships but our relationships also shape techniques. The tractor makes sense as a means of production in very different kinds of society and culture in profound ways.
When the tractor is hired by poorer peasants in a village or kinsmen, it establishes a kind of cooperative endeavour. Thus, technology shapes culture or social relationships.
We have no intention to present a portrait of Indian tribes as living isolated from the present trends of globalization, liberalization and privatization. The tribals from the north-east as well as from central India have now accepted money as the state denomination of exchange. Barter and jajmani systems no more rule the market.
On the other hand, it is the market which determines the exchange processes of tribals. It is the new trend of globalization which opens people’s lives to culture and all its creativity and to the flow of ideas and knowledge. But, in this process, there is also a fear, as the Human Development Report, 1999, says:
Poor people and poor countries being pushed to the margin in this proprietary regime controlling the world’s knowledge.