Re: [GKD] Integrating Western and Traditional Information Systems

[Daniel Taghioff]

In response to the fascinating thread as below:

Stuart Hawthorne wrote:

> The literature covering the implemention of Western designed information
> systems in developing countries frequently attests to the difficulty of
> matching the world view of the local community with the way knowledge is
> represented in the system. This difficulty arises because the local
> perspective is, or is historically derived from, a community-centered
> approach to information sharing. It is holistic and essentially
> deductive. This contrasts with the inductive, segmented nature of
> Western information systems. While there is much descriptive comment on
> the problems this mismatch causes, little attention has been given to
> identifying the operational differences at the analytical level

John Lawrence wrote:

> Particularly interesting is the effort to understand the differences in
> perceptual organization, and therefore knowledge 'management' at the
> most fundamental levels. Can I ask, have you considered the implications
> for possible education system applications, and e-learning approaches?


The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London is
running an MA and PhD research programme on the Anthropology of Media,
aimed at precisely these sorts of issues. I am enrolled on this
programm for entry 2003, and having read the course materials I can
vouch for its relevance.

http://www2.soas.ac.uk/AnthSoc/MACourses/maanthmed.html

A programme I have no direct experience of but one that seems very
interesting is one at the Institute of Learning Technologies, Columbia
University. They seem to be doing in-depth research on the implications
of ICT for education.  As an educator (Well a TEFL teacher at least) and
someone in this discussion, I can say that the integration of these two
areas of inquiry in a "field" setting is probably key to "development as
capacity building."

http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/about/index.html

Does anyone know of any programmes or institutions similar to these two?
Perhaps we should start a training and resources links site for our
particular field of interest, do any already exist?


Daniel Taghioff




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Re: [GKD] Integrating Western and Traditional Information Systems

[John Lawrence]

This gets at the heart of development efforts to match western
infotechnologies and local social and cultural processes. Particularly
interesting is the effort to understand the differences in perceptual
organization, and therefore knowledge 'management' at the most
fundamental levels. Can I ask, have you considered the implications for
possible education system applications, and e-learning approaches?

Stuart Hawthorne wrote:

> The literature covering the implemention of Western designed information
> systems in developing countries frequently attests to the difficulty of
> matching the world view of the local community with the way knowledge is
> represented in the system. This difficulty arises because the local
> perspective is, or is historically derived from, a community-centered
> approach to information sharing. It is holistic and essentially
> deductive. This contrasts with the inductive, segmented nature of
> Western information systems. While there is much descriptive comment on
> the problems this mismatch causes, little attention has been given to
> identifying the operational differences at the analytical level. Our
> view is that if we can identify the actual processes that occur in the
> community-based information processing system, we may be able to develop
> information systems better suited to the user in the traditional
> community. This will provide the means for the traditional user to
> access indexed information under his own familiar perspective and
> facilitate access by the traditional user to Western datastores. Given
> our backgrounds, our interest lies largely with the traditional
> Melanesian community but have a strong suspicion that there are general
> principles that apply to all community-based (historically oral)
> information systems employing distributed storage. For example, given
> system requirements, it seems determination of relevance has to occur at
> a different, probably later, time in the retrieval process than it does
> in Western systems. The anecdotal evidence points in this direction at
> least.  We would very much like to make contact with anyone working in
> this area or to learn of any related research we may consult.





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