Liberal Arts Services

New Technologies in Developing Countries

The possible benefits of nanotechnology for developing countries are enormous. In fact, each of the top ten potential applications for nanotechnology, as identified by a panel of 63 nanotechnology experts, would directly contribute to the goals laid out by the United Nations programs for developing countries. However, it is no simple task to bring ‘first world’ technological tools into a ‘third world’ community, particularly one that is not integrated into the larger global market economy. The consequences of bringing new technologies into developing countries, while sometimes positive from an economic standpoint, can also have less positive effects for the preservation of a community’s languages, cultural practices, and, perhaps ironically, quality of life.

The entry of market economies, which depend on the exchange of capital for goods and labor, into a community based on a different kind of economic system is not always negative. For example, potential health benefits include improved nutrition, knowledge about illnesses, medicines, technologies, and greater income, thus making health care and food affordable. Yet market economies can also lead to adverse health effects. They encourage a sedentary lifestyle and high population densities in which hygiene is more difficult to maintain, and, sometimes, they produce income that is used to buy items contributing to poor health, such as tobacco and alcohol. New systems can interact with the existing local economy in various ways, bringing benefits and risks to the existing health and culture of the people.

The establishment of a market economy can also potentially disrupt the main economic and cultural system upon which a community is based. One example is the Southern Kwakiutl’s potlatch tradition. Until the Hudson’s Bay Company established a trading post in 1849 at Fort Rupert, Canada, the potlatch was a local community gathering during which people witnessed status differences between members symbolized by the ownership of “songs, dances, coppers and carvings.” At end of the assembly, gifts were distributed to guests—their value and order according to the guests’ social rank. In other words, the potlatch was a formal means of acting as a collective in addition to symbolically making social status distinctions within that collective.

With the entry of the capitalist market system and market goods, the function of the potlatch was transformed. In addition, the significant depopulation of the Kwakiutl community after the introduction of European diseases resulted in ambiguities with regard to who would occupy status roles. The material wealth that the market system brought was thus used by individuals vying for these roles to hold lavish potlatches. Potlatches were thus transformed from a collective activity to one based on individualistic goals. In 1921, the Canadian government attempted to end the tradition by seizing potlatch goods, enforcing an earlier 1884 ban on the practice. By privileging one system of cultural values over another, the government viewed these events as an obstacle to ‘Kwakiutl progress’. In 1951, the ban was lifted, and the practice could once again be performed in the open although it had by this time changed significantly. While the entry of a new economic system into a community espousing a different set of cultural values may not lead to the complete eradication of local values and practices, change—both positive and negative—is inevitable.