The management and preservation of indigenous knowledge in Dlangubo village in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The objectives of this study were to establish various practices of indigenous \nknowledge (IK) commonly used in the Dlangubo village, and methods and tools used \nin managing IK; to determine ownership protocols and what they know about the \nSouth African (SA) intellectual property (IP) laws; to explore the role of libraries and \ninformation and communication technologies (ICTs) in managing IK and, lastly, what \nmodel can be developed for the management of IK in the Dlangubo village, in \nKwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. In order to gain more insight about the \nproblem studied, the socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation \n(SECI) model of knowledge management and the diffusion of innovation (DoI) model \nwere adopted. The SECI model helped in understanding the modes of knowledge \ncreation and transfer that were used in managing IK in the area of study. The DoI \nmodel was important in understanding the perceptions of the community about the \nSouth African intellectual property (IP) laws, the libraries and the ICTs in managing \nIK. \n \nThis study used the constructivist theoretical underpinning and adopted the \nqualitative approach in order to inquire in depth and explore the studied \nphenomenon in the natural setting of the Dlangubo village. This approach allowed \nthe researcher to engage in an in-depth interviewing process with the participants in \norder to explore IK management challenges and then get empirical evidence about \nthe area studied. Flowing from the qualitative approach, the grounded theory (GT) \nwas adopted because it uses the systematic inductive approach to inquiry followed \nby a constant comparison of categories in order to generate theory, which is \ngrounded in data of the sampled participants of the Dlangubo village \n \nThe findings of the study indicated that the practices that were predominantly used in \nthe area of study included agricultural crop farming and livestock keeping, the \ninitiation of girls into adulthood and beadwork. The in-situ preservation strategies \nwere more common than the ex-situ preservation strategies. Most of the respondents \nindicated that they acquired IK through apprenticeship of family line. The majority did \nnot have knowledge or had insufficient knowledge about the South African IP laws. \nIn addition, they were not using the libraries and the ICTs in managing their IK. The \nmodel that was recommended was to have the cultural information centre where \nthey can sit together and share their IK and skills, and market their finished products.
Author: Acquinatta Nomusa Zimu-Biyela
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2756007878