| Abstract: |
The concept of technology becomes useful only when its tacit preconceptions are unpacked. Linked with the term in Western discourse are two poles of mythic thinking: technological determinism and technological somnambulism. The former depicts technology as the cause of social formations
the latter denies a causal link. Both, however, disguise the social choices and social relations that figure in any technological system. To counter such notions, technology is redefined here as a total social phenomenon in the sense used by Mauss
it is simultaneously material, social and symbolic. To create and use a technology, then, is to humanise nature
it is to express a social vision, create a powerful symbol and engage ouselves in a form of life. The study of technology, therefore, is well suited to the interpretive tools of symbolic anthropology. This point is illustrated in a brief analysis of Sri Lanka's irrigation-based colonisation schemes.
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