Technological Change and its Effect on Traditional Religious Beliefs: The Tiv Experience

Abstract

The research was motivated by the need to review traditional beliefs of the Tiv currently undermined by the significant impact of technological change. The Tiv now put more emphasis on technology and its benefits, resulting in an erosion of traditional values within family and clan structures. The work is based on primary sources, including oral interviews with Tiv in positions of leadership, retired elders and chiefs, as well as average citizens. Secondary sources include materials from available literature, from both methods will emerge historical method. While the phenomenological method of study is employed. Research has uncovered a new religion among the Tiv; having abandoned traditional beliefs connected with witchcraft and sacrifice, the Tiv have enthusiastically embraced new means of production in agriculture, new methods of health care, educational change, developments in transportation, the media, and industry. Hospitals and other public facilities have greatly improved through technology. Abundant harvest have brought new wealth. However, social structures have suffered from increased mobility of people, urbanization and similar new opportunities given with the introduction of technology. The Tiv are now more materialistic and greedy. It is now much easier to approach the Christian God, compared with the traditional high god, Aondo. People know they are created in the image of God. The new Tiv religion is more man-centred, although on the basis of technological change, women and children are as valuable as men, and have the same rights. But the Christian God is not thought to be as demanding as traditional gods and their human representatives. Moral standards are lower; pornography and divorce are now more common. This thesis makes a contribution by uncovering some of the root causes of serious breakdown in Tiv traditional beliefs and social structures during the past decades. By focusing on technology as a crucial factor in these changes, the thesis encourages the molding of an ethics of accountability in accepting change, since change is an inevitable aspect of ongoing development in technology.