Ring tones as social capital

THE BUZZWORD these days in development jargon is "social capital," which is now touted by such agencies as the World Bank as an important key to development.

The term dates back to the 1970s, and is used by anthropologists and sociologists to refer to the social networks as well as norms of obligation and trust. The idea here is that it takes more than financial capital to move a community forward. People need to be convinced to work together, and to pool together knowledge and skills. Without this, all the monetary capital in the world will not be very useful.

My favorite definition of social capital comes from two South African researchers, Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside, who offer this succinct description: "stored trust, understanding and information."

I'm particularly interested in this idea of "stored information." One can imagine a community, or even an entire nation, having a kind of data bank of knowledge and skills which grows with time. All societies have this, but the ways of transmitting this accumulated knowledge will vary, ranging from proverbs and riddles to books and, today, compact discs.

Preserving--and transmitting--knowledge is important because it saves on having to reinvent the wheel. Instead of starting from scratch, you pick up from where previous generations left off, to improve and expand.

The indigenous portions of this social capital are especially important because you have knowledge that evolved in response to local conditions and may therefore be the more appropriate for solving problems.

This is where I have fears about the Philippines. We are already handicapped, compared to many other Asian countries, by having a fairly short history as "the Philippines" and as "Filipinos." Our oldest churches, for example, are less than 400 years. In China, a 400-year-old temple would be considered "new" since "old" means a thousand years or so.

There's also a very more conscious effort, among many other Asian countries, to transmit and accumulate social capital. I once had a tour guide who proudly told me her four-year-old son, who had only started nursery, could recite poems from the Tang dynasty, which goes back a thousand years. This is not surprising. Go into a Chinese bookstore and you will find shelf after shelf of very old books in all kinds of adaptations, including comic-book versions for very young children. Older Chinese, who memorized the poems in their childhood, get the next generation off to an early start by reciting these poems much like they would sing a lullaby.

I don't see enough of that here. We have children's books certainly, and outfits like Aklat Adarna do a good job in weaving in local folk tales. But we need a more sustained effort to propagate older traditions.

This is not a matter of nostalgia. Having links to the past makes us appreciate ourselves more, and helps to wean us from our over-dependence on America and the West. Just look at the use of medicinal plants as an example. We buy up all kinds of imported "natural products" but fail to develop our own, because there hasn't been enough interest in documenting and developing local plants, or traditional medicine in general.

There are so many channels for accumulating social capital. I know this will sound almost strange, but even ring tones can be one such venue. Look at Globe and Smart's available ring tones for download and you'll find everything from the Beatles to Eminem--everything foreign, that is. There are a few contemporary Filipino tunes but none of the older Filipino songs. A few months back, when Lucio San Pedro passed away, I realized you couldn't get his "Ugoy sa Duyan" as a ring tone. No wonder one TV commentator, attempting a eulogy to this great composer, referred to his piece as "Unggoy sa Duyan.''

I checked around at UP and found a musical score for the song, and then converted the notes into a ring tone. Since then I've shared it with friends, usually people who hear my phone ringing and recognize the tune. That recognition is at least a consolation. Even more encouraging is that some of them tell me their teenage children have also requested the ring tone.

I'd like to think that's one way of contributing to social capital, not so much a bunch of musical notes than a sense of pride in our own culture. Note, too, that there's a political angle to "Ugoy"--If people ask, you should explain it was composed during the Japanese occupation, the plaintive lullaby-like tune being a metaphor for a nation in distress.

There are many other examples of lost opportunities for passing on social capital. I particularly like the way Indonesians tap older terms to describe modern technologies. A phone booth is a "wartel." If you're looking for an Internet cafe, look for "warnet." The terms are hybrids: "warung telefon" and "warung Internet," warung being the equivalent of our kubo or hut.

Last year, taking one of their commuter trains, I was intrigued by vendors hawking, "sarong remote, sarong remote." No one seemed to be peddling the cloth wraparounds one associates with sarong. It turned out a sarong remote was a case for the remote control unit. I presume they now have sarong mobile.

Indonesia's phone cards come in a wide variety, most of which are colorful designs adapted from Indonesian arts and crafts. In contrast, Philippine phone cards feature basketball players, movie stars, Winnie the Pooh or, worse, drab company logos.

Our much-touted artistic flair is, unfortunately, mainly imitative, and this lack of originality spills over into our political culture and our economic system. We consume or ape other societies' creations and stifle local initiatives. Building social capital is not a matter of stagnating and living in the past. It's harnessing the creativity and imagination of past generations so we can catapult ourselves into an exciting future.