Traditional knowledge handed down from generation to generation helped to save ancient tribes on India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Natural cataclysms like tsunamis and epidemics raise criti cal questions concerning how best to allocate resources to research and action in order to avoid foreseeable recurrences. Th is pair of news items, following the 26 December 2004 tsunami off the coast of Sumatra that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries, shows contrasting knowledge systems brought to bear in comprehending and constructing the nature of a problem and its response. On one side are decidedly low-tech indigenous knowledge and anthropological research; on the other is capital-intensive, high-tech seismic detection. Perhaps most notable is the almost refl ex endorsement of the latter knowledge system by the most powerful government on the planet, and the complex, expensive, global infrastructure put in place to sustain that system. Th is small example in the sociology of science can be an occasion for refl ecting on the construction and in stitutionalization of knowledge in the HIV epidemic, in parti cular the overwhelming belief in, and institutionalization Abstract