I would suggest beginning by problematizing the very terms of your exploration.  What is traditional culture/knowledge?

Article Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development

Article Dismantling the Divide Between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge

Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World

Arturo Escobar, Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9564.html

Diccionario del Desarrollo, Wolfgang Sachs, 1992

http://pratecnet.org/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/pdfs/Diccionariodesarrollo.pdf

Lash, Scott & Jonathan Friedman (Editores). Modernity and identity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992

Pred, Allan & Michael John Watts (Editors). Reworking modernity. Capitalisms and Symbolic discontent, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992

I would question what is meant by 'logic' in the question. Whose logic? Your logic or indigenous people's logic? To begin with, I would encourage you to acquaint yourself with Gadamers concept of 'fusion of horizons' as a way of understanding the 'other'. See for example here: http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/IIA-19/CH2.htm

As for me, the question is so broad I don't know how to even begin to answer. For example are you trying to understand why people heating their homes with peat will buy a mercedes car rather than upgrade their heating source/method?

I can suggest a partial answer from economic perspective. As you know, economists believe that people are fully rational. In reality, they are partially rational.

Traditional cultures are really path dependent; that is why they are different across societies. It means that some random  but important event in the past has influenced further development of a whole society. About economic modelling of path dependency I can recommend you this book: "Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy"by Brian W. Arthur (1994)

F. Engels in "Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State" (on-line here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf ) studies the historical emergence of this phenomena from prehistoric society. This is common that happened in all societies, although forms of family still differ.

Thank you all for your ideas...