The Capability Approach, Technology and Design

The Capability Approach, Technology and Design PDF Author: Ilse Oosterlaken
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940073879X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The capability approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen places human capabilities at the centre stage of discussions about justice, equality, development and the quality of life. It rejects too much emphasis on mere preference satisfaction or resource provision and highlights the importance of human agency and freedom. This approach has already significantly influenced different fields of application, such as economics and development studies. Only recently have scholars started to explore its relevance for and application to the area of technology and design, which can be crucial factors in the expansion of human capabilities. How does technology influence human capabilities? What difference could a capability approach make to policies and practices of applying ICT in development processes in the South? How can we criticize and improve the design of technology from the perspective of the capability approach? The authors of this volume explore the implications of the capability approach for technology & design and together create the first volume on this emerging topic.

The Capability Approach, Technology and Design

The Capability Approach, Technology and Design PDF Author: Ilse Oosterlaken
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940073879X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
The capability approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen places human capabilities at the centre stage of discussions about justice, equality, development and the quality of life. It rejects too much emphasis on mere preference satisfaction or resource provision and highlights the importance of human agency and freedom. This approach has already significantly influenced different fields of application, such as economics and development studies. Only recently have scholars started to explore its relevance for and application to the area of technology and design, which can be crucial factors in the expansion of human capabilities. How does technology influence human capabilities? What difference could a capability approach make to policies and practices of applying ICT in development processes in the South? How can we criticize and improve the design of technology from the perspective of the capability approach? The authors of this volume explore the implications of the capability approach for technology & design and together create the first volume on this emerging topic.

The Capability Approach, Technology and Design

The Capability Approach, Technology and Design PDF Author: Ilse Oosterlaken
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789400799172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The capability approach of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen places human capabilities at the centre stage of discussions about justice, equality, development and the quality of life. It rejects too much emphasis on mere preference satisfaction or resource provision and highlights the importance of human agency and freedom. This approach has already significantly influenced different fields of application, such as economics and development studies. Only recently have scholars started to explore its relevance for and application to the area of technology and design, which can be crucial factors in the expansion of human capabilities. How does technology influence human capabilities? What difference could a capability approach make to policies and practices of applying ICT in development processes in the South? How can we criticize and improve the design of technology from the perspective of the capability approach? The authors of this volume explore the implications of the capability approach for technology & design and together create the first volume on this emerging topic.

Technology and Human Development

Technology and Human Development PDF Author: Ilse Oosterlaken
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317672895
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
This book introduces the capability approach – in which wellbeing, agency and justice are the core values – as a powerful normative lens to examine technology and its role in development. This approach attaches central moral importance to individual human capabilities, understood as effective opportunities people have to lead the kind of lives they have reason to value. The book examines the strengths, limitations and versatility of the capability approach when applied to technology, and shows the need to supplement it with other approaches in order to deal with the challenges that technology raises. The first chapter places the capability approach within the context of broader debates about technology and human development – discussing amongst others the appropriate technology movement. The middle part then draws on philosophy and ethics of technology in order to deepen our understanding of the relation between technical artefacts and human capabilities, arguing that we must simultaneously ‘zoom in’ on the details of technological design and ‘zoom out’ to see the broader socio-technical embedding of a technology. The book examines whether technology is merely a neutral instrument that expands what people can do and be in life, or whether technology transfers may also impose certain views of what it means to lead a good life. The final chapter examines the capability approach in relation to contemporary debates about ‘ICT for Development’ (ICT4D), as the technology domain where the approach has been most extensively applied so far. This book is an invaluable read for students in Development Studies and STS, as well as policy makers, practitioners and engineers looking for an accessible overview of technology and development from the perspective of the capability approach.

The Capability Approach

The Capability Approach PDF Author: Flavio Comim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521862875
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
The capability approach developed by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has become an important new paradigm in thinking about development. However, despite its theoretical and philosophical attractiveness, it has been less easy to measure or to translate into policy. This volume addresses these issues in the context of poverty and justice. Part I offers a set of conceptual essays that debate the strength of the often misunderstood individual focus of the capability approach. Part II investigates the techniques by which we can measure and compare capabilities, and how we can integrate them into poverty comparisons and policy advice. Finally, Part III looks at how we can apply the capability approach to different regions and contexts. Written by a team of international scholars, The Capability Approach is a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students concerned with the debate over the value of the capability approach and its potential applications.

The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice

The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice PDF Author: Serena Olsaretti
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199645124
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
Distributive justice has come to the fore in political philosophy: how should we arrange our social and economic institutions so as to distribute benefits and burdens fairly? Thirty-eight leading figures from philosophy and political theory present specially written critical assessments of the key issues in this flourishing area of research.

Value Sensitive Design

Value Sensitive Design PDF Author: Batya Friedman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262039532
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Using our moral and technical imaginations to create responsible innovations: theory, method, and applications for value sensitive design. Implantable medical devices and human dignity. Private and secure access to information. Engineering projects that transform the Earth. Multigenerational information systems for international justice. How should designers, engineers, architects, policy makers, and others design such technology? Who should be involved and what values are implicated? In Value Sensitive Design, Batya Friedman and David Hendry describe how both moral and technical imagination can be brought to bear on the design of technology. With value sensitive design, under development for more than two decades, Friedman and Hendry bring together theory, methods, and applications for a design process that engages human values at every stage. After presenting the theoretical foundations of value sensitive design, which lead to a deep rethinking of technical design, Friedman and Hendry explain seventeen methods, including stakeholder analysis, value scenarios, and multilifespan timelines. Following this, experts from ten application domains report on value sensitive design practice. Finally, Friedman and Hendry explore such open questions as the need for deeper investigation of indirect stakeholders and further method development. This definitive account of the state of the art in value sensitive design is an essential resource for designers and researchers working in academia and industry, students in design and computer science, and anyone working at the intersection of technology and society.

Creating Capabilities

Creating Capabilities PDF Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674252780
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
If a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how—by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy—we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives.

A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice PDF Author: John RAWLS
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042603
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Technologies of Choice?

Technologies of Choice? PDF Author: Dorothea Kleine
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262018209
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
A new framework for assessing the role of information and communication technologies in development that draws on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach. Information and communication technologies (ICTs)--especially the Internet and the mobile phone--have changed the lives of people all over the world. These changes affect not just the affluent populations of income-rich countries but also disadvantaged people in both global North and South, who may use free Internet access in telecenters and public libraries, chat in cybercafes with distant family members, and receive information by text message or email on their mobile phones. Drawing on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to development--which shifts the focus from economic growth to a more holistic, freedom-based idea of human development--Dorothea Kleine in Technologies of Choice? examines the relationship between ICTs, choice, and development. Kleine proposes a conceptual framework, the Choice Framework, that can be used to analyze the role of technologies in development processes. She applies the Choice Framework to a case study of microentrepreneurs in a rural community in Chile. Kleine combines ethnographic research at the local level with interviews with national policy makers, to contrast the high ambitions of Chile's pioneering ICT policies with the country's complex social and economic realities. She examines three key policies of Chile's groundbreaking Agenda Digital: public access, digital literacy, and an online procurement system. The policy lesson we can learn from Chile's experience, Kleine concludes, is the necessity of measuring ICT policies against a people-centered understanding of development that has individual and collective choice at its heart.

Visualization and Interpretation

Visualization and Interpretation PDF Author: Johanna Drucker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262044730
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
An analysis of visual epistemology in the digital humanities, with attention to the need for interpretive digital tools within humanities contexts. In the several decades since humanists have taken up computational tools, they have borrowed many techniques from other fields, including visualization methods to create charts, graphs, diagrams, maps, and other graphic displays of information. But are these visualizations actually adequate for the interpretive approach that distinguishes much of the work in the humanities? Information visualization, as practiced today, lacks the interpretive frameworks required for humanities-oriented methodologies. In this book, Johanna Drucker continues her interrogation of visual epistemology in the digital humanities, reorienting the creation of digital tools within humanities contexts. Drucker examines various theoretical understandings of visual images and their relation to knowledge and how the specifics of the graphical are to be engaged directly as a primary means of knowledge production for digital humanities. She draws on work from aesthetics, critical theory, and formal study of graphical systems, addressing them within the specific framework of computational and digital activity as they apply to digital humanities. Finally, she presents a series of standard problems in visualization for the humanities (including time/temporality, space/spatial relations, and data analysis), posing the investigation in terms of innovative graphical systems informed by probabilistic critical hermeneutics. She concludes with a final brief sketch of discovery tools as an additional interface into which modeling can be worked.