Journal article
The place of technology in the capability approach
- Abstract:
-
Increasing scholarly attention has focussed on how to integrate technology within the Capability Approach (CA), yet without a consistent solution. While some positions in the CA literature describe technology as a special kind of capability input, others consider the concept of technology to be fundamentally different from that of an ordinary input. We aim to contribute to the theoretical development of the CA by offering a consistent justification for the explicit inclusion of technology in this framework.
We propose that technical objects have a “generative” and a “transformative” dimension through which they enable capabilities directly and manipulate other inputs in the attainment of valued capabilities. The objects acquire the transformative dimension from the broader technological context, which we propose as a new class of conversion factors. Using the example of mobile phones and their role in healthcare access, we demonstrate that our proposal helps to frame the analysis of the development impact of technology.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.0MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/13600818.2017.1325456
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Journal:
- Oxford Development Studies More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2017-05-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-03-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1469-9966
- ISSN:
-
1360-0818
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:685182
- UUID:
-
uuid:74f8c95c-358a-4f31-a0e3-c4cf541738c0
- Local pid:
-
pubs:685182
- Source identifiers:
-
685182
- Deposit date:
-
2017-03-09
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Ariana and Haensggen
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Notes:
- © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor and Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record