Building collective capabilities through ICT in a mountain region of Nepal: where social capital leads to collective action

Volume 18, Issue 1, 2012 

Information Technology for Development

Special Issue: Development as freedom – how the Capability Approach can be used in ICT4D research and practice

Devinder Thapa, Maung K. Sein & Øystein Sæbø

Abstract:

In this paper, we explore how ICT can lead to development specifically human development in Sen's capability approach. In answering to the critique that Sen views capabilities as the individual, we incorporate the societal level by adding collective capabilities. We propose that ICT helps to create or enhance SC of communities which in turn can lead to development by building collective capabilities through collective action. To illustrate, we conducted a qualitative case study of an ICT initiative in a remote mountain region of Nepal. We found support for our proposition and further that developing collective capabilities also simultaneously enhanced individual capabilities. We contribute to theory building by showing that not just the characteristics of SC, but also its form can promote collective action. We further illustrate that the SC and the capability perspectives are compatible and it is possible to read the two streams both simultaneously and complementarily.

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Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap

W3C Interest Group Note 08 December 2009


Abstract:

This document's purpose is to understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear.

This document is divided into two major parts. The first part presents the major challenges today for both developing and accessing mobile services, potential ways to bridge them with existing tools, technologies and infrastructure, and potential research directions to follow to provide a more comprehensive resolution or solution. The second part focuses on presenting the major technologies and the major options existing today to deploy content and applications on mobile phones. For each of these technologies, the document presents a short analysis of the technology's potential and the requirements in terms of infrastructure, devices, targeted end-users, and costs associated with implementation and delivery.

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Let's Plant Green's - Environmental Quotes

Just wanted to share some of the quotes by famous and great people who were telling us why a plant need to be green. Here are few of them: 

• "When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves. " - David Orr

• "If we do not permit the Earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either." - oseph Woodkrutch

• "Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge." - Thomas Edison

• "The human race will be the cancer of the planet."  - Julian Huxley

• "Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back."  - Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health, 1959

• "Those who love and free nature are never alone." - Rachel Carson

• "We share the earth not only with our fellow human beings, but with all the other creatures." - The Dalai Lama

• "We have been god-like in the planned breeding of our domesticated plants, but rabbit-like in the unplanned breeding of ourselves."- Arnold Toynbee

As we all know that man is a complex being who can make the deserts bloom and can kill the lakes then why living the earth behind. Let's be wise and save our mother.

Let us once more listen to what Michael Jackson was telling us to think about.