The Capability Approach: Influence of Technology on Human Capabilities, Study notes of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)

Download The Capability Approach: Influence of Technology on Human Capabilities and more Study notes Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in PDF only on Docsity! POVERTY & ‘TECHNOLOGY Cover photograph Children in Block E, Rehoboth, Namibia. August 2010. Abstract In this world, there are many people that live in poverty, while at the same time scientists and engineers create new technologies that solve problems that were too big to solve only decades ago. It would seem that if we did our best effort, a technological fix for poverty would be at our doorstep. Yet at the same time, could it not also be true that some new technology only increase poverty? The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relation between technologies and poverty, from the point of view of justice. The justice approach that I choose in this thesis is the Capability Approach, an approach that looks at what a person can truly do and be (his or her capabilities), instead of what he or she has or achieves. More specifically, the Capability Approach of Martha Nussbaum is used as a more concrete interpretation of the more general approach that Sen introduced. Based on this version of the Capability Approach, poverty is then defined as violation of the minimal right to vital security, or the hindrance of attaining social goods. A person's (lack of) capabilities can be influenced by technologies either by directly introducing or prohibiting capabilities, or by influencing our perceived choices between capabilities, or by doing either one indirectly. Because of this, the introduction of a (new) technology in a society should include an assessment of how the technology influences capabilities. In this assessment, interplay between technology experts and local actors can provide valuable insights that can be beneficial for citizens, governments, and corporations. Table of contents 1 Introduction ... 1.1 Problem description. 2° Justice and well-being 1 Conceptualizing Justice ... 2 Theories of justice: Rawls, Sen and Nussbaum . 3 Comparison 4 Conclusion. 3 Capability and poverty... 3.1 Capability deprivation . 3.2 Capability Levels... 3.3 Capability and Poverty. 3.4 Where are the poor? 3.5 Conclusion... 4 Technology and Capability 4.1 Technology in the Capability Approacl 4.2 Influence of technology 4.3. A dynamic view on technology and capal 44 Conclusion... 5 Justice, Technology & Development. 5.1 Why to open the black box of technology? 5.2 Capability Sensitive Design 5.3. Actlocally, think globally 54 Conclusion. Conclusion... 5.5 Evaluation & future research . Bibliography POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY basic level of welfare. As Nelson Mandela - among others - claimed, this is not an issue of charity, but an issue of justice. That claim gives the problem another dimension: a moral one. Not being charitable is notimmoral, but being unjust is. So why is extreme poverty a problem. of justice? Can justice really help solve the problem? And would everybody agree with that? Despite the attention that extreme poverty has received in the last decades, the results of fighting it are not impressive. There are of course the stories of some countries in Asia and South America that have seen a steady increase in economic growth, increasing the living conditions for many of their citizens, but for many other countries - especially in Africa - poverty proves to be difficult to eradicate. So why don’t we transfer the ‘proven’ principles? For the rich countries in the world, the road to wealth was paved with technology. Sanitation, medicine, the printing press, steam engines, motorized transport, and communication technologies are just a few of the technologies that have driven the welfare levels up, directly or indirectly. Can't we use these technologies to justly improve the living conditions of people in less developed countries? 1.1 Problem description The problem area that I have described has multiple aspects: justice, human development, and technology. Justice concerns the observation that many people live under conditions that are below our standards of human dignity, while at the same time others live in excessive wealth. Human development is in the list because we want people to develop their lives, not only accept that what is given out of charity. This is nicely described with the Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime”. Technology has always been a driving force in human development and it may be put to use to advance human development. Together, these aspects form the parts of the main question that | will investigate: INTRODUCTION How can the lives of the poor be given attention and improved in a just way in the development of new technologies and the introduction of existing technologies? The aim of my research, and the type of answer I hope to give, is to describe a process that will lead to technologies that can fulfill the goal of improving the lives of the poor in a just way. How these technologies should actually be designed is outside the scope of this paper, though it will sometimes be touched upon. To find the answer to the main question, I will first discuss three issues that are important in the question. First, | will elaborate on the idea of justice that I will use, after that I will look into poverty, followed by an account of the influence of technology. In the end, these three subquestions will form the basis for answering the main question concerning the development of new and the introduction of existing technologies. The first main topic that I will discuss (Chapter 2) is justice, more precisely its distributive part: justice that deals with what people are entitled to. Part of the discussion of justice will be about what counts a good life. The topic of the next chapter will be poverty (Chapter 3), in which | will use the earlier conception of justice to discuss when people can be considered to be poor. The third topic will be what the influence of technology can be on human lives (Chapter 4): how, if at all, could technology actually influence the lives of people? Finally, given these definitions of justice and poverty, and the description of the role of technology on human lives, 1 will discuss (Chapter 5) how the creation and introduction of technologies can take place so that the improvement of the lives of the poor is taken into account. JUSTICE AND WELL-BEING points; and they must be evaluated with these in mind. I will now first set out the playing field in which the different theories of justice contest, so that we have a basis from which differences between the theories can be analyzed. The playing field will be based on the prominent concepts in earlier thought on justice: social order, freedom and equality. 2.1.1 SOCIAL ORDER The first concept, social order, marks an important distinction that we have to make in theories about justice: the intended goal. Is it aiming at a complete set of rules that will result in a perfectly just society? Or do we want a less demanding theory that may be easier to implement? These differences were already described by Plato (360BC): against the Socratic ideal of perfectly virtuous human behavior, some opponents posed a more practical position. Because Socrates idea seems so far from reality, they said that social order is based on reciprocity: arrangements for mutual benefits. This entails the idea that ‘what goes around comes around’; so when | treat someone badly, 1 can expect to be treated badly myself, so I better treat others like I want them to treat me. Besides this schism between an ideal and a more practical goal, there are many different ideas of how to treat others well and what a good life for oneself looks like. Amartya Sen recalls (2009, p. 20-21) the Sanskrit notion of matsyanyaya, or justice in the world of fish’, meaning that big fish can freely devour little fish. In the context of fish, this may very well be called just and notions from biology about ‘survival of the fittest’ fit this kind of justice very well. However, the people who would want this concept to apply in the world of man will probably form a minority, though they might very well exist. FREEDOM Freedom is a term that is often used in many ditferent forms. As we will see, the biggest difference is that between ‘being free from ° POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY interference’ and that of ‘really being able to do something’. Two examples to clarify this distinction: consider that you are walking in a city and see a man begging for money. You only have a one euro coin, but you feel empathy for him and you have decided that when you reach him, you will give him that euro. But when you reach him, he suddenly pulls forth a knife and demands that you give him one euro. Frightened, you give him the euro and quickly walk away. The result would have been equal whether he had threatened you or not, but what about your freedom? Next, you are walking past an election location and you see a woman, who has the freedom to vote, ready to make her voice heard. But at the bottom of the stairs before the entrance, she looks up helplessly from her wheelchair. Nobody stops her from voting, but does she really have the freedom to vote? 2.1.3. EQUALITY Equality is a less difficult concept, but there needs to be some caution about how the term is used. In its most strict (mathematical) form, equality means that two things are exactly the same. In the justice debates, however, a softer definition of equality is at play. This conception does not demand absolute equality on every point, but equality on points that are relevant. Thus when we are talking about equality, we must always give the characteristic(s) that the equality is based on, or otherwise it must mean the hard definition of total equality’. This means that we must always, as Amartya Sen puts it, ask ourselves: equality of what? Claiming that all people should be equal is thus arguing for a world of clones, whereas claiming that all people should be equal in the rights they have is a more common stance JUSTICE AND WELL-BEING 2.1.4 FREEDOM AND EQUALITY Though freedom and equality are sometimes thought to be fighting for the priority in theories of justice, Sen shows that this is a categorical mistake. Theories of justice, he explains, can be analyzed in terms of two different categories. The first category is that of the relevant personal features, and the second that of the combining characteristics. The personal features can be e.g. happiness, rights, resources or freedom and the combining characteristics can be e.g. summation, maximal minimum or equality. When we consider for example the standard utilitarian approach (which says that we should aim for the greatest utility) the relevant personal feature is happiness and the combining characteristic is summation (Sen 1995). In discussing theories about justice, we thus need to look at (at least) three aspects: the goal of the theory, what it is that we should look at to evaluate the position of a person, and how we want that evaluation to take place. With these three points in mind, I will now discuss three influential modern theories of justice. 2.2 Theories of justice: Rawls, Sen and Nussbaum After the Second World War, welfare steadily increased in the Western world but so did the social and economic inequalities. In many European countries, these inequalities were dampened by extensive social welfare systems, but less so in e.g. the United States (Bourguignon and Morrisson 2007). The problem of how to deal with these inequalities led to a new attention to justice. In this section 1 will give an overview of three different conceptions of justice. The first is John Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness. His theory has been very influential in this field and no work on justice can do without either stating how it is influenced by Rawls or where it differs from Rawls’ theory. The second and third theories are two versions of what is called the Capability Approach. This approach is often used in theoretical as well as empirical discussions about poverty and POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY received the Nobel Prize for his work in that field. He is currently a professor at Harvard University, where he worked together with Rawls. About a decade after the publication of Rawls’ book, Sen started publishing about what he calls the Capability Approach. With the Capability Approach, he provides an alternative way of looking at and measuring poverty, which he has explained in several essays and books. Most of his ideas are brought together in his book The Idea of Justice (2009). In his own field, the dominating view was that poverty can be described by factors relating only to resources, like the Gross National Product, which sums up the economic value of activities in a country. Sen argues that there are problems with relying exclusively on such aggregated, resource-based indicators. In the first place, aggregated numbers, like the Gross National Product give no information about the distribution among the people. The 80-20 ‘rule’ illustrates this problem: the distribution of resources within (poor) countries often comes close to the situation in which 20% of the population holds 80% of the resources. And even when we look at the household level, there can be big ditferences in the shares of different family member (Sen 2001). Sums are therefore not very suitable for assessing poverty of individuals. In the second place, people can be deprived in other ways than in terms of resources. Though resources surely help in attaining well- being and there is a correlation between higher income and better health and higher education, there are other important factors that contribute to well-being. Take, for example, Aung San Suu Kyi. She left her home and family in England and went back to her native Myanmar (Burma) to fight for the rights of her people. Though she won elections, the military junta stayed in control and placed her under house arrest. Even though she has quite some resources, especially compared with other people in Myanmar, she was deprived JUSTICE AND WELL-BEING of free movement (she did not even attend her husband's funeral), and freedom of speech’. Resources do not take these freedoms into account. Thirdly, resources in themselves do not promote well-being. Only in their relation to a person and the environment can resources be converted into well-being. How this conversion happens depends on rent things: what Sen calls the conversion factors. The focus many di should therefore not be on the resources that people have, but on the freedom or capability that they can get from those resources. A person’s capability consists of the different lives that person could live: all the doings and beings that are within a person's reach. Factors that play a role are physical characteristics, geographical location, social structures, personal skills ete. In Africa, thick clothing does not add much to a person’s capability, just as a deaf person will get little excitement from a music CD. How people will choose what capabilities they will realize (their functioning) is not of importance in the evaluation of their freedom, according to Sen. He does not want to look at realizations, because nobody is in a position to judge whether the functionings of somebody else are valuable. The approach of asking people themselves how they judge their lives will also not give a good impression, because people adapt their perceived happiness level to their situation. It should be noted that Sen does not provide a full theory of justice. He only points out the weaknesses of other theories of justice: weaknesses that are based on what counts as poverty. What Sen argues for is to shift our focus from resources and realizations to capabilities, no matter what distribution we think is best for that. 7 Aung San Suu Kyi was given the opportunity to get her freedom if she promised never to return to Burma. This is an example of what Sen calls the difference between agency freedom and well-being freedom: she was offered wellbeing freedom, in exchange for her agency freedom (Sen. 1995, p. 59-60) POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY 2.2.3. CAPABILITY APPROACH®: NUSSBAUM In the early 1990's, Sen was accompanied by Martha Nussbaum in his work on the Capability Approach. Nussbaum, born in 1947, is a professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She studied philosophy at Harvard University, a period that she, as a woman, recalls as a struggle”. Nussbaum took the Capability Approach further and added more body to it from her background of legal philosophy. Compared to Sen, she goes further than merely giving a framework for evaluation: she wants to give a bigger theory of justice that includes a threshold level for each of the central capabilities that she lists and a justification for these capabilities and the threshold levels. She calls her theory (Nussbaum 2000) universal, focused on human capabilities, and “set in the context of a type of political liberalism” (Nussbaum 2006, p. 70) and she defends this at the beginning of this book, giving a justification for each important term in this description. Following Sen, Nussbaum opposes resources and realizations as ways of assessing the well-being of people and focuses on what people are able to do: their capabilities. She distinguishes different kinds of capabilities: basic, internal and combined. Basic capabilities are those that we have from birth: hearing, sight ete. and internal capabilities are those that we develop during our life, like speech and reasoning. The combined capabilities are connected to the environment: they require not only basic and internal capabilities, but also the cooperation of others or the possession of goods. 5 Nussbaum calls her approach the Capebilities Approach, but to avoid confusion, | will only use the term Capability Approach, accompanied by the relevant author if necessary. ° Martha Nussbaum Interview: Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, http,//glcbetrotter berkeley.edu/people6/Nussbaum/nussbaum- conl html. Accessed 16 February 2010. JUSTICE AND WELL-BEING which principles to adopt under less happy conditions” (Rawls 2005, p. 216). Sen, on the other hand, does not have a theory that has such breadth. Instead of focusing on a pertectly just system, he wants to focus on actual systems and how they can be compared and, after that, improved in terms of justice. Sen’s approach is therefore more practical; however 1 do have a doubt about how well it will work in practice. Making small, manageable, steps might mean a gradual improvement in terms of justice, but how likely is it that it will give the best result? Perhaps a combination of less optimal individual steps will lead to more justice in the end. The ad hoe approach of Sen looks only at the problems at hand and seems to miss the grand scheme that Rawls offers. Nussbaum also struggles with the problem of how a ‘good idea’ might be put into practice. She takes somewhat of a middle road: first, Nussbaum wants to reach a broad consensus about the central capabilities” in the society (the grand scheme). When there is a good conception of central capabilities, these should be brought into practice through the political system: in democracies, the people themselves choose to implement these capabilities in their society by means of the available democratic tools. Internationally, there should be an urge towards nondemocratic governments to adopt these capabilities in their policies too (Nussbaum 2000, p. 103-104). Nussbaum thus opts for defining the grand scheme first and after that the steps that should be taken to reach it. Though | think that it is important to have a fixed goal in mind, the actual tools for reaching that goal should not be fixed, or at least not in a universal way. Because of different and dynamic circumstances, it °© The way towards consensus is Rawls’ reflective equilibrium. This means that we look both at our system of norms and our intuition. When these are in conflict, we should look which of these two we think is incorrect and change it so the conflict is resolved. In the end this will result in a system thats in accord with our intuitions POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY is unfeasible to have one implementation that will always work. In business terms, a society needs a mission statement, but how that mission is implemented is something that needs to be evaluated and adapted to the circumstances from time to time in a policy plan. Translated back to societies, it is good to have a constitution with a fixed view on the society, but the practical implementations should be in normal laws. Nussbaum’s theory incorporates this with the central capabilities as a (democratically reached) constitution, but the actual implementation as an ongoing democratic process. 2.3.2. VIEW OF AGOOD LIFE: AUTONOMY" The theories of Rawls, Sen and Nussbaum all agree that the autonomy of individuals is an important good, because individuals should be able to decide for themselves what a worthy life is. With Rawls, this is apparent in the veil of ignorance that obscures the person’s conception of a valuable life. In the Capability Approach, the key concept of capability is aimed at promoting “objectives that we have reasons to value”. Rawls, Sen and Nussbaum ideas about what is valuable is an individual choice. Therefore, it has no place in the public debate; they are all supporters of autonomy as individual liberalism. But is autonomy really the most important issue, or are there other things to consider? In the political spectrum, there can be said to be four positions, aligned on two axes. The first axis is the amount of redistribution by the government (socialists’ vs. ‘capitalists’), and the second axis is the level of government regulation (‘democrats’ vs. ‘republicans’, ‘left’ vs. ‘sight’). The four quarters of this space then represent” “A more elaborate discussion about (moral) autonomy can be found in (Christman 2009) or (Swift 2006). = This is a more elaborate view than the traditional leit vs. right view, but still a limited view. Ditferent authors give different names to the axes and sections of the spectrum, JUSTICE AND WELL-BEING ¢ ‘Libertarian’: little redistribution, little regulation; ¢ ‘Liberal’: more redistribution, little regulation; © = ‘Communitarian’: more redistribution, more regulation; © ‘Conservative’: little redistribution, more regulation. Rawls, Nussbaum, and Sen fall in the liberal quarter: the government should redistribute goods for increased equality, but should leave citizens the choice what to do with their lives. But not everybody agrees with a liberal view of the good life. Some will argue that the government/society has the right or even the duty to intervene in the lives that people choose to live. When the freedom of others is at stake, this is widely accepted, but when there is no obvious harm to others, opinions may differ. Should a government, for example, forbid or discourage smoking and euthanasia? Should it impose taxes to aid the worst off in society? Liberalism argues for individual freedom, but conservatives and communitarians will argue for government intervention. For libertarians and conservatives, the amount of redistribution that liberalism demands is too much of an interference with individual freedom. Every form of redistribution means that some people, the best off, will have to give away a part of their income to those that are worse off. This introduces an inequality for the wealthy people: an inequality that has to be justified. According to some philosophers, these inequalities cannot be justified. For Nozick, a colleague of Rawls at Harvard, private property is one’s own and people should not interfere with other’s possessions. Nozick also denies that there is something like common goods: goods that are owned by men collectively. Therefore, there is no need for a strong government to keep that in order, but only a nightwatchmen government that provides some services, giving people more autonomy. As an argument from a Kantian perspective, he claims that redistribution “uses some people as a means to other people's ends” (Swift 2006), POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY the Netherlands were to go on a hunger strike, he may (in terms of nutrition) temporarily have the same functioning as a refugee in Sudan. The objection against utility from Rawls, Sen and Nussbaum is based on the issue I discussed before: liberalism. Every person should be free to pursue his or her own conception of the good, and we have no absolute grounds on which we can favor one, chosen, way of living above the other. In terms of practical feasibility, resources are the best candidate, because they can be measured relatively easily”, but they may not give all the information that we want to know. Utility faces the problem of interpersonal comparison: how do we know how much. utility or pleasure two people get trom performing the same action? Capabilities are also difficult to measure, so Sen gives three distinct ways of measurement based on the Capability Approach: comparison on (a set of) capabilities, comparison on income and some indicators of capability (see the HDI in Chapter 3), and comparison on the income adjusted with capabilities (raising the income when more capabilities are present and reverse)". Though the first gives the best view of capabilities, the last approach is the easiest. But the easier the evaluation, the more things become invisible in the outcomes. Money cannot buy capability and the difference between hunger and starvation cannot be easily seen in income figures (Gen 2001). But even though a theory should be useable, convenience of comparison should not be a ground for the way in which we judge the life of persons. © In Less Developed Countries, expenditure can be a better measure than income, because income is often very irregular and people have a clearer idea of their expenditure than their income (White 2008) 1] should note that, as we will see in the next chapter, some of the indicators based on the capability approach are actually functionings. Though these are functionings of a system and not of individuals JUSTICE AND WELL-BEING For evaluation of the lives of people, a focus on resources misses the attention for differences between people, while a focus on realizations misses the attention for the freedom to pursue one’s own goals. Capability is the intermediate form that does take these two issues into account. For practical applications, however, the Capability Approach has to depend on the other two: capabilities do show correlation with income and realizations are easier to quantify than capabilities, so these can be used as indicators for the capability level, though they will never absolutely define it. 2.3.4 MORALITY: SEN AND NUSSBAUM As I have already stated, the way in which Sen and Nussbaum want to put their versions of the Capability Approach into action are different. Sen offers a broad framework aimed at tackling one issue at a time, while Nussbaum wants to make progress along the entire front: “it applies to all social justice issues, and to the global world”. Because of this, Sen refuses to give a list, because, as he states, that would require an ordering that cannot be given. Nussbaum’s approach however does not need an ordering, because the social level of each central capability must be met. This does have implications for the possible solutions that are available, because there are far less solutions that satisfy the requirements of each central capability than there are solutions on just one issue. It also is decisive for how we look at problems related to the social conversion factors. Sen gives more thought to the conversion factors than Nussbaum does. For Sen, the social conversion factors are givens that we should take into account when we try to find a solution for the problem. For Nussbaum, however, they are a part of the problem (though not necessarily the problematic part). Therefore, the social conversion factors of Sen have a place in the list of central capabilities of Nussbaum. To give an example: Sen names (among others) “the prevalence or absence of crime and violence” (Sen 2001, p. 71) as a variation in 25 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY social climate that can affect the conversion of resources into functionings. So what does this mean? If you live in a violent part of town, but you have a lot of money to buy a good alarm system and an armored car, your capability is fine? Should we not, to a certain level, be able to choose ourselves what we spent our money on instead of letting the social circumstances dictate our spending? The latter is the position that Nussbaum would take. 2.3.5 JUSTIFICATION OF JUSTICE A theory of justice needs a proper justification if we want to give it any power in the real world, because while we may acknowledge that people need things like food and shelter, we might argue that this does not affect us. We might argue that what people have is the product of their own work and that therefore there should be no redistribution. So can we justify the justice principles described above? Do all people have the right to a minimal level of capability? The big questions about autonomy and redistribution all come down to this justification of justice. Sen and Nussbaum often fall back to Aristotle in their justification for a theory of justice based on capabilities. The argument is that human life (being a full human being) can be marked by the presence or absence of the most important functionings. By being born, everybody has the moral right to be able to live a life that is worth to be called human: we should see every single person as an end, not a means. A more theoretical justification of capabilities can be found in Gewirth (1998), who has stated the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC) in which he grants capabilities to every human based on the fact that each person is an agent, i.e. a purposeful actor. Based on the observation that agents need freedom and well-being (@ general description of capabilities) to be an agent, no human could claim these capabilities for himself and deny them to others. This justification can be seen shimmering through other justifications we have seen. A similar argument was already raised against Socrates: we a 3 CAPABILITY AND POVERTY “It is not an unfortunate cluster of random events, nor differences in individual behaviours, that consistently keep the health of some countries and population groups below others. Where systematic differences in health are judged to be avoidable by reasonable action globally and within society they are, quite simply, unjust.” (WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health 2008, p. 26) In the previous chapter, justice was shown to be related to distribution. 1 have chosen for capabilities as the object of that distribution, in particular the basic capabilities defined by Nussbaum. In this chapter, I will look at poverty as capability deprivation and take a closer look at each basic capability and the ‘level’ of that capability around the world. After that I will look at who would count as poor by this standard, and where most of the poor people live. 3.1 Capability deprivation In everyday use, the word poverty is mostly limited to the meaning of little financial assets. But this does not do justice to many people who are poor in other ways, because poverty is not limited to the financial dimension: poverty is multidimensional (Deneulin and Shahani 2009), it includes eg. health, education and Rawls’ social bases for self-respect. Because when we talk about a ‘poor human’, it 8 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY essentially means that the person does not meet the standard of humanity. Not by his or her own choosing (that would make a bad human), but because of deprivation. A poor human lacks what he or she needs to live a humane life. Physical goods (alone) are not a good. measure for this as 1 explained in the previous chapter’®. In the Capability Approach, this ability to be a human being is defined as the ability to do and be what one wants. Another philosopher following this line of thought is Alan Gewirth, who sees humans as purposive agents, and agency is all about the ability to act or function (Gewirth 1998). So, just as we can say of soil that it is poor when it cannot function as the giver of nutrients to plants, a human lite is poor when. it cannot function as an agent. And whether that agent wants to be happy or just content, and whether he only needs basic goods or needs a wheelchair, those individual factors should not be fixed by a definition of poverty that looks only at resources or outcomes. A iduals is much more appropriate. For this, according to Gewirth, we need well-being definition that looks at the possible actions of indi: and freedom, the two key characteristics of capabilities. 3.2 Capability Levels Before deciding how this well-being and freedom should be distributed among people, and how to define what counts as poverty, I will give an overview of the current state of each of the ten central capabilities that are given by Nussbaum. | will not give a complete evaluation of the state of each capability in each country, but I will try to give an idea of the current capabilities levels, mainly in what are called Less Developed Countries (LDC's), either by data or by examples that stress the importance of the capability. © See (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003) for a more elaborate discussion of the merits and defects of a monetary measure of poverty. 30 CAPABILITY AND POVERTY LiFE “Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living” The capabilities of life and health will not likely be disputed by many, but they are not within everybody's reach. A report of the World Health Organization (2008)" gives an overview of the causes of death in different countries grouped by income level. For high-income counties, the major causes of death are chronic diseases and 70% of the population reaches the age of 70 years. In the lowincome counties, however, infectious diseases take most lives and only 21% of the population reaches the age of 70 years. Though this capability cannot be guaranteed to everybody (not all diseases can be cured), these major differences in life expectancies - the injustice that whether you live is correlated to where you live - are a clear form of deprivation. Life is the minimal indicator of well-being, and that human right should not be denied when there is no lack of the means to sustain it (WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health 2008, p. 26). HEALTH “Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.” Health, both physical and psychological, determines to a large degree how well a person is able to do and be what he wants. At the root of this capability are the ‘social determinants of health’, which include social policies (and attitudes), politics and economics "T The data in the report are from 2004. 31 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY "My husband slaps me, has sex with me against my will and I have to conform. Before being interviewed 1 didn’t really think about this. I though this is only natural. This is the way a husband behaves.” 3.2.4 SENSES, IMAGINATION AND THOUGHT (EDUCATION AND EXPRESSION) “Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason...” This capability is described by Nussbaum with many different examples, but in general it comes down to the capability for mental development; in reasoning, knowledge and expression. For this capability, education” is a resource that helps a person to develop a better view of the environment and his or her place in it. In addition, it also provides the tools for further reasoning (Young 2009, p. 259). Besides education, there are other important aspects of this capability: use one’s mind freely, act freely, and express oneself freely. In education, things are starting to look a lot brighter on the global stage. The enrolment rates for primary education have risen steadily. In Sub-Saharan Africa, in 2008, 80% of the children were enrolled in primary education, up from 72% in 1995 and 52% in 1991”. Differences between the enrollment rates of boys and girls have decreased from 14% to less than 5%. For the future, this means that education levels of men and women will be both higher and closer "© Though education is often linked to literacy, this is a very narrow conception for this capability. Literacy is only a means for the mental capabilities, but in the end it is important that a person has the mental capability to reason. What education should be focused on is on what a person needs to know to live in his (changing) environment ‘This can include education about personal hygiene, basic health issues and nutrition, but also a focus on vocational training in more traditional societies (Young 2009) *° Data from United Nations Statistics Division for minimally 23 SubSaharan countries: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx 34 CAPABILITY AND POVERTY together. However, it must be noted that these are only aggregates, and data grouped by income and ethnicity is not available. Freedom of expression is much more difficult to assess, and the proxy used is often what treaties on human rights are signed by a country. But this says nothing about whether the treaty is followed and it also does not include violations by non-government parties, like criminal groups. Another proxy that gives a better view is that of the number of journalists’ deaths. In these figures, politics only plays a small part, smaller than crime (including local ctime) or corruption. fm conaict lmconticCuture \a Contict/Human Rights Is Contic/Poitics 'm Corruption [Corruption Pottics lace ‘acute [a cunre/Pottics [auman Rights latecat latoca/Crime \aPotiics Imspon Figure 2 Deaths of Journalists in JanJun 2010 Divided by Topics Covered”? 3.2.5 EMOTIONS (MENTAL WELLBEING) “Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves...” Source: International Press Institute Death Watch June 2010. One has to keep in mind that the numbers are too low for a good evaluation. The total number of journalists killed was steady in 2010 and 2011, but rose in 2012 35 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY Besides being able to develop one's mind, the capability to develop one’s emotions towards others is an important capability, whether it concerns loving, grieving, longing or justified anger. According to Nussbaum (2000), people should not have their “emotional development blighted by overwhelming fear and anxiety” (p. 79). Especially children have a need for this capability for their emotions to develop normally or their emotions will “remain at an infantile level and are felt as threatening and shameful power, totally disconnected from the ‘true’ and ‘adult’ self.” (D’Addelfio 2006, p. 10). In LDC's, especially in those countries that are plagued by HIV/AIDS, many children are depending on care from others than from their parents. Families often take over the care for orphans within their family and sometimes foster parents can be found, or otherwise the children end up in social child care (Maundeni 2009). Private and social care-givers alike run into the problems of increasing demand, due to HIV/AIDS deaths. A friend who did an internship in a South-African orphanage wrote about the lack of attention for the children and how this affected their emotional development (van Rikxoort 2010). Life and health are the key capabilities that are provided in those places, because they do not have the resources to focus on other capabilities. Her experience fits the picture that is sketched in a working paper by Patrice Engle (2008), especially in the diagram in Figure 3. CAPABILITY AND POVERTY RESPECT “Having the social bases of selfrespect and non- humiliation...” The minimum level of this capability, non-discrimimation, is not completely absent is any society, but there are examples of extremes, such as the one discussed in capability 6. Another well-known example of this is the caste system in India, where people who are born in the caste of the untouchables have less chance and freedom to pursue their ends than people who are born in a higher caste”. The caste system, however, has no formal backing anymore and is prohibited in the constitution of India. Nevertheless, in the minds of the citizens, it still exists”; that is where the minimum level of non discrimination has to rise to that of respect. 3.2.8 OTHER SPECIES (ENVIRONMENT) “Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.” This capability is concerned with our environment. Injustice is visible here in the observation that most of the degradation in the environment is (probably) caused by the large consumption of rich countries that cause world-wide problems. Indirectly, the well-being of people is compromised by the changing environment: food supplies are in danger (Simatele, Binns, and Simatele 2012), and carriers of diseases move to new areas (Patz et al. 1996). But the living This is a big difference with the ‘American Dream’, where everyone, no matter their status or background, can become important, even if only few actually succeed in doing 20 > An interesting book about this topic is Amartya Sen’s “Identity and Violence” (2006). POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY environment of people can also be atfected more directly, as was the case with the Trafigura toxic waste incident”. The impacts of environmental changes on the lives of people in LDCs are visible in several ways. Changes in climate cause problems in fishing (Nellemann, Hain, and Alder 2008). Deforestation can threaten entite societies, and cause their collapse (Diamond 2005). Melting glaciers and water dams can cause flooding or drought ete. An example is “the Akosombo Dam in Ghana, completed in 197 [which] has rarely functioned to projected capacity and created a wide range of ecological and human problems in the catchment area. Worse, however, were the downstream effects. In the two decades after the dam's commissioning, a growing swath of beach in neighbouring Togo has disappeared, damaging roads, port facilities, fishing villages and threatening Leke Togo, an important wildlife habitat and source of human drinking water.” (Smillie 1991) 3.29 PLAY “Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities” The capability for play seems to be a somewhat odd one. In the fourth capability, Nussbaum already mentions the ability ‘to have pleasurable experiences’, so it is strange that it appears again as a separate capability. But though play may result in a pleasurable experience, for children it also helps to develop certain functions. Health and mental well-being are increased by recreational activities, and for children play is an important instrument to learn social and emotional skills. Pellegrini and Smith (1998) discuss several studies * See —_http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/23/tratigura-dutchtine-waste- export 40 CAPABILITY AND POVERTY into the importance of play (exploration, fantasy, and locomotor) and experimental deprivation studies”. Little practical information can be found about this capability. There is however a relation between income poverty and recreation: those who have less to spend are less likely to participate in recreational activities, even when these activities are free of charge (ark, A. P. Turnbull, and H. R. Turnbull 2002, p. 6). The same paper reports that free activities for people with a disability are biased towards skills development and miss the real recreational aspect. 3.2.10 CONTROL OVER ONES ENVIRONMENT POLITICAL (DEMOCRACY) “Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life...” This capability follows up on the fifth capability: that of practical reason. Political influence helps to ensure that everybody's voice is heard and everybody can have influence in how the society in which they live is organized. Without other capabilities, however, Sen argues that the capability is worthless, because when the capability for bodily integrity, freedom of expression, and practical reason are not present, the result of elections are not representative for the thoughts of the voters (Sen 2009, p. 327). Though the news shows images of protest for more democracy in countries like Myanmar (Burma), Iran, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Egypt, democracy is facing a difficult time, according to the Democracy Index 2010 (Economist Intelligence Unit 2010), see Figure 4. In high Experimental deprivation studies test the hypothesis that children who are deprived from one of the forms of play will compensate for it when they are not deprived of it anymore 28 “The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism civil liberties; the functioning of govemment; political 41 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY 3.3.1. AJUST DISTRIBUTION L will look at three different distributions: equality, the difference principle that is proposed by Rawls end a social minimum that is proposed by Nussbaum”. Equality of capabilities (Strict Egalitarianism) seems like a very just distribution, because it would mean that there is no inescapable relative poverty and we could all be real equals. But this is not such an ideal situation as it seems. Equality of capabilities would mean a limitation of equality in other fields and even hindering people to fully utilize their potential. As an example, we can take the observation that women live longer than men, but that does not mean that men should get more healthcare to make up for the difference in life expectancy. Also, when a certain distribution will make everybody better off than before while another distribution has less advantage, but results in equality, the former would be preferable Gen 2009). Rawls proposes a system that is most to the advantage of those who are in the worst position. In the first place, Rawls argues for equality of the basic liberties. Rawls’ second principle dictates that any inequalities in the distribution of resources should be “attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity” and “to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society” (Rawls 2005). The second part is called the difference principle”: any inequality in distribution of primary goods should benefit the least advantaged. According to Rawls, “the intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate” (p. 65). But why do the less 7 For a more elaborate discussion about this topic, the entries about Egalitarianism and about Distributive Justice in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are good sources, which also discuss some positions that I do not. A more elaborate discussion about equality and alternatives can also be found in the third chapter of Switt (2006) * aka, maximin principle 44 CAPABILITY AND POVERTY fortunate have more right to become better off than the most fortunate; is Rawls not introducing a form of inequality (in liberty) in his effort to minimize inequalities? Yes, he does introduce inequality, but only to counterbalance other inequalities: namely those of the Natural Lottery. Those who are lucky to have higher than average natural endowments or those who are born in a higher social class should realize that in no way they have earned that situation”. Social classes and natural endowments are distributed randomly among newborns, but we could say that Rawls sees them as public goods that a person may use, but not claim as his or her own. The best off should use their higher capacities to help those who are worse off. As Rawls summarizes it: “In justice as fairness men agree to share one another's fate” (p. 102). But the difference principle does not mean that there is no unnecessary poverty: better off does not necessarily mean well. This is where we can use the social minimum that is proposed (among others) by Nussbaum. She argues for “a weaker focus on a (rather ample) social minimum” (Nussbaum 2000, p. 86). For the central capabilities that she proposes, she thinks every person should have at least the social minimum”. Above that minimum, Nussbaum has no preference for any system of distribution, as long as it is judged in terms of (combined) capabilities. The level of the social minimum should be decided upon democratically. This debate should not be a onetime event, but an ongoing investigation. Over time, the threshold will change (mainly positively), like in Finland: the Finnish, parliament proposed the right to a broadband internet connection for Technological developments might have an effect on this position however: eugenetics can make it possible to ‘cheat’ in the Natural Lottery, perhaps even replace the lottery completely. A more elaborate survey on the social minimum can be found in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 45 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY every household”’. Rawls does not really object this social minimum, but only because he frames it as a special form of the difference principle. According to Rawls, in determining the social minimum, the person is led by the difference principle, without realizing it. So Rawls does not oppose a mixed conception of a social minimum with some other (fair) sort of distribution because that might as well be the result of (unintentionally) applying the difference principle”. The details of the social minimum are left over to the involved people themselves. They should, democratically, decide what capabilities should be enhanced and how this could best be achieved. According to Rawls, this is an almost impossible task. But then, it is perhaps just as hard to find out what way of distribution is for the greatest long term benefit of those who are worst off. And nonetheless, any minimum. that lies above the level of the worstoff now is an improvement, so there is no need to have the ‘real’ social minimum (though it should be the objective!) to apply this principle. So equality is not the most just distribution of capabilities. For the entire society, the difference principle may be most beneficial, but it gives no guarantee that the worstoff are not still at an unacceptable level of poverty. A social minimum does offer that guarantee, or at least it voices the intent to prevent an unacceptable level of poverty, where the poverty line is decided upon by those involved. 3.3.2 POVERTY: RELATIVE OR ABSOLUTE? But even when we let people decide for themselves about the poverty line, there is still at least one issue about poverty that remains. That issue is whether poverty is absolute or relative®. Stéphane *! Ahmed, Saeed. 2009. Fast Intemet access becomes a legal right in Finland. CNN. * Another possible outcome of the difference principle might be an insurance system such as that proclaimed by Dworkin. ® Sen often refers to adaptive preferences: people accept their low standard of living vhen they have no perspective of improving their living standards CAPABILITY AND POVERTY Though not perfect®, it is a more accurate measurement of poverty than income per capita alone. The HDI is a useful proxy for a comparison on the level of capabilities, but it is not exactly what we are looking for. The HDI is normalized, so the level of the top country in a category has a big influence on the results, therefor it cannot reflect on what should be the minimum level. Nevertheless, we can make general statements about poverty by identifying a HDI level below which the minimum is generally not met. In the HDR, the authors have identified limits, though probably not with a social minimum in mind. The categories that are identified in the HDR are (colors refer to Figure 6): © >0.793 Very High Human Development (Dark blue) High Human Development Medium Human Development Low Human Development (Lightest blue) 3.4.1 SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXTS IN LEss DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ‘As can be seen in Figure 6, most of the countries with medium and low human development on the HDI scale are located in (sub Saharan) Africa, followed by South East Asia. © The HDI is based on only a few indicators and itis based on aggregate data, so it does not take the variance within a country into account. The last point is addressed in the inequality adjusted HDI (HDI). POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY Figure 62011 Human Development Index Though there are many differences between these LDC’s, there are also many characteristics that they have in common. Adam Szirmai. (2005) provides a list of common characteristics of those countries (which he mainly locates in Africa, South- and South-East Asia, and the former Soviet Union, based on GNP). Of course not all characteristics apply to all LDC’s, but all LDC’s show at least some of these characteristics. The list has different kinds of characteristics; some describe the socioeconomic context, while others are the result of other factors. The list of nine characteristics that Szirmai gives in his book (p. 28) is literally: Widespread (income) poverty and malnutrition ve A relatively large share of agriculture in output and employment Pronounced dualism in economic structure Very rapid growth of population Explosive urbanization Largescale underutilization of labour Political instability, pervasive corruption Environmental degradation SO PAAR YH Low levels of technological capabilities 50 CAPABILITY AND POVERTY Some of these characteristics are directly related to capabilities, while others are of a more environmental type. 3.5 Conclusion Poverty has an absolute and a relative dimension. On the one side there are irrevocable human rights that enable vital security that must be provided to every individual at a minimum level. On the other side are social goods, that determine how well we are off in relation to others; in attaining those, none should be hindered. For measuring poverty, there are many data sources we can choose from, of which. the HDI is the closest to the capabilities approach. Geographically, poverty mainly exists in Africa and South-East Asia. 51 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY In this chapter, 1 will discuss in which ways this can happen. 1 will start by shortly covering the place of technology in the formation of capabilities in existing works. Next, 1 will discuss how technology can influence its environment. After that, 1 will combine these two into a dynamic view on the influence of technology on capabilities. 4.1 Technology in the Capability Approach 1 will start by describing how technology takes a place in the original writings on the Capability Approach. A much-used reference for this purpose is an overview of how capabilities are formed, given by Robeyns (2004). This overview can be found in a paper in which she discusses the Capability Approach and the different positions that Sen and Nussbaum take. Robeyns calls it “a stylized non-dynamic representation of a person’s capability set and the social and personal context of this person”, and I have reproduced this overview in Figure 7. Social institutions >) Social norms q Preference formation ; (Other people's behavior frocharisins Personal history and characteristics ‘and psychology Environmental factors (and many, many ‘Social influences on decision making (ends J | Nommarket Capability set production Goods _ Individual , , Market Production band — conversion PH CSPERIES | — choice —P Reet Net income services llacors fe, opportunity, D Transfers-in-kind functionings) means to achieve Freedom to achieve achievement (capability inputs) Figure 7 Schematic representation of capability formation (original in Robeyns 2004) From this diagram, we learn that a person's capability set result from resources and the environment, and how these two are converted by individual conversion factors. Furthermore, it shows how the capabilities in this set are transformed into functionings by 54 ECHNOLOGY AND CAPABILITY choices that are influenced by a person's history and his or her environment. This image gives a good overview of how capabilities are formed and how they result in functionings. However, technology plays only a very small role in this original conception of the Capabilities Approach. Technologies are limited to ‘goods and services’ in Sen’s view (and in the diagram) and to material circumstances in Nussbaum’s view (Johnstone 2 2, p. 85). The original ideas about the capability approach fall short when we try to clarify the role of technology in the process of capability formation. In order to evaluate the role of technology, we need to expand the original ideas about the Capability Approach. 4.1.1 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Recently, the landscape of work on the Capability Approach has started to change. In the past decade, scholars have slowly started to look at the relations between capabilities and technology, as 1 intend to do in this chapter. Literature references to such studies can be found in the introduction to “The Capability Approach, Technology and Design” (Oosterlaken and van den Hoven 2012) and in a book chapter by Justine Johnstone (Johnstone 2012). But even with this growing attention for this topic, Johnstone notes that “relatively little has been published”, though new collections of work on the topic indicate that the Capability Approach “is making an impact”*” (Johnstone, p. 88); in other words, that the attention for the subject is growing in the field of Philosophy of Technology. Yet the field of ‘Technology & Capability’ is still in a developing phase: most of the publications up to four years ago stressed the importance of linking the two (Oosterlaken 2008, 2009; Zheng 2007), or were Though 1 was not able to take notice of most of the recent publications (2011 to 2014); where I could, I have tried to relate these to the views I propose here 55 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY case studies of a particular technology, especially ICT Garnham 1997; Johnstone 2007). To my knowledge, there has not been an earlier work (before 2011) that has reflected upon the relations between technology in general, its environment (context) and capabilities, or at least not in the context of Less Developed Countries. 4.1.2 THE ONTOLOGY OF CAPABILITIES There is, however, a relevant article by Smith and Seward (2009) about the ontological basis’ of the capabilities. Their view builds es defined by Martins (2005; further on the ontology of capabi 2007). The core of this ontology is formed by a combination of structures and mechanisms. Structures can be seen as networks of objects: different objects are in some way connected to each other, like for example the blades of a mill, its axis, and the millstone are connected. These are examples of a physical structure, but the objects can also be persons or immaterial objects, like the miller and the grain-market. The mechanisms are what allow a structure to cause a certain result. In the case of a mill, it is the specific placement of the objects that makes it possible that the millstone turns when the wind hits the blades. Smith and Seward translate this ontology to capabilities, and say that a capability consists of a structure and its associated causal mechanism. This causal mechanism is not a straightforward causality of ‘a causes b’, but is less deterministic: ‘a tends to lead to b’. In this view, structures are formed by a person (and his or her conversion factors), and the objects in his or her environment. The combination (structure) of these objects behaves in a way (mechanism) that results in a capability that can, or tends to, lead to a functioning. *5 An ‘ontological basis’ describes “what it is”; how we can think and talk about it. ECHNOLOGY AND CAPABILITY 4.2.1 BEHAVIORAL Technologies can have an influence on the behavior of people. Often this is by design, though this does not have to be the case. For examples, we can take a look at the technologies surrounding cars. Speed bumps induce the behavior of driving at a slow speed (Latour 1992), as was intended in their design. Traffic lights and roundabouts both enforce letting other cars to cross your path, though in different ways. The way that highway ramps (clover leaf styled) are designed allow drivers to gradually reduce their speed when taking an exit and also gradually increase their speed when entering the highway. For some motor cyclists however, these constructions that invite going through a bend at a reasonable speed also invite to see where the physical speed limit lies, which is above the safe and enforced speed limit. USER-PROFILE The user-profile influences relate to the fixed attributes of users. Artifacts often require users to fit in a certain profile, a profile that the designers had in mind when they designed the artifact”. To stay in the automotive realm: a standard car has several requirements for its driver. He or she should be able to use both legs and both arms. In terms of affordances, technology can widen the user-profile by overcoming constraints, like adaptations to a car for people who are physically challenged. 4.2.3 MATERIAL AND INFRASTRUCTURAL Besides presupposed user characteristics, there are physical conditions that must be met for the functioning of an artifact. Again, many of these are presupposed by the designers; in the automotive * See (Costerlaken 2012) for a discussion of Franssen’s typical user and whether an. artifact is ‘good’ for that user. POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY branch these are roads, gas stations, garages and car parts stores. But technology can also afford the construction of new infrastructures. The $100laptop (OLPC) extends the wireless network of other laptops, thus creating the infrastructure that would be necessary for other devices to access the internet. 4.2.4 SOCIAL In the social influences, Brey distinguishes two areas: the informal statuses, roles and relations, and the formal organizations and institutions. Cars have also changed the relations between people. Before the cars were common, most people had to find work close to home, so with the advent of factories, company owners built entire villages next to the factory to accommodate the workers; as can still be seen in some industrial cities. People’s private lives and work lives were centered on the factory they worked in. Cars changed this, because they allowed workers to live further away from where they work, and have different social environments for work and private time (Verbeek 2005, p. 43). And this is not only the case for those who have a car, but also for those who do not have a car, the non users. So not only the users themselves, but also the non-users can be influenced by a technology. In the organizational and institutional area, cars have also had their impact. Because of the increased speed and the large number of cars going to and tro, there are institutions that control the vehicles that may be used on the public road, that control the persons who may use the public road, an institution that maintains the network of public roads, an institution that controls traffic rules and signs, and probably even more. ECHNOLOGY AND CAPABILITY 4.2.5 CULTURAL Finally, artifacts can also affect cultural meanings and cultural practices. New technologies can change the way in which we perceive the world: the governing mentalities® (“those widely shared values, norms, expectations, and assumptions of how the world operates” (Nieusma 2004)). With modern information and communication technologies, the world seems to be smaller, and cars, trains and planes add to that idea. We can now know what happens at the other end of the world within seconds, and if we want we can be there within a day, bringing along our own culture. In the automotive world, there are also cultural practices that have developed. This ranges from the many racing events to signs of politeness by blinking your headlights to let another car pass on a narrow road. 4.2.6 PRECONDITIONS There is one strange thing in the way that Brey characterizes atfordance: “[to] afford, enable, allow, induce, stimulate, cause, necessitate or require certain events or states-of-atfairs” (p. 72, emphasis added). It includes what a technology presupposes, besides what a technology provides. This is quite contrary to the way in which Gibson, who introduced the term, used it. As a matter of fact, he explicitly names the preconditions (the context of use) for affordance when he gives the following example: “[a postbox] affords letter-mailing to a letter-writing human in a community with a postal system” (Gibson 1986, p. 139). Gibson names conditions that must be met before the atfordance becomes real, so these conditions cannot be part of the atfordance as Brey poses it. The consequence of this change in meaning is that Brey gives many examples of affordances which are in fact preconditions for that technology: he would name the postal * The term was introduced by Campbell (2000). POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY context, the reception in China improved. For examples of different social contexts, one can think of discrimination; for examples of different personal contexts, one can think of people who are physically challenged. All in all, the context in which a technology is used is decisive for the capabilities it constitutes. When a product is well adapted to the context, and the user of the technology is able to use it (in other words, when all preconditions for the technology are met), then a technology can lead to expansion of the user’s capability set. These are direct influences of technology on a person’s capabilities. THE ATTAINABILITY OF CAPABILITIES In the Capability Approach, the set of capabilities of a person is often discussed. Most of the time, it is portrayed as a set of things that a person is able (and free) to do. Talking about a ‘set’ of capabilities introduces the risk that the distinction between capabilities and ‘non- capabilities’ is seen as black and white: the capability is there or not. But this would not do justice to the essence of capabilities. Most capabilities are not about being available or not, but are about the extent to which it is available. Implicitly, Gibson makes this observation when he states that man “has made more available what benefits him and less pressing what injures him” (Gibson 1986, emphasis added). Changes in capability sets are not from unavailable to available, but from scarce to more available. Sometimes the changes in characteristics are small, or a mix of positive and negative points Gf. Johnstone 2012, p. 87). In other cases, characteristics may change in such a way that a specific capability becomes reasonably unattainable. The poor in the suburbs of New York after the low. hanging overpasses were built could of course still reach the beaches of the rich if they went on foot, but that option is very unfavorable ® Kleine (2010, p. 126) also refers to the direct and indirect influences of technology. “4 ECHNOLOGY AND CAPABILITY because of the time it takes: the real opportunity that marks a capability was no longer there. As an example, let's look at mobile phones. Mobile phones have not suddenly allowed to us speak to each other, yet it expands our capability set for affiliation and practical reason. It does so by making it easier to talk to someone at a long distance and retrieving information from elsewhere. Before modern communication devices, people had to travel to achieve this; now, the communication is virtually instant. Mobile phones (and the fixed phones, and telegraph before) have made it less time consuming to communicate over long distances. Seldom does a technology allow a capability that was not there before; in most cases, technologies make a capability more easily available by reducing the required amount of time, effort, costs, etc. 4.3.2 CHOICE The introduction of a technology in a given structure with mechanisms changes the set of possible actions and results. Still, people have to choose whether they tum capabilities into functionings. An important factor in this choice is that capabilities can be realized in multiple ways and that the choice is often not whether we realize a capability, but how we realize a capability. Based on the perceived efforts and outcomes of a realization and our personal preferences, we make a choice between realizations. Let’s take mobility as an example. For myself, when 1 need to go somewhere | take into account the distance (can 1 walk, or take the bike), luggage (can I carry it or not), infrastructure (is there a train station or are there parking spaces), the weather (will 1 get wet and will the trains be operational), the impact on the environment (is the time 1 could win really worth, the possible damage), social contacts (do 1 want to have contact with people during the trip), time available (do I need to rush), costs (gas and train ticket prices), and my mood (do I feel like 1 could use a relaxed walk). For each consideration, different realizations have POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY different outcomes and in the end the total outcome that | prefer determines my choice*®. New technologies can have an impact on what the outcome will be by changing the (perceived) outcome for a certain consideration. For example, electric bikes have not only replaced conventional bikes, but also cars in the Netherlands (Hendriksen et al. 2008). An important factor that is not often found. in the capability literature, but is found in examples of problematic introductions of technology is that of the impact on someone’s social status. A few examples: instant formula for new mothers with HIV that is thrown away by these women because it shows that they are infected. Refusal of sorghum as food, because it is ‘poor mans’ foo. And finally, the fair-andlovely skin whitening cream that will increase your status by lightening your skin was heavily criticized for the discriminatory nature of the television commercials that showed this effect (Karnani 2007). In this way, technologies do not directly influence our behavior, but they influence our (perceived) options, and through them our behavior. 4.3.3. INDIRECT INFLUENCES: FEEDBACK INTO THE CONTEXT. The influences of technologies go further than changing a person's capabilities and functionings. A technology can also have indirect influences: for users and non-users, short-term and long-term, visible and unnoticeable (cf. Johnstone 2012, p. 87). In these cases, the structure or the mechanisms that tend to lead to a capability are changed by the new technology". This can lead to new characteristics © Not all decisions of course are made this explicitly. For more about (rational) choice, see (Sen 2009, chapter 8) © These changes can be catastrophic for societies. Though large-scale catastrophic influences of technology do not immediately come to mind, other contextual changes Gocial and cultural) have led to the end of entire societies, as can be read in the book “Collapse”, by Jared Diamond (2003) 5 JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT “An ethics of ... technology should open the black box of technology design and Development and describe its rich and heterogeneous content, and make an inventory of the degrees of freedom in the design and engineering process, which choices have been made and can be made, preferably before the problem becomes manifest, preferably before it is too late, preferably when ethics can still make a difference.” (van den Hoven 2007) In the preceding chapters, | have talked about justice, (the lack of) human development, and the influence of technology. In this chapter, l will bring these three parts together. This will allow me to answer the main question of my thesis: How can the lives of the poor be given attention and improved in a just way in the development of new technologies and. the introduction of existing technologies? From justice, 1 take the capability approach as the way to evaluate the lives of individuals. From poverty, | take that the capabilities of every individual should at least be that of the human minimum for every capability: the essential conditions for human life must be met and there should be no obstacles for the social capabilities. From technology and capability, 1 take that technology is connected to the social, material, cultural and personal sphere by means of influences and preconditions. Considering these answers, the main question can now be rewritten to “How can the minimum capability level for each person be reached POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY in the development of new technologies and the introduction of existing technologies?” To answer this question, I will first identify problems with the existing situation. Next, 1 will discuss a process to evaluate a technology in terms of capabilities. Finally, 1 will discuss who should be involved in this. 5.1 Why to open the black box of technology? In the previous chapter | discussed the relations between technology and the environment, where the environment is seen as a combination of the personal, social, cultural, and material spheres. These relations are not merely a theoretical framework to visualize relations between different areas. These relations are a reflection of the real world and a tool to comprehend why sometimes problems with technology emerge, and how we can try to prevent such problems. These problems are also not merely imagined or isolated, but there are many apparent problematic introductions of technology in LDC's. Let’s start small, with packaging. Almost everything we buy in a store comes in some kind of protective packaging, in most cases it is plastic, and sometimes it is made of paper or glass. In the highly developed countries, people are used to it, children grow up with it and there is an extensive system to dispose of it; there are even political debates about the best way to dispose packaging. As a result, most of the packaging is put in waste bins and is collected and processed. How different is the situation in less developed countries. When I visited Albania in 2002, there was a small river next to the town we were located, and at a bend in that small river, there was a huge pile of empty plastic bottles. People didn't know what to do with it, so they just threw it away. Likewise, in Namibia, there was a lot of litter lying around. And I heard a very plausible explanation for this behavior from somebody who visited the Bushmen in Namibia. He told that these people were used to the fact that everything around 70 JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT them was organic and that the things that they could not eat or use could be thrown away. After all, it would eventually decay, being a part of the ‘circle of life’. From that mindset, why would you collect your litter? If packaging is introduced in such a cultural context, how can we expect that people will dispose it in a waste bin, a thing they have possibly never even seen? And what if there is no garbage collection in the social infrastructure? But technology does not have to lead to physical, environmental problems. It can also lead to social problems, or enlarge social problems. An example of this could be seen in India, where the skin complexion is correlated with social status. People with a darker skin are discriminated and have a lower social rank*’. This discrimination is morally wrong, and violates the capability of respect for a person. Apparently, a dermatological company thought that people with a darker skin should not be discriminated, and should have equal opportunities as people with a lighter skin complexion. But here is where we meet the difference between Sen and Nussbaum again. For Sen, increasing people’s capabilities is enough, while Nussbaum has a much thicker conception of justice: a solution should also be morally good. The solution in India however was not morally good. In commercials, the new “Fair & Lovely” product was shown as a product that would raise your social status, by lightening up your skin (Karmani 2007). Instead of targeting the social problem of discrimination, it only made the problem worse: for those who could afford it, there was a way out of the lower social status, leaving those without the money, or the will, even worse off. In the previous chapter 1 have already named the example of woodstoves and different cooking styles in India in China, and there are more examples to be found that stress the need for an increased attention to ethics (capabilities/values) in design. Its black box needs © The same can be seen in other countries, like Namibia pe POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY observations by others that | have read or heard in the past. The table is not intended to be complete, but it illustrates the principle of evaluating a technology. Preconditions / Influence Users [Non-users Social 'A network of providers & pre-paid resellers 'A moneybased economy = Aggregation of individual choices Material y [A network of cell towers (Forestier, Grace, and Kenny 2002) "A network of providers & pre-paid resellers Power supply (Forestier, Grace, and Kenny 2002) Remote monitoring and controlling Possible interference with critical equipment in hospitals and airplanes - Health, |- Health Cultural Language based communication "Ring messages! (two rings = arrived safely) Marking ‘territory’ by (loud) ringtones (Gray 2011) | Leisure Personal [Ability to speak, hear and operate a device Source of income Maintaining contact with distant relatives and friends, to strengthen social network and absorb shocks (Frost and Sullivan 2006) + Affiliation, Getting access to information (market prices, work opportunities, health) (Frost and Sullivan. 2006) + Reason + Health, Increased status (Fantaw 2006, p. 90) + Affiliation, |- Affiliation [Always being reachable/traceable (Fantaw 2006, p 93.94) Integrity - Leisure Possible health issues caused by radio waves (Gaudin 2011) |- Health |- Health Have private conversations in public Paul 2011) | Leisure Interrupting conversation for phone call |. Affiliation. [Alternative for travelling (ike water pipes (Verbeek 2005)) Frost and Sullivan 2006) + Affiliation, |- Affiliation EWaste - Environment] - Environment Table 1 Evaluation of the preconditions and influence of mobile phones As can be seen, there is a wide variety of topics that are addressed. Professionals from different fields (.g. sociology, anthropology, technology, medicine, ethics, and ecology) can all make valuable contributions to the evaluation. JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT PRECONDITIONS From the results of this exercise, we can make the observation that preconditions are not directly linked to a specific capability. In fact, they may better be left out of the table and discussed separately, because they do require attention. If these preconditions are not in place, the capabilities of individuals can possibly not be attained. MATERIAL PRECONDITIONS The matetial preconditions firmly belong in the realm of design, and I trust that designers (for whom this process is envisioned) are aware of how to deal with these preconditions. Nonetheless, the analytical branch of the philosophy of technology may offer some interesting insights. CULTURAL PRECONDITIONS The cultural preconditions are at the other end of the spectrum. These require a good knowledge of the culture at a certain location, something that cannot be realized easily. For this, the help of people with knowledge of the culture (locals, or e.g. anthropologists) is necessary for a good evaluation. SOCIAL PRECONDITIONS ‘The social preconditions 1 found to be more interesting, because the society it possibly is the most malleable” of the environments. De Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof (2000) have studied the structures and mechanism of society and described much of its dynamics in the textbook “Networks and Decision Making”. Essentially, their approach shares a common view with the SCOT-approach of Pinch ® Though corruption is possibly the most evident example of influencing society, this is not the only way, and not what 1 propose here POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY and Bijker, but with a different perspective”. De Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof are more interested in using and shaping the network to ones desires rather than shaping the solution to the desires of the network. A big element in their view is the perception of the problem: if people are convinced that your solution addresses a real problem that needs to be addressed, they are more likely to support your solution. This can be achieved by broadening the problem, or by adapting the solution. In the end, a perfectly sound solution that is opposed by many people will do less for capabilities than a less perfect solution that people are happy to use. PERSONAL PRECONDITIONS The personal preconditions are most spoken about in the capabilities approach, because the approach includes the personal conversion factors. They are important, because people who do not meet the preconditions for a product, e.g. because of a disability or illness, are at risk of lagging behind. Now that our world is becoming ever more an information society, not having the skills to operate a computer can severely influence a person’s capability level. “The emergence of new capabilities is closely linked to the progress of scientific and technical innovations... Those with access to these innovations - and those who have the capacity to absorb them and use them - will have opportunities to reap social and economic advantages. Those without access and the appropriate capabilities risk being marginalized in the ‘knowledge societies’ of the future.” (Mansell and Wehn de Montalvo 1998, p. 10). * Barlier, 1 referred to Langdon Winner close to the phrase “opening up the black box”. Winner's article “Upon opening the black box of technology and finding it empty” gives an interesting critique on. the sociology of technology. Some lessons from that article are that we should look at the influence of technology (not just how it came to being) and that the term “relevant social groups” can be very biased, because it is unclear who decides which social groups are relative 76 JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT efforts have been taken to make the world a better place for all, but not all efforts have been equally successful. By looking at these efforts of the past, we can learn lessons for the future. A summary of these efforts is given by Ilse Oosterlaken (2008), who discusses three views on development for LDC’s (the three views were originally introduced by Leach and Scoones as three races to ‘the’ top of development (2006)). After discussing these views | will evaluate which view best supports the approach described before. 5.3.1 THREE VIEWS The first view on technology for development is that no specific technologies need to be designed and that LDC’s are not treated differently from any other country. The idea is that the upper classes of the society will be affluent enough to purchase (advanced) technologies, including for production of new technologies. This will increase the size of the economy by the purchase, the resulting maintenance, and the increase in labor efficiency, thus stimulating economic growth. This economic growth will then trickle down to the lower levels of society and thereby raise their standard of living and create a middle class who can spend more themselves, increasing the trickle-down effect. The second view is that specific technologies are brought to the LDC, which will have direct benefits for the entire population, or at least a large part of it. This is often called Technology Transfer. This view can be broken up into two different ideas, depending on the view of technology. The first is that of the Technological Fix the idea that (a specific) technology will solve a problem wherever it is introduced. Technology is seen as a panacea and one size fits all. An example of this is the green revolution of the 1970's that was believed to rid the world of hunger. The second idea, often called Appropriate Technology, is that technology depends on the specific local circumstances to be successful and has to be tailored to each specific context. S POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY The third view is that development in LDC's can best come from these countries themselves. According to this view, the best road to development is by letting people construct their own technologies that help them to develop: Grassroots development. An example of this is SouthKorea, that invested heavily in setting up factories themselves and saw an enormous development from a mere copycat to important producer of state-of theart technology (Lall 2003). China has also seen an enormous development, but with virtually no foreign influence, though the overall (non-economic) level of development in China is still questionable. North-Korea, a country that took the same course, did not manage to develop as quickly as its big communist brother. 5.3.2 TAKING THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT INTO ACCOUNT In the previous chapter, we have seen that technology is intricately connected to the material, social, personal, and cultural environment. Approaches that do not take this into account do not fit the part of our main question that the socio-economic context should be taken into account. No interference and the idea of a Technological Fix are thus not suitable. This does not necessarily mean that it can never be successful, but a technology that is brought to a LDC should not be introduced without thought, even though there might be some ‘no brainers’, like medication and mosquito nets. The result of an inquiry into the construction and use of technology in a society may very well be that the negative impacts are negligible, or of a lesser order than the impact of not introducing it. This leaves two options open: Appropriate Technology and Grassroots Development, which both focus on attention to the society and that can be used complementary. To start with the latter, a large part of technological development could be left to the people in LDCs themselves, perhaps with some financial (micro-credit) or intellectual support: they only need the “capability set for design” (Nichols and Dong 2012). This increases the chances that knowledge of the culture and society is taken into account while developing the technology, 80 JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT something that is harder for outsiders to achieve. Regarding ICT for Development, Unwin summarizes this as follows: “Far too often, externally generated solutions have been imposed without sufficient attention being paid to these crucial factors, and this is one of the main reasons why so many ICT4D projects have failed to deliver sustainable outcomes.” (Unwin 2009, p. 119). But local knowledge may also include injustices: “Pre-existing structures, such as in the distribution of political power, economic and asset wealth or in gender relations, are very difficult to wish away by the best intentions of grassroots activists, and indeed may become reinforced by their activities” (Parnwell 2008, p. 114). It can thus be helpful to look at the problems with a fresh eye. The pitfall of this help it that there is a risk that it becomes paternalistic, undermining the capability tor design of the local people. “Centralized development decision making, often involving city-based ‘experts’, is generally too detached from local contextual realities” (Parnwell 2008, p. 113). What is claimed is that local circumstances can be best described by local people themselves. However, some technologies that may bring much improvement for a certain capability rely on knowledge or resources that are not present in the LDC. This is e.g. the case with E-Health: “Despite the great potential of ehealth, many countries, especially in the developing world, are unable to derive benefit from it because they lack the capacity systematically to evaluate developments in ICT and make informed decisions about potential applications, country readiness for they adoption and adaptations to country-specific needs, circumstances and resources.” (Kwankam, PablosMendez, and Kay 2009) In this case, working together with foreign experts may result in technologies that take the society into account, and also have a positive effect on the capabilities in the LDC. In the end, cooperation between local people and external experts seems to be the best way to develop and evaluate a technology in a way that takes the capability set of those affected into account. 81 POVERTY & TECHNOLOGY irrevocable human rights that enable vital security that must be provided to every individual at a minimum level. On the relative side are social goods, that determine how well we are off in relation to others; in attaining those, none should be hindered. For measuring poverty, there are many data sources we can choose from, of which. the HDI is the closest to the capabilities approach. The HDI is based on a combination of indicators of capabi es and income. Still, we should not forget that aggregated data always hide information about distribution, and a good evaluation of capabilities should be based on individual data. On many capabilities, there are still many people who do not have the minimal level; geographically, these people mostly live in (subSaharan) Africa and South-East Asia. The effects of technology on capabilities can be described in terms of influences and preconditions. The preconditions exist of the social, material, cultural and personal objects, gathered in a structure, or network. The relations between these objects reflect the mechanisms that work in these structures. The combination of these structures and mechanisms are capabilities: the tendency to lead to an action. In the capability approach, this tendency is reflected by the choice that individuals can make in which capabilities they will tum into functionings. Because technological objects are a part of these networks, they can have an influence on the set of capabilities that are available for a person, or on the choices that an individual makes between different capabilities or different paths to the same capability. When these capabilities are realized, this can change the mechanisms in the network that constituted the capability at first. This can lead to a changing capability set, or to different individual choices in which. fold: directly changing the capability set, influencing the (perceived) choice capabilities to realize. The influence of technology is thus ti between capebilities, and indirectly changing the capability set and choices. The described influence of technology on the environment is not merely a theoretical idea, but in some cases a real problem. People’s &4 JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT capabilities can be greatly influenced by new technologies or technologies that are introduced in a new environment. Not in all cases does this mean an improvement, so it is important to consider capabilities before a technology is introduced. This calls for capability sensitive design, in which the capabilities of users and nomusers are central. Especially users that do not conform to the standard are important in this process, because they run the risk of lagging (even more) behind. Factors that should be taken into account are the effects on capabilities, the network in which the technology is introduced, and whether the technology can actually reach those who need its impact. By including local actors in the construction of a technology, the local context can be taken into account when designing or introducing a technology. 5.5 Evaluation & future research So, has this study answered the question that I set out to answer? At least I have specified the direction in which the answers lie, and ] have sketched out an approach to the answer. For concrete steps in the design and evaluation of technologies, the subject matter is too broad. Depending on the kind of technology and the context in which it is to be introduced, the exact steps for action should be filled in. The link between Actor-Network-Theory and Capability and Technology is one that might be interesting to investigate further, especially how the nature of the relationships in the network can be given more attention. 85 JUSTICE, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT Hamel, Jean-Yves. 2010. Human Development ICT4D and the Human. Development and Capabilities Approach: The Potentials of ICT. 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