INCLUSIVE URBAN
DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ICT
HOW RIO DE JANEIRO’S NAVES DO CONHECIMENTO
INTERVENTION IMPACTS THE WELLBEING OF THE
MARGINALIZED
University of Amsterdam / GSSS / International Development Studies
22.11.2016, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Research Master Thesis
by Léonard Vonlanthen
10987045 leo.vonlanthen@student.uva.nl1
Abstract
The emergence of the knowledge economy in the information age has deepened the digital divide and increased urban inequalities, with this trend most apparent in developing countries. This thesis incorporates the capability approach within a multistage mixed method design to evaluate the implementation and the impact of Rio de Janiero’s biggest municipal ICT intervention, and its potential as a contemporary measure for inclusive urban development countering the abovementioned trend. The intervention is only successful if it involves a non-discriminating environment and services (conversion factors) that allows the marginalized population to develop their ICT skills (capabilities); in turn, they then gain the freedom to use them in a rewardingly and wellbeing-enhancing way (functionings). The implementation analysis based on seven interviews finds that the intervention was designed and implemented to be socially and economically inclusive, but involves exclusionary participation requirements that might function as negative, institutionally produced conversion factors. The impact analysis compares the subjective, objective and partly relational wellbeing of the users and non-users along their needs (educational, financial, living, health and security situation), using a survey (N=55) contrasted and explained by 33 semi-structured in-depth interviews. It finds that the users’ slightly higher subjective educational wellbeing weakly relates to the provided technology and services usage frequency (Pearson Correlation r=0.24). Contrarily, the users’ objective wellbeing remains slightly lower than the non-users’ (thus only benefiting a few advanced users), but still leaving common users feeling significantly better integrated and connected in the community. The thesis concludes that the municipal intervention builds an admirable basis for inclusive development but has not yet reached its full potential, and needs to better include the local population in its decision-making and link their services and economic opportunities more efficiently. The thesis contributes to improving the practical and theoretical understanding of the relation between technology and development, with the hope of subsequently benefiting future ICT4D interventions and the building of a common theoretical basis.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who supported me in establishing this thesis. I want to thank my supervisor Dr. Linnet Taylor who invested a lot of time and thought giving constructive feedback and guidance at all times, my field supervisor Dr. Kalinca Copello who advised and supported me throughout my time in Rio and Dr. Nicky Pouw who agreed to be my second reader. Furthermore, I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Maria Helena Cautiero H. Jardim “the mother of the Naves”, her team and especially, all the participants of my study who build the foundation of this project as well as my (new and old) family and friends in Brazil, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Valeu!
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Content
Abstract ... 1 Tables ... 4 1 Introduction ... 6 1.1 Thesis Outline ... 7 2 Theoretical Framework ... 102.1 Uneven Development and Urban Inequalities... 10
2.2 Inclusive and Sustainable Development ... 11
2.3 Wellbeing ... 13
2.4 Modern Times call for Modern Measures ... 15
3 Research Design ... 26
3.1 Conceptual Framework ... 27
3.2 Operationalization, Methods and Data ... 29
3.3 Research Limitations and Difficulties ... 34
3.4 Research Ethics ... 35
4 Research Context ... 37
4.1 The Marginalized Population of Rio de Janeiro ... 37
4.2 Favela Upgrading and Social Housing ... 38
5 Analysis and Findings ... 40
5.1 Implementation of the Naves do Conhecimento ... 40
5.2 Impact of the Naves do Conhecimento ... 54
6 Discussion and Conclusion ... 75
References ... 79
Figures
Figure 1: Difference between Inclusive growth, Green economy, green society and inclusive development (Gupta et al., 2015) ... 12Figure 2: Worldwide internet access penetration (Graham and Straumann, 2013) ... 17
4 Figure 4: Social Progress Index values for wellbeing world map (The Social Progress Imperative, 2016)
... 20
Figure 5: Sites of Individual Internet Access by Education Level, Age, and Family Income (Lemos and Martini, 2011) ... 21
Figure 6: IDI score. Brazil overview (ITU, 2015) ... 23
Figure 7: Rio de Janeiro’s zones, favelas and research site. ... 39
Figure 8: Implementers' organizational structure ... 42
Figure 9: Markers = Nave location, 1: Nova Brasilia, 2: Santa Cruz, 3: Padre Miguel, 4: Madureira, 5: Iraja, 6: Penha, 7: Vila Alianca, 8: Triagem, 9: Engenhao (Cidade Olimpica). ... 49
Figure 10: Subjective Wellbeing Overview ... 66
Figure 11: Objective Wellbeing Overview ... 66
Figure 12: Acceptance of the Nave ... 70
Tables
Table 1: Research Design Concept ... 28Table 2: Operationalization Table for the concept of inclusiveness ... 30
Table 3: Operationalization Table for the concept of wellbeing ... 33
Table 4: Course availability ... 46
Table 5: Type of Nave Use: Multiple response answer... 55
Table 6: Type of LAN Table Use: Multiple response answer.. ... 56
Table 7: Usage Frequency of technology and services ... 57
Table 8: Non-Users reasons for Non-Usage ... 58
Table 9: Subjective Wellbeing Dimension Financial Situation ... 62
Table 10: Objective educational Wellbeing ... 63
Table 11: Subjective Wellbeing Dimension Educational Situation ... 63
Table 12: Subjective Wellbeing Dimensions Living Situation ... 63
Table 13: Subjective Wellbeing Dimension Health Situation... 64
Table 14: Subjective Wellbeing Dimension Safety Situation ... 64
Table 15: Subjective Wellbeing Dimensions Overview ... 65
Table 16: Relative Wellbeing Non-Users... 67
Table 17: Relational Wellbeing Users ... 67
Table 18: Perceived change of subjective wellbeing ... 68
Table 19: Perceived change since Nave use ... 71
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1 Introduction
This research project sets out to improve the understanding of whether contemporary information and communication technology (ICT) can increase the wellbeing of the urban poor and reduce inequalities in the case of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest municipal ICT intervention.
Since the new millennium, the internet has become increasingly important in people’s lives and builds the prerequisite for participation in many social and economic activities (Castells, 2002; Graham, 2011). However, similarly to capital, access and skills for internet usage are spread unequally increasing the social and economic inequalities (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Gilbert, 2010). These inequalities become most evident in urban areas (Brenner, 2004), given the clear dichotomy between poor and wealthy inhabitants who live side by side. Urban inequalities are often coupled with higher crime rates (Fajnzylber et al., 2002), the spread of disease (Alsan et al., 2011; Farmer, 1996) or stifling economic long term growth (Thorbecke and Charumilind, 2002), notwithstanding the overarching issue of substantial parts of the population living in inhumane conditions.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the urban inequalities are visible to the bare eye. While the residents and tourists of the wealthy South Zone take a break on the beach from shopping in Leblon’s luxurious boutiques, the residents of the infamous inner-city hillside favelas and the impoverished North Zone make their way southwards to offer their goods in their daily struggle to survive. Rio’s persistently staggering crime rate and Zika virus outbreak exemplify the difficulties that accompany high urban inequalities. It has become the aim of international organizations, local governments, academic circles and policy makers to find solutions, in order to stimulate equal economic growth, increase human wellbeing and elevate the poor. Many in the development sector see Information Communication Technology as an important tool, highlighted by the fact it has led to its own strand of development studies called ICT4D. Many promising studies have explored how ICT can improve health (Minichiello et al., 2013), education (Mitra et al., 2005) or economic activities (Pilat, 2003; Türen et al., 2016), encouraging national and local governments to adapt ICT policies and interventions. Rio’s city government is no exception to this trend, which is evident in the creation of its youngest department, the department of science and technology (SECT). SECT aims at improving the wellbeing of Rio’s citizens using Information and Communication Technology. Their newest intervention, Naves do Conhecimento, ('knowledge spaceships' in English), is an intervention offering ICT access and skills to improve the access to knowledge and information in the city’s areas with low human development (Prefeitura Rio de Janeiro, 2016). The nine Naves do Conhecimento, aka Naves, are spread over the outer zones of the city offering public internet access alongside free technical courses and cultural activities. They promise to improve the wellbeing of the poor and consequentially serve as a tool to reduce urban inequalities.
7 However, research of the interdisciplinary ICT4D strand shows that many such ICT interventions have failed, with some even countering the proposed benefits of the schemes by increasing inequality (Luciano Morganti et al., 2014); primary causation is blamed upon the fact that the relationship between ICT and development remains poorly understood (Heeks, 2007, 2002). Finding workable solutions is often foiled by the absence of a solid common theoretical basis and a lack of rigor research contributing to said basis (Burrell and Toyama, 2009). Therefore, this research project focuses on establishing if the Naves do Conhecimento intervention are leading to inclusive development, using a solid theoretical framework by adapting contemporary wellbeing, inclusive development and ICT4D theories to the capability approach of Amartya Sen (1985). This work shall contribute to a better understanding of ICT and development, primarily by filling in existing theoretical gaps in ICT4D. Inclusive development seeks to improve the wellbeing of the marginalized population while avoiding negative impacts on a variety of social, economic and environmental factors (Gupta et al., 2015). If the intervention is designed to be inclusive, the marginalized population of Rio has a better chance of improving their wellbeing. Hence, the design and implementation are related to the impact of the intervention on its target population. This results in the following research question:
“Are the Naves do Conhecimento in Rio de Janeiro leading to inclusive urban development through their inclusive implementation and wellbeing enhancement of the marginalized population?”
In order to find a comprehensive answer the research project takes upon a multi staged evaluation design divided into two main empirical analysis, each answering one main sub-question:
1. Are the Naves do Conhecimento planned and implemented in an inclusive way?
2. How are the Naves do Conhecimento influencing the wellbeing of the marginalized population?
The following thesis outline section provides a more detailed overview of how and in what order the thesis seeks to answer the research question and its sub questions.
1.1 Thesis Outline
The thesis is divided into theoretical, conceptual, contextual, empirical and concluding chapters. The theoretical chapter (2) will further explain the key theories underlying this research project. First, the theory of inclusive development, and both its commonalities and differences with precedent human development and sustainable development theories, are explained. Thereafter, the concept of wellbeing and its relations to inclusive development is demonstrated by using Sen’s capability approach. The concluding section demonstrates the role of ICT in our society. ICT4D is characterized as a multidisciplinary endeavor to find tools for inclusive development in the age of information and knowledge.
8 The research design chapter (3) explains how the mixed methods multistage evaluation design fits into the paradigm of pragmatism, and how the theoretical concepts of inclusive development and wellbeing were operationalized, in order to evaluate the inclusiveness of the intervention’s implementation from the implementers’ side, and its impact on wellbeing from the target population’s side.
The Research context chapter (4) provides an overview of the cultural and historical context of the marginalized population and introduces the social housing neighborhood within which the research took place.
Thereafter, the empirical section of the research presents findings in two chapters. Chapter 5.1 answers the first main sub question along three guiding sub-sub questions:
1.1 Who are the main actors behind the intervention and how are they organized? 1.2 What are the main goals, features and methods of the intervention?
1.3 What elements of inclusive development are incorporated in the design of the intervention? Understanding who planned the intervention, what their main goals are and how they plan to achieve them helps to identify the elements of inclusive development incorporated within the intervention’s design, and furthermore how inclusively they were planned and implemented. The analysis is based on the interviews with the implementers supported by maps, field observation and online research data.
Chapter 5.2 evaluates the impact of the intervention on the wellbeing of its users. It is crucial to establish if the users belong to the marginalized population, how their wellbeing has changed since the intervention and who is benefiting how from it. Non-users serve as an important source to measure the impact on wellbeing and for understanding the factors preventing usage. The concept of wellbeing was operationalized using the local population’s definition and preferences, in order to incorporate the local needs in the evaluation of the interventions impact. Consequentially, the second set of sub-sub questions are derived as follows:
2.1 Who is using the “Naves do Conhecimento”? 2.2 How are users and non-users defining wellbeing?
2.3 What are the levels of wellbeing of the “Naves do Conhecimento” users and non-users and how are they differing?
2.4 What is the perception of change in wellbeing of the “Naves do Conhecimento” users and non-users since their establishment?
2.5 Who benefits in what ways from the “Naves do Conhecimento”?
The quantitative survey data is completed and contrasted with qualitative interview data, thus ensuring a holistic and extensive analysis of the impact on the users’ wellbeing.
9 In the discussion and conclusion chapters (6), the findings are combined in order to answer if the
Naves do Conhecimento in Rio de Janeiro are leading to inclusive urban development through their inclusive planning and implementation and enhancement of wellbeing of the marginalized population.
Finally, it is discussed how the inclusiveness of the intervention’s design is affecting its impact on the wellbeing of the users. This provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the relation between ICT and development and input to guide further research. Moreover, it provides policy input on how to improve the intervention at hand; this should contribute towards improving the implementation of future ICT4D interventions in other urban areas.
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2 Theoretical Framework
The underlying influence and key goal of the thesis is to contribute towards contemporary tools for inclusive development. It requires the understanding of what inclusive development is and why it is needed; therefore, exclusive development (otherwise known as ‘uneven development’) and its consequences will be elaborated. Inclusive development is presented as an approach to overcome the negative externalities and inequalities caused by uneven development and globalization. Wellbeing plays a central role when measuring inclusive development, and in becoming a field of investigation and research on its own has demonstrated its comprehensiveness as a theory of development. Hence, contemporary ideas and conceptualizations of the construct will be presented. In order to understand how ICT might lead to inclusive development or influence the wellbeing of a certain population, the role and impact of ICT use on our society is explained. It is demonstrated how our society has become ICT dependent, and furthermore how unequitable distribution of this technology has reinforced the process of uneven development worldwide. To conclude, contemporary theories on overcoming the digital inequalities and using ICT as a tool for development will be presented. The research project will be positioned within the field of ICT4D and demonstrated how the intervention might allow for a better understanding of the impacts of ICT on development.
2.1 Uneven Development and Urban Inequalities
As in Rio’s case, many societies have become eminently unequal, whereat the richer grow richer and the poorer stay poor. Uneven development, together with social and political inequality, is often linked to globalization and global (urban) development theories (Wallerstein, 1989; Shatkin, 2007; Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000). Structural drivers for uneven development have been theoretically identified on a global (Brenner, 2014), regional (Goldfrank and Schrank, 2009) and urban level (Smith, 1996; Shatkin, 2007), with all impacting upon the individual realities of citizens. The uneven flow of capital through the urban, regional and international levels is the overarching driver of uneven development. Uneven development or dominant urban restructuring is driven by capital flows, whereby space is operationalized in order to maximize profit and thus increasing capital (Brenner, 2004, 2014). This process is highly exclusive as it favors the population that is in control of capital already. One needs to have disposable capital to invest in order to be able to benefit economic structural changes or intensifying capital flows (Harvey, 2001). The intensification of capital flows on a global level is also referred to as globalization (Joshi, 2009) or financial globalization (Kose et al., 2003). In a more general notion, global cities tend to be (re) integrated in the global political economy by increasing provision of export goods and services. Coupled with an increasing privatization of goods, services and land, this newly made surplus is kept among private (international) actors. Thus,
11 the needs of the urban poor are neglected, whilst simultaneously transforming urban space in order to maximize benefits for the aforementioned actors (Shatkin, 2007). Urban inequalities are often coupled with higher crime rates (Fajnzylber et al., 2002), the spread of disease (Alsan et al., 2011; Farmer, 1996) and stifling economic long term growth (Thorbecke and Charumilind, 2002), with these just three of numerous examples of negative consequences. These factors are underpinned by the core issue of substantial parts of the population living in inhumane conditions.
There is a vast body of theory regarding the inherence of the capital’s reinforcing exclusivity. Marx was amongst the first to demonstrate how, in a capitalist economy, technological improvement is leading to increased production and material wealth whilst simultaneously diminishing the economic value of the same wealth, thus leading to “poverty in the midst of plenty” (Marx, 1867). Meyer and Krücken show that globalization, seen as the dissemination of the western, capitalistic system, can cause extensive, negative externalities (2005). Most common among these negative externalities are environmental exploitation (Stern et al., 1996; Vieira and Carlos, 2009) and increasing social and economic inequality and deprivation (Piketty, 2014). However, after decades, these critiques could no longer be unheard and gave birth to a range of political, economic, social and academic movements, approaches and theories that tried to overcome the negative effects of processes highlighted above. The following section explains how human, sustainable and inclusive development have emerged in the attempt to counter uneven development.
2.2 Inclusive and Sustainable Development
The development sector is crucial when considering the need to push back against the numerous negative externalities which arise as a consequence of capitalism. When initially driven by a strong focus on economic development through GDP growth, it was soon realized that development as a concept was far more nuanced (Sen, 2001; Stiglitz, 2007). A strong shift towards the inclusion of environmental aspects emerged in the 1970’s (Adams, 2009: 65) and was soon after translated into the concept of sustainable development (Lélé, 1991: 610). Traditionally, sustainable development had a stronger focus on the inclusion of environmental rather than social factors (Gupta et al., 2015) and efforts to greater include the latter saw a subsequent further shift towards inclusive growth (Gupta et al., 2015). However, it was soon found that these two dimensions interrelate strongly amongst each other (Chopra et al., 2005), and therefore, contemporary conceptualization of inclusive development seeks to include the social, environmental and economic dimension equally (Rauniyar and Kanbur, 2010; Gupta et al., 2015). Gupta et al. note that the social dimension came under pressure during the latest global recession, which consequently led to a strong focus on the promotion of growth within environmental boundaries whilst diminishing the importance social components (ib.). These concepts
12 are referred to as green economy (UNEP, 2011) and green growth (World Bank, 2012; Gupta et al., 2015) (Figure 1).
Discussions within this thesis regarding sustainable and inclusive development will be referring to concepts of development that increase human wellbeing through social and economic opportunities while evading negative environmental externalities. It is “development that includes marginalized people, sectors and countries in social, political and economic processes for increased human wellbeing, social and environmental sustainability, and empowerment” (Gupta et al., 2015). Inclusive development aims to increase the material and social relational wellbeing of everyone, but especially focuses on the poorest and marginalized; key influences behind this include the desire to enhance the participation in decision-making (in order to include the interests of the marginalized and protect and enhance their little capabilities), to imply affordable access to civic amenities and basic infrastructure, to take the economic, social, political, ecological and cultural local context into account and to enhance the sectors the poorest are employed in (home based entrepreneurs, informal workers, street vendors etc. in Rio’s case) (Gupta et al., 2015). Hence, increasing the wellbeing of the poorest and marginalized
population through social initiatives and economic progress is the paragon of successful inclusive
development. The Marginalized population is defined as
“those excluded from mainstream social, economic, cultural, or political life. Examples of marginalized populations include, but are by no means limited to, groups excluded due to race, religion, political or cultural group, age, gender, or financial status. However, to what extent such populations are marginalized, however, is context specific and reliant on the cultural organization of the social site in question” (Given, 2008: 496).
Who can be considered as the marginalized population in Rio de Janeiro’s case will be further defined in the context chapter. Wellbeing, the second key concept, is summarily defined as “a good or satisfactory condition of existence; a state characterized by health, happiness, and prosperity” (Dictionary.com, 2016) or as “the state of being happy, healthy, or successful” (Merriam-Webster, 2016). It eludes that definitions can vary considerably, as the concept includes a realm of aspects of life that might be influenced in any possible way. This broadness of the concept has led to difficulties in finding a common definition among academics. The following section shall shed a better light on wellbeing and its relation to inclusive development.
Figure 1: Difference between Inclusive growth, Green economy, green society and inclusive development (Gupta et al., 2015)
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2.3 Wellbeing
We learned that improving wellbeing is a primary goal of inclusive development. In the last two decades, it has been increasingly acknowledged by various academics, policymakers and civil society actors that purely measuring economic production might not be sufficient to assess progress. Hence, “in the quest to increase GDP, we may end up with a society in which citizens are worse off” (Stiglitz et al., 2009: 12). The growing consensus is that traditional economic measures need to be supplemented by other measures founded in a more holistic view of human progress (OECD, 2013). The Human Development Index (HDI), introduced by Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen in the 1990s, was one of the most prominent examples of shifting the attention from economic to human wellbeing (Srinivasan, 1994). However, measuring wellbeing has become a main challenge and reason for confusion, dispute but also collaboration among disciplines, scholars and implementers. This is grounded in the theoretical broadness of the concept of wellbeing, itself sometimes interchangeably referred to as quality of life, happiness or wellness by different strands. Cooke et al. explain the differences in the definition of wellbeing through the disciplinary traditions and boil the concept down to four main strands; the hedonic approach, the eudemonic approach, the quality of life approach and the wellness approach (Cooke et al., 2016). The first two have their origins in psychology and sociology, while the latter are more prevalent in medicine and counselling. In IDS the understanding of wellbeing is often linked to the capability approach of Sen’s development as freedom that has many communalities with the wellness and QoL approach (1999).
“The capability approach marks a person's well-being in terms of his functionings and his capabilities: respectively, his achievements or realized life and his potential or feasible life set, and his reasoned and deliberated freedom to choose how to live” (Agee and Crocker, 2013: 81).
Hence, wellbeing is closely related to Sen’s key concepts of functionings and capabilities. “Functionings are the “beings and doings” of a person, whereas a person’s capability is “the various combinations of functionings that a person can achieve” (Robeyns, 2000). In context, the functionings are the measureable things someone has achieved, whilst capabilities are the chances one has to achieve these things. The binding element between functionings and capabilities are the conversion factors, which determine how someone can convert capabilities into functionings. There are personal and social characteristics that compose the conversion factors (ib.); personal characteristics can be one’s metabolism, physical condition, reading skills, intelligence, etc. and social characteristics can be infrastructure, institutions, public goods, public policies, social norms, discriminating practices, gender roles, societal hierarchies, power relations etc. (ib.). Robeyns uses a simple but illustrative analogy of a bike to understand the different components of wellbeing. Riding a bike can increase one’s speed and mobility compared to walking on foot. Being faster and mobile (because of riding a bike instead
14 of going on foot from A to B) would be the functioning. To make use of the bike one needs to know how to ride a bike, thus the chance to learn bike riding is the capability. However, the chances to learn riding a bike are determined by the conversion factors i.e. personal and social characteristics. Learning to ride a bike might be difficult or impossible if one has no legs (personal) or if there are no roads or bike riding is prohibited by law (social).
The main difficulty of the concept remains in how to operationalize it. Sen always refused to provide an exclusive or predefined set of dimensions and variables explaining how capabilities could be measured. On a macro level the HDI was the first successful endeavor to measure human wellbeing beyond purely economic factors (United Nations Development Programme, 1999). Later attempts to define encompassing lists of capabilities, such as Nussbaum’s (2000), were often criticized for being too reductive and running counter the idea of the capability approach to promote a holistic account of human wellbeing (Alkire, 2002). Debate on how best to measure wellbeing has been lengthy ever since, and has in turn led to the development of further indices such as the IHDI (Inequality adjusted HDI) or SPI (Social Progress Index)1. One consensual agreement in the debate is that wellbeing is multi-dimensional; “there is a global convergence around a conceptual framework for human well-being that is multidimensional” (OECD, 2013: 1). A common division is the difference between subjective wellbeing and objective wellbeing. Objective wellbeing is based on observable factors such as richness, health, tangible goods, etc. Therefore, objective wellbeing is often described as material wellbeing, as it can be easily measured in physical goods one acquires. Material wellbeing relates to the extent to which people meet their basic human needs (in terms of food, source of income, housing, access to service etc.) on a secure and sustainable basis; this dimension is often understood as welfare (McGregor et al., 2015). Subjective well-being refers to wellbeing which is psychologically experienced (D’Acci, 2011) and is hence often described as psychological wellbeing or happiness. Subjective wellbeing refers to people’s perceptions of what constitutes a good or improved life. It is the extent to which people are satisfied with being able to realize the goals that they believe are necessary to lead a good life (McGregor et al., 2015), and the overarching level of satisfaction with one’s life in all its areas. The third wellbeing dimension is relational wellbeing, which refers to personal and social relations. It is the most complex type of wellbeing, because it involves collective structures and how a person is situated within them. It includes the perceived networks of support, incorporating ones relation to family, relatives and friends (OECD, 2013). Relative wellbeing influences one’s ability to become who and what they are and want to be (McGregor et al., 2015: 233). The three dimensions
1 The social progress index provides an interesting combination on measuring human development whereby wellbeing, besides basic human needs and opportunities, builds one of the dimensions of social progress ((The Social Progress Imperative, 2016)). It will be used to illustrate relationships between technology and wellbeing further bellow.
15 are believed to mutually influence each other (Pouw and McGregor, 2014); for instance, if one has a high level of material wellbeing this may have a consequential impact on the makeshift of his relational or subjective wellbeing (and vice versa) (ib.). When it comes to measuring wellbeing, methods and procedures once again differ. McGregor highlights the difference between top-down and bottom-up, subjective and objective and qualitative and quantitative approaches. A combination of all influencing factors is recommended in order to measure wellbeing in a holistic, comprehensive way (McGregor et al., 2015). The OECD report suggest similar to include subjective and objective data when measuring wellbeing.
“Measuring well-being makes use of existing objective data but also involves the generation of subjective data that takes account of peoples’ own aspirations and their evaluations of their experiences of development (OECD, 2013: 1).”
It becomes clear that difficulties in specifying or generalizing wellbeing arise because it can be something highly personal and culturally specific.
“We have emphasised that there are likely to be differences in what is required for well-being in different societal contexts. This means that all exercises to assess human well-being must involve a new step to ascertain what is important for people’s well-being in any particular context” (OECD, 2013: 12). Hence, the concept of wellbeing will be further specified in relation to the definitions of the population. This supports and emphasizes the necessity of using a mixed methods design to gather objective, subjective and relational data while using individual perceptions (bottom-up) to define and refine common (top-down) components of wellbeing accordingly and adopt the concept of wellbeing to the specific context.
2.4 Modern Times call for Modern Measures
When trying to imagine how the construction of a building filled with Information Communication Technology in an impoverished part of the city should lead to inclusive development (and consequently increase the wellbeing of the marginalized population), one needs to think about development beyond its occidental, romanticized projection and take the ongoing changes of our globalized society and its conceptualization into account. The romantic imaginary of international development, first apparent in the 1950’s, is the deployment of western technology in an under developed, preferably sub-Saharan, country leading to prosperity for everyone (Escobar, 1995). However, the development perspectives and the role of technology are tightly interlinked with global social changes. Therefore, the next section will discuss how the emergence of ICT (Information Communication Technology) has drastically changed and continuously will change our society and what consequences and challenges it poses for the development sector using the example of Brazil.
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2.4.1 The Information Society and the Knowledge Economy
The last three decades have brought about enormous changes with far reaching impacts on today’s and future’s society, with some suggesting a complete social and economic revolution. Encompassing possibilities include a knowledge economy, an information or a computer revolution, a third wave of human history bringing about a post-industrial, post service and post-modern network society, or a second machine age (Benkler, 2006; Dahrendorf, 1977; Castells, 1996; Brynjolfsson, 2014). Said upheaval is brought about by the emergence of information communication technology (ICT), within which technological devices such as computers or cell phones, using broadband or mobile internet as medium, provide the technological base which allows any person around the globe to connect and communicate with each other in numerous ways. In modern society, ICT has become ubiquitous and for many it has become difficult to imagine a life without it. It has changed the way we use language (Spagnolli and Gamberini, 2007) how we meet or interact with people (Boyd and Ellison, 2007), how we organize our daily lives, and how we gather knowledge or how we learn (Mitra, 2010). On the economic side, there has been a crucial change in the mode of production as well as the resources required for production. The production of goods through physical resources has been substituted by the provision of services through non-physical resources, namely information and knowledge. Castells (1996) argues that knowledge and information have been critical components of economic growth, and that evolution of technology has, in turn, largely determined the productive capacity of society and standards of living, as well as social forms of economic organization. However, in the age of the information economy, it is information itself that has become the product of the production process (Castells, 1996: 67). It is closely coupled with the advent of the digital good. As in the industrial age, the rate and number of the production of a certain good determines output and consequently revenue; in the digital age, digital goods can be replicated arbitrarily at virtually no cost, and therefore information and know-how2 becomes ever more important. Information is passed between individuals forming networks. Thus, network connections are posited as crucial to obtaining the raw materials of the post-industrial, third-wave, networked society (Castells, 2002). Such networks are global but not universal; in this sense, they are spread around the world but they do not include every country, city, neighbourhood or household on Earth. On the contrary, they are very selective on which nodes of the urban network they interconnect with and on the intensity of the connections (Tranos and Gertner, 2012: 180). In that regard, the networked society and its new economy is likely leading to uneven development, including the facets described above. While the few connected to the new global digital production network profit from the surplus, others remain excluded. Castells argues that
2 In a world of theoretical omniscience, memorizing knowledge becomes ever less important and access to knowledge or know-how to access ever more important.
17 this is because the rise of the internet occurred when social inequality had a large bearing on access to the service. However, the digital inequalities go beyond mere access to ICT; the following section will further elaborate the so-called ‘digital divide’ that drags through continents, countries, cities and social classes.
2.4.2 Digital Divide and Digital Inequalities
As with capital, the rapid yet uneven diffusion of the internet across the planet is causing the so-called “digital divide”. “The usual meaning of the digital divide refers to inequality of access to the internet” (Castells, 2002: 248). On a global scale, the digital divide becomes immediately apparent. When looking at the distribution and penetration of internet access worldwide (Figure 2) one can see the unequal total amount of internet accesses and percentage of total population with internet access between the countries. Using raw numbers of internet users, Figure 2 illustrates the countries as the size of their percentage of the total number of (global) internet accessers. The biggest internet user population, with around 400 million users, is China, followed by the United States. The saturation of the color illustrates the internet penetration of each country, and it is evident that the map is skewed compared to a classical, cartographic map of the world. China, India, the United States and Western Europe is overrepresented, South America and parts of Asia are much smaller while Africa is almost non-existent. Especially considering the percentage of people online (color of the countries), an apparent global divide between what is referred to as developing and developed countries. Brazil has the biggest proportion of internet users of Latin America, yet the 40-60% penetration amongst its population is of a low level compared to “developed” countries.
18 Even though the map is illustrating an already very drastic picture of the digital divide, “[…] Internet access is only one component of the global digital divides that serve to amplify the differences between the privileged and underprivileged” (Graham, 2011). Once connected entirely different divides are possible, which Graham refers to as the virtual divide. There are different limitations of internet usage causing the virtual divide; for instance, censorship: “Nation states, government agencies, the private sector and even individuals are all able to construct layers of censorship that effectively make parts of the internet inaccessible” (Graham, 2011: 221). Additionally there are cultural differences: “It remains that English is a dominant language on the internet. Those not fluent in English are likely to face significant barriers to both non-proximate communication and organizing online content into meaning” (Graham, 2011: 222). Lastly, there is the lack of visibility of certain websites: “there are immense difficulties involved in being able to organize, classify and move through the thirty billion web pages on the internet. Ranking and ordering systems are powerful factors which allow some information to remain visible while other content stays hidden” (Graham, 2011). All sorting, ordering and ranking systems are inevitably hierarchical due to the searching algorithm of most contemporary searching engines on the internet that function as a portal to the cyberspace (e.g. Google). The visibility is determined by the importance of a webpage assigned by the algorithm, which takes the quantity of hyperlinks as an indicator. “This means that the websites of organizations already well integrated into the social and economic fabric of large segments of society are more likely to be made visible” (Graham, 2011). This connects very well to Castell’s earlier argument that the internet is structured by its first users. Therefore, ones experience of moving through cyberspace is very much determined by how the cyberspace is structured, but also by where in the network one is positioned, increasing or decreasing the probability to access certain parts of the network. Hence, it eludes that internet access is crucial as “the prerequisite for many types of communication, information access, and participation in nonlocal cultural, economic, and political processes” (Graham et al., 2012) however, in order to make use of these processes for one’s own benefit, a certain skillset is required. Furthermore, there are other influencing structural and social factors, i.e. the examples of the virtual divide that limit ones possibilities of using the technology; this translates easily to the capability approach. ICT can be used to participate in the global economic network or increase one’s knowledge and ultimately translate into various functionings. However, one’s capabilities to do so depend on the personal and social conversion factors. Using our previous bike analogy, ICT access to an illiterate
19 individual is as useful as a bike to the person without legs. Slow internet, censorship or gender roles3 might be further conversion factors when mentioning only a few social characteristics.
In order to draw a more complete picture of global digital inequalities, the ITU (International telecommunication union) has constructed its own index, the ICT Development Index (IDI), which takes ICT access4, ICT usage5 and ICT skills6 into account. Once again, the digital divide can be illustrated quite drastically. Observing the map (Figure 3), the IDI scores seem to correlate strongly with other development indices such as the HDI, GDP or Social Progression Index wellbeing scores (Figure 4). This further emphasizes the point made previously of how ICT skills relate to ones functionings. When looking at Brazil’s IDI, the relatively low score of 4.29 (South Korea has the highest score of 8.64 and Chad has the lowest available score of 0.88)7 can already be taken as an indicator on which side of the digital gap Brazil is positioned (ITU, 2015). As mentioned earlier, Brazil has the biggest Internet User population of Latin America, yet the digital inequality on both a global and country scale is high – this is demonstrated by Brazil’s ranking of 73 in the IDI of 2010 (ITU, 2015). Hence, Brazil can be positioned on the lower end of the digital divide.
Figure 3: ICT Development Index scores. World map. (ITU, 2015)
3 Stack overflow, a world wide software developer platform, shows that 92% of their users are male ((Stack Overflow, 2015)). This shows how male dominated many of the professional knowledge and capital producing online networks are and gender could be a conversion factor.
4 Access sub-index: This sub-index captures ICT readiness, and includes five infrastructure and access indicators (fixed-telephone subscriptions, mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions, international Internet bandwidth per Internet user, households with a computer, and households with Internet access) (ITU, 2015).
5 Use sub-index: This sub-index captures ICT intensity, and includes three intensity and usage indicators (individuals using the Internet, fixed broadband subscriptions, and mobile-broadband subscriptions) (ITU, 2015). 6 Skills sub-index: This sub-index seeks to capture capabilities or skills that are important for ICTs. It includes three proxy indicators (adult literacy, gross secondary enrolment, and gross tertiary enrolment). As these are proxy indicators, rather than indicators directly measuring ICT-related skills, the skills sub-index is given less weight in the computation of the IDI than the other two sub-indices (ITU, 2015).
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Figure 4: Social Progress Index values for wellbeing world map (The Social Progress Imperative, 2016)
Exclusive of the elaborated global divide, there are inequalities or a digital divide within countries as well. Castells illustrates, using the example of longitudinal US household data of the early days of the internet (around the turn of the millennium), that internet access depends on level of income, education and ethnicity (Castells, 2002: 249). Therefore, he argues that: “the ethnic digital divide continued to be indicative of the fact that the information age is not blind to colour” (Castells, 2002: 249). Nor is it blind towards level of education and income. In short, it can be argued that one’s capabilities to use the internet rewardingly depends on many factors that make up what can be defined as the social class.
That the digital divide also carves through social classes can be shown with Brazil’s country level data on internet usage. There is a big difference in internet access between the varying income brackets. In the lower brackets, less than 16% of the households have internet access at home while in the highest bracket 88% of the households do (Figure 5).
21 In particular, citizens of lower income brackets rely on public internet access. Lemos and Martini showed that the use of paid public internet access, mostly through so called LAN Houses, is most common amongst said income class (2011). The same accounts for the socio- economic class; 79% of the people from lower income classes (D and E)8 access the Internet from paid public access centers (PPACs) (Figure 5). The LAN Houses are comparable with Internet Cafes where one pays per minute to use a computer with internet access. They are very popular in Brazil and have now become a phenomenon proliferating in poor communities, especially the favelas (Lemos and Martini, 2011: 31). Alone in Roccina, the biggest favela of Rio, there were approximately 130 in 2008 (ib.). The high demand for internet access through all social classes exemplifies how necessary Internet has become in today’s society.
“It’s the technological tool and organizational form that distributes information power, knowledge generation, and networking capacity in all realms of activity. All projected services and applications that people will really need for their work and lives depend on access to these new transmission technologies” (Castells, 2002: 269).
The correlation of wellbeing and the ICT development index reinforces this point. “If there is any consensus about the societal consequences of increased access to information it is that education and life-long learning become essential resources for work achievement and personal development” (Castells, 2002: 258). This demonstrates how important the digital sphere has become in today’s international development efforts. “Without an internet based economy and management system, there is little chance for any country to generate resources necessary to cover its developmental needs on a sustainable ground meaning economically, socially and environmental sustainable” (Castells, 2002: 269). In the second machine age, “development without internet would be equivalent of industrialization without electricity in the industrial era” (ib.). Consequently, it has efforts trying to
8 In this illustration, socioeconomic classes in Brazil, ranging from A to E, are identified by a point system based on the socioeconomic criteria of the householder income, education level, and ownership of a series of domestic utensils. (Lemos and Martini, 2011)
Figure 5: Sites of Individual Internet Access by Education Level, Age, and Family Income (Lemos and Martini, 2011)
22 close the digital divide and reduce digital inequalities are at the forefront of numerous contemporary development projects.
2.4.3 Bridging the Gap with ICT4D
“Almost every major international development agency now has a programme to tackle the ‘digital divide’ and every industrialized nation (as well as many in the global South) devotes significant resources to reversing domestic ‘digital divides’” (Graham, 2011: 213).
Brazil, and specifically Rio, is no exception to this described trend. After the World Cup, the Olympics 2016 were the main driver for development projects in Rio. Since the qualification for the Olympic Games, most of Rio’s development projects have been closely linked to the games. “The vision and mission of the Rio 2016 Games were inspired by the global planning strategy of the city and country in the long-term” (Rio2016 2013). Therefore, most of Rio’s urban development programs have been fused into one big attempt to ready the city for the upcoming games. The Naves do Conhecimento intervention is coordinated by Rio’s department of science and technology (SECT) and is generally aimed at making the citizens of Rio digitally literate. Its goal is to “democratize access to information and knowledge about new forms of learning in collaborative and creative environments. To promote the mediation of qualified information and the development of skills for people of the third millennium” (SECT, 2016). In other words, SECT attempts to use ICT to reduce digital inequalities. Development through ICT is not a recent phenomenon. The notion of ICT4D was introduced around the 1980’s (Thapa and Sæbø, 2014: 1) and is an interplay between information (I), communication (C), technology (T), and development (D) (Heeks, 2007). ICT4D has become a multidisciplinary field of computer science, information systems and development studies (Thapa and Sæbø, 2014) where development is seen as the consequence of interplay between socio-technical components (Walsham and Sahay, 1999). In the field of ICT4D emphasis is placed upon the importance of how ICT is used and implemented “Technology needs to be designed to be able to operate in a complex social, political, economic, and cultural context” (Thapa and Sæbø, 2014: 1).
As mentioned, providing access merely by facilitating the technology will not bridge the digital divide. Early, failed development projects have shown often enough that the mere provision of technology is not consequently leading to development; for instance, the deployment of industrial machinery on the African continent has not led to an African industrial revolution. Similarly, the mere deployment of computers in Brazil cannot be expected to lead to its informational revolution. On contrary mere provision of ICT might lead to negative outcomes:
“[…] the level of digital skills and the ability to use ICTs to one’s own social, economic, cultural or political benefit, has proven to define one’s capacity to become empowered. Low and unskilled individuals, on the contrary, are experiencing an increased sense of disempowerment, as they have no power or
23 influence on the processes of digitization or on the overall presence and integration of ICTs in all life domains. As such, the ongoing and widespread digitization of Western capitalist societies, often led by a market-driven reasoning of commodification and cutting down costs, is creating and, in many cases, reinforcing existing social and digital inequalities” (Luciano Morganti et al., 2014: 43).
This shows how important it is to overcome new digital inequalities by not only providing access, but also opportunities in order to create the necessary skills to be able to use the technology in an empowering manner.
Recent data and a simple longitudinal analysis suggests that the informational revolution is already well underway in Brazil. In terms of ICT development (accompanied with other socio-economic aspects) Brazil is one of the fastest developing countries worldwide (ITU, 2015), demonstrated by a 50% rise in IDI score over the last five years (from 4.29 to 6.03) and subsequent rise from 73 to 61 in rank, placing it higher than Turkey or Malaysia. Households with internet access doubled while mobile
broadband subscription quadrupled (Figure 6).
Figure 6: IDI score. Brazil overview (ITU, 2015)
This amplifies the notion that Brazil has long entered the digital age, making ICT development interventions indispensable to prevent the increasing of social and economic inequalities through digital inequalities. Hence, it becomes crucial to provide the skills of the digital age for those currently digitally and socially excluded.
It is believed that the Nave do Conhecimento, as an ICT intervention, could lead to inclusive urban development. In an ideal scenario, the intervention attempts to overcome the (naïve) implications of the technological panacea by providing opportunities to obtain the required know-how alongside with the technology and thus increase the users’ wellbeing. It is therefore necessary to evaluate if the intervention is truly designed to reduce digital inequalities, and how efficient it is in doing so.
24 Participants will only have a chance to enhance their functionings if the intervention is designed to include the marginalized population and aims to both minimize negative, and maximize positive, conversion factors. In a more practical context, only if the intervention involves a non-discriminating environment and services that allow the marginalized population to develop their ICT skills they gain the freedom to use them in a rewardingly and wellbeing enhancing way.
However, “numerous projects involving ICT innovation in developing countries have failed to achieve the anticipated benefits” (Heeks, 2002), primarily because the relation between ICT and Development is still only understood poorly (Thapa and Sæbø, 2014; Graham, 2011). The lack of rigor and an underlying theoretical paradigm to build on, test or extend further concepts in most ICT4D research has been criticized and is seen as hindering factor to better understand mentioned relationship (Heeks, 2008; Burrell and Toyama, 2009). Furthermore, in most ICT4D research the views on development from the different stakeholders involved are often not taken into consideration (Loh, 2015). The capability approach of Sen is mentioned as a valid concept to understand the relation of inclusive development through ICT, as many ICT4D projects were initiated with the objectives of contributing to social, cultural, economic, human, and political problems (Loh, 2015; Thapa and Sæbø, 2014). Subsequent, evaluated ICT4D intervention were predominantly focused on rural areas, aimed at the reduction of poverty (Duncombe, 2006), enable social economic emancipation (Kanungo, 2004) or support cultural, economic and social development (Heeks and Kanashiro, 2009) etc. The Nave do Conhecimento intervention is no exception as it is trying to provide digital literacy in education, entertainment, services and training in areas with low human development (Prefeitura Rio de Janeiro, 2016). The capability approach therefore fits as an underlying theoretical foundation of the inclusive development theories and our concept of wellbeing, and will thus allow us to better understand how wellbeing is influenced through ICT use. Furthermore, the approach will allowed nuanced analysis regarding the role played by conversion factors, which are embedded in the intervention’s design and are linked to the social and personal characteristics of the potential users. Moreover, focusing on an urban area will provide further, diverse input to the rather rural oriented field of ICT4D.
The global and country analysis shows how digital inequalities caused by uneven development correlate with the levels of wellbeing and development indicators on both levels. This emphasizes the importance of contemporary and practical tools to reduce uneven development in the accelerated information society. On a more general note, the research shall contribute to the understanding of the relation between ICT and inclusive development by evaluating the relationship between the ICT intervention and its impact on wellbeing, including the views of various stakeholders on the implementing and receiving end of the intervention. The organizational and local cultural context will thereby be taken into consideration, delivering further input to evaluate and explain the impact of the
25 Nave do Conhecimento intervention. Evaluating structure, implementation and impact of the intervention shall help to identify elements that enhance or decrease the success of the intervention and animate the concerned parties to take action. A mixed method multistage evaluation design builds the foundation for a rigorous analysis and further research. The following chapter on research methodology elaborates how all these demands are met.
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3 Research Design
It is the overarching goal of this research project to identify contemporary, inclusive development tools with the potential to reduce urban inequalities. The findings should contribute to answering the conceptual question under which conditions ICT interventions lead to inclusive urban development. This research project is founded on the scientific paradigm of pragmatism. Pragmatism is a deconstructive paradigm that, “sidesteps the contentious issues of truth and reality, accepts, philosophically, that there are singular and multiple realities that are open to empirical inquiry and orients itself toward solving practical problems in the ‘‘real world’’” (Feilzer, 2010: 8; Dewey, 1925; Rorty, 1999). In our case, the problem at hand is the overwhelming inequality of Rio’s society, with desire to thus establish whether ICT is a practical and effective solution to reduce inequality in the case of the Naves do Conhecimento. The ideal effect of the city’s intervention would be an increase in wellbeing of the marginalized population, using the infrastructure, services and technology provided. From the objective and measurable reality of positivism via the ‘‘contextualised causal understanding’’ of realism (Greene et al., 2001: 29) to the subjective plurality of interpretivism, a paradigm can constrain intellectual curiosity and creativity, blind researchers to aspects of social phenomena, or even new phenomena and theories (Kuhn, 1962: 24), and limit the ‘‘sociological imagination’’ (Mills, 1959). It is not believed that the simplistic provision of ICT will reduce inequalities per se. However, it is important to test and explore the relationship between the two, in order to improve ICT as an inclusive development tool for the future. The case of Rio’s Nave do Conhecimento intervention provides the environment under which this relationship can be further explored and tested.
Pragmatism rejects the possibility of taking a position between the opposing paradigms and rather focuses on their communalities. Both objective and subjective inquiries attempt to produce knowledge that best corresponds to, or represents, reality (Rorty, 1999). In a way, pragmatism is a commitment to uncertainty, an acknowledgement that any knowledge ‘‘produced’’ through research is relative and not absolute, and that even if there are causal relationships they are ‘‘transitory and hard to identify’’ (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009: 93). Based on these beliefs, it is acknowledged that there can be big gaps between a simple theory and the messy practice. Therefore, it is not only important to know if ICT use is leading to the improvement of wellbeing but also to take into account the uncertain circumstances and/or differing possibilities and realities of why (or why not) such relationships can be observed. It is crucial to make use of, and further develop, existing theories that explain human behavior through casual relations and patterns. In our case, we want to explore and explain the relationship between ICT and wellbeing development using the theoretical framework of the capability approach inherent in inclusive development and wellbeing theories by using a multistage evaluation design. This will allow analysis as to whether the Nave do Conhecimento
27 intervention is leading to inclusive development in a comprehensive way. Therefore, the overarching conceptual framework, how the concepts were operationalized, what methods for data collection and analysis were used will be discussed in the following two sections. The difficulties and research limitation as well as the research ethics are presented in two separate sections rounding up the research design chapter.
3.1 Conceptual Framework
The ICT intervention “Naves do Conhecimento” is examined by using a multistage evaluation design. “The intent of the multistage evaluation design is to conduct a study over time that evaluates the success of a program or activities implemented into a setting” (Creswell, 2015: 46). A mixed method approach is utilized in order to test the impact of the intervention, explain and contextualize the effects and explore conditions and practices for inclusive development interventions using ICT. The overarching conceptual framework is adopted from the capability approach. The intervention is providing goods and services that are a prerequisite for turning one’s capabilities into functionings. In practical terms, the intervention is providing technology (goods) and courses (services) to improve one’s ICT skills that could thereafter be used to increase one’s wellbeing (capabilities). Increasing one’s wellbeing through the Nave use is seen as the functionings (Table 1). This conceptualizes the hypothesis9 that: using the technology and services provided through the Naves do Conhecimento
intervention, increases one’s wellbeing.
However, there are two requirements attached to this hypothesis. We have learnt from Sen’s capability approach that certain personal, social and environmental factors, referred to as conversion factors, might influence one’s capabilities to improve one’s wellbeing (functionings). Hence, they will be included in the analysis, providing important input to help explain the impact of the intervention. It is believed that the implementers can influence these conversion factors through their planning and implementation of the Intervention. They cannot change the explicit personal and social characteristics of their target population; however, they should take into account what consequences the specific contextual conversion factors have on the effectiveness of their intervention. They shape the conditions under which one could increase their wellbeing (capabilities). Thus, the first requirement determines: only if the Naves are designed and implemented to be inclusive, the
intervention has the potential to lead to inclusive urban development.
Since the goal is to find out if the intervention can be seen as form of inclusive development, the intervention’s impact should benefit the marginalized population. This conceptualizes the second
9 The term working hypothesis would also fit because the relation between ICT use and development is still poorly understood (Thapa and Sæbø, 2014) therefore, the research project further explores and tests this link.
28 requirement: only if the marginalized population is increasing their wellbeing by using the Naves, the
intervention can be seen as a form of inclusive urban development.
Combined, this leads to the following research question: “Are the Naves do Conhecimento in Rio de Janeiro leading to inclusive urban development through their inclusive implementation and wellbeing
enhancement of the marginalized population?”
The evaluation of the intervention is divided into two main analysis: Implementation analysis and impact analysis. The implementation analysis evaluates the design and execution of the intervention from the implementers’ side while the impacts analysis evaluates the effects of the intervention on its target population (user side). Each analysis is answering one main sub-question.
1. Are the Naves do Conhecimento planned and implemented in an inclusive way? (Implementation Analysis)
2. How are the Naves do Conhecimento influencing the wellbeing of the marginalized population? (Impact Analysis)
Although each analysis could be seen as an independent study in the way they were conducted, the findings are combined and relations discussed throughout the empirical chapters and rounded up in the discussion and conclusion. Both analysis are guided along a set of sub-sub questions that provide the structure for the two main empirical chapters. Table 1 illustrates the overarching theoretical hypothesis and how it is empirically evaluated further explained in the following sections.
Theoretical Hypothesis
General Idea ICT Intervention leads to Inclusive Development
Practice Nave use leads to Increased Wellbeing
Capability Approach
Goods / Services converting into Capabilities
leads to Capabilities converted into Functionings
Empirical Evaluation
Multi Stage Evaluation
Implementation Analysis Impact Analysis Research Sub
Question
Are the Naves do
Conhecimento planned and implemented in an inclusive way?
How are the Naves do
Conhecimento influencing the wellbeing of the marginalized population?
Requirement Inclusive Design Belonging to the marginalized
population
Concept Inclusiveness Wellbeing
Unit of Analysis Implementers / Design Users and Non-Users
Data Interviews, Maps, Field notes Survey, Interviews, Field Notes
Methods Content Analysis Descriptive Statistics and
Correlations, Content Analysis and Key-Quotes
Type of Data Qualitative Mixed
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3.2 Operationalization, Methods and Data
Each stage of the intervention evaluation design is directed at specific fractions of the capability approach. While the implementation analysis primarily focuses on the conversion factors, influencing the users’ capabilities from the top down, the impact analysis evaluates the functionings from the bottom up perspective. Therefore, a different operationalization, data type and analyzing methods is required for each stage presented in detail bellow.
3.2.1 Implementation Analysis
The implementation analysis evaluates if the Naves are designed and implemented in an inclusive way that allows the increasing of wellbeing of the marginalized population (1st requirement). Firstly, the analysis provides an overview of who planned the intervention and how they are organized; secondly, what the exact goals and means of the intervention are and thirdly, what elements were considered to make the intervention as inclusive as possible. This results in the following three sub-sub questions:
1.1 Who are the main actors behind the intervention and how are they organized? 1.2 What are the main goals, features and methods of the intervention?
1.3 What elements of inclusive development are incorporated in the design of the intervention? Combining the answers of the sub-sub questions will allow us to address if the intervention provides the necessary conditions to improve the wellbeing of the marginalized population.
The methods used to answer the first set of questions are mainly of qualitative nature using a qualitative content analysis of interviews and supported by maps and field observations. The data basis is built upon seven semi structured in-depth interviews with the implementers, consisting of the main interview with the head of the implementers, four interviews with managers of three different Naves and two additional interviews with employees that work at the Naves. Each interview took between forty minutes and two hours. As noted, the main source of information derives from the interview with the Intervention boss, who is primarily responsible for the intervention’s design and execution. The interviews with the managers add additional firsthand experience of the implementation process of the intervention. The interviews with managers of the oldest and newest Naves, alongside one constructed in between, should represent the execution process of the intervention. Together with maps, organizational diagrams, observations and online publications they provide additional data to assess the inclusiveness of the intervention’s design and implementation. The first two sub-sub questions introduce the implementers, aims and means of the intervention. In the last section it is assessed how inclusive the intervention is designed to be. The theoretical assumption is that the intervention needs to be designed inclusively in order to lead to inclusive development. To evaluate the inclusiveness of the design of the Nave do Conhecimento intervention, inclusiveness was operationalized along three main dimensions of inclusiveness: Social factors,
