Field Guide to Appropriate Technology is an all-in-one "hands-on guide" for nontechnical and technical people working in less developed communities. It has been developed and designed with a prestigious team of authors, each of whom has worked extensively in developing societies throughout the world. This field guide includes: - Step-by-step instructions and illustrations showing how to build and maintain a vast array of appropriate technology systems and devices - Unique coverage on healthcare, basic business and project management, principles of design, promotion, scheduling, training, microlending, and more - Teachers, doctors, construction workers, forest and agricultural specialists, scientists and healthcare workers, and religious and government representatives will find this book a first source for advice - Step-by-step instructions and illustrations showing how to build and maintain a vast array of appropriate technology systems and devices - Unique coverage on healthcare, basic business and project management, principles of design, promotion, scheduling, training, microlending, and more - Teachers, doctors, construction workers, forest and agricultural specialists, scientists and healthcare workers, and religious and government representatives will find this book a first source for advice

This book is the first edited compilation of selected, refereed papers submitted to ERTEP 2007. The selected papers either dealt with technologies or scientific work and policy findings that address specific environmental problems affecting humanity in general, but more specifically, people and ecosystems in developing countries. It was not necessary for the work to have been done in a developing country, but the findings and results must be appropriate or applicable to a developing country setting. It is acknowledged that environmental research, technology applications and policy implementation have been demonstrated to improve environmental sustainability and protection in several developed economies. The main argument of the book is that similar gains can be achieved in developing economies and economies in transition. The book is organized into six chapters along some of the key themes discussed at the conference: Environmental Health Management, Sustainable Energy and Fuel, Water Treatment, Purification and Protection, Mining and Environment, Soil Stabilization, and Environmental Monitoring. It is hoped that the contents of the book will provide an insight into some of the environmental and health mana- ment challenges confronting the developing world and the steps being taken to address them.

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

A third of a century ago, E. F. Schumacher rang out a timely warning against the idolatry of giantism with his book Small Is Beautiful. Schumacher, a highly respected economist and adviser to third-world governments, broke ranks with the accepted wisdom of his peers to warn of impending calamity if rampant consumerism, technological dynamism, and economic expansionism were not checked by human and environmental considerations. Joseph Pearce revisits Schumacher’s arguments and examines the multifarious ways in which Schumacher’s ideas themselves still matter. Faced though we are with fearful new technological possibilities and the continued centralization of power in large governmental and economic structures, there is still the possibility of pursuing a saner and more sustainable vision for humanity. Bigger is not always best, Pearce reminds us, and small is still beautiful. Humanity was lurching blindly in the wrong direction, argued Schumacher. Its obsessive pursuit of wealth would not, as so many believed, ultimately lead to utopia but more probably to catastrophe. Schumacher's greatest achievement was the fusion of ancient wisdom and modern economics in a language that encapsulated contemporary doubts and fears about the industrialized world. The wisdom of the ages, the perennial truths that have guided humanity throughout its history, serves as a constant reminder to each new generation of the limits to human ambition. But if this wisdom is a warning, it is also a battle cry. Schumacher saw that we needed to relearn the beauty of smallness, of human-scale technology and environments.