This paper argues that participatory research is an approach to developing knowledge that can make significant contributions to occupational therapy. One project, working with older adults in Toronto to organize a new seniors' organization, is used to illustrate the ways in which this approach is participatory and how it can be understood as research. Other examples of participatory research fr...

Ongoing advances in mobile technologies have the potential to improve independence and quality of life of older adults by supporting the delivery of personalised and ubiquitous healthcare solutions. The authors are actively engaged in participatory, user-focused research to create a mobile assistive healthcare-related intervention for persons with age-related macular degeneration (AMD): the aut...

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning of applications of GIS which grant legitimacy to indigenous geographical knowledge as well as to ‘offi cial’ spatial data. By incorporating various forms of community participation these newer framings of Geographical Information Systems as ‘Participatory GIS’ (PGIS) offer a response to the critiques of GIS which were prevalent in the 1990s. This paper r...

Community networks are participatory connectivity solutions for citizens where all the resources are owned, managed and controlled by the participants. As a natural evolution, in recent years some initiatives have flourished to provide higher level services based on volunteer computing and resource sharing paradigms. A fundamental aspect of these paradigms is user participation. In this work, w...

The field of technoethics explores the ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society. Recently, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama’s campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in ord...

In the Bering Strait region of Alaska decreasing sea ice and increasing development are driving environmental and policy changes that significantly impact federally recognized tribes, which depend on marine resources for cultural, economic, and nutritional reasons. Kawerak, Inc., an Alaska Native non-profit tribal consortium, conducted participatory ice seal and walrus harvest and habitat mappi...

Why do activists choose the organizational forms they do? Social movement scholars have tended to focus on activists’ instrumental assessment of organizational forms’ costs and benefits or on activists’ efforts to balance instrumental calculations with a commitment to ideological consistency. Neither explanation is adequate. Organizational forms, like strategies, tactics, and targets, are often...

a rural environment is reflect of the historical practices over the time, mutually feedback of human settle, activities nature and include aesthetic quality, environmental function, local knowledge, tradition and customs. but rapid growth of consuming economy and emphases only on functional character without linkage to different environmental socio-cultural and economic condition led to model o...