The entity dictionary defines the entities available to actors during their operations, monitoring and evaluation, and change activities.
The constraints and the rigidity of constraints depends on the order (natural, social, technical) in which the entity is included.
Constraint rigidity is an important factor when exploring the change options available to actors improving their livelihood.
Available technologies is another factor that determines the change options. Knowledge about appropriate technologies, including principles for choosing the best technology for a given situation, is increasingly becoming available from Appropedia, the "appropriate technology wiki."
The entities included in the chapters 1 Products and Technology (e1) and 2 Natural Environment and Human-made Changes to Environment (e2) of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
An entity has the continuant property: it has a life time, during which it exists at each point in time, at a specific location (natural order). According to this definition, an actor is an entity. Yet actors are not included in the Entity Dictionary as they are in the Actor Atlas.
Entities are grouped in three orders, with increasing option ranges:
- the natural order;
- the social order; and
- the techno order.
The existence of an entity must be distinguished from the role it may play in an interaction: for instance, a person who is in the role of teacher in a school. The person is the entity, who, during school hours fills the teacher role in the education interaction. The teacher is one actant in the interaction in which also pupils, the blackboard and the handbook are actants. The use-rights of the handbook are controlled by institutions such as copyrights: the teacher cannot modify the content, or make copies (social order). The internet and mobile communications provide increasingly versatile means to deal with learning objects (techno order).
In addition to actors, also the role of an entity in an interaction may be described in the Interaction Dictionary.
Entities as Environmental Factors
See the entities included in the chapters 1 Products and Technology (e1) and 2 Natural Environment and Human-made Changes to Environment (e2) of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
Note that the ICF chapters 3 Support and Relationships (e3), 4 Attitudes (e4) and 5 Services, Systems and Policies (e5) are (to be) covered in the Actor Atlas and Interaction Dictionary.
Appropriate Technologies & Capability
For a knowledge resource on the appropriate technologies that people are using to improve their livelihood, see Appropedia, the "appropriate technology wiki," from the Appropedia Foundation.
Sustainable & Equitable Implementation
For an effort to articulate how constraint rigidity differs for the natural, social and technical order, and what implications this has for our decision making and implementation of appropriate technology use, see: Ens Overview.
Constraints of resources and their changing supply rates co-determine the socio-economic choices that found the sustainable and equitable use of technology in situations that are embedded both bio-physically and socio-economically.