Economics meets philosophy in this wide-ranging manifesto that
identifies freedom as the agent of universal development as well as
its goal. Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate in economics, points out,
among many things, that there has never been famine in functioning
democracies, including modern India, Botswana, and Zimbabwe
(democratic officeholders, unlike colonial functionaries or
dictators, are obliged to respond to impending shortages). High per
capita income does not necessarily mean longer life (poor residents
of Kerala, India, can expect to live longer than richer American
blacks). In much of the world, gender inequality causes distorted
male-female ratios (thus, there are "missing women"). Sen analyzes
a myriad of such considerations and offers a thoughtful synthesis
of welfare economics, political principles, and ethics. He asks
fundamental questions, challenges common assumptions, and takes on
diverse shibboleths. Lest you think a statement like "low income is
clearly one of the major causes of poverty" is foolishly
simplistic, hold on as he proceeds to demonstrate that there are
other important causes for "capability deprivation," as he
characterizes poverty. "Human development . . . is ah ally of the
poor," he says. "It is an indication of the topsy-turvy world in
which we live that the school-teacher or the nurse feels more
threatened by financial conservatism than does the army general."
The lucid insights are abundant as Sen marshals scores of thinkers
from Aristotle to Rabindranath Tagore, Confucius to Bentham. His
text is, as well, a sly review of his contemporaries and a
sagacious reappraisal of Adam Smith. Casual readers may find rough
going with a lexicon like "complemantarity" or "chosen functioning
vector," but the expansive discussion will surely attract
contemplative public policy practitioners. This learned book, more
diagnostic than prescriptive, convinces us of freedom's value and
utility in economic development. Less clear: how to bring freedom
about in the world. Sen's book must nevertheless be seen as a
seminal and influential text for students and makers of policy.
(Kirkus Reviews)
In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen explains how in a world of
unprecedented increase in overall opulence millions of people
living in the Third World are still unfree. Even if they are not
technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedoms and remain
imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social
deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The
main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand
charms' to the unfree citizens. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues,
is at once the ultimate goal of social and economic arrangements
and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. Social
institutions like markets, political parties, legislatures, the
judiciary, and the media contribute to development by enhancing
individual freedom and are in turn sustained by social values.
Values, institutions, development, and freedom are all closely
interrelated, and Sen links them together in an elegant analytical
framework. By asking 'What is the relation between our collective
economic wealth and our individual ability to live as we would
like?' and by incorporating individual freedom as a social
commitment into his analysis Sen allows economics once again, as it
did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of
individual well-being and freedom.
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