Development as Freedom
 | |
| Author | Amartya Sen |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
Publication date | 1999 |
Development as Freedom is a 1999 book by economist Amartya Sen, which focuses on international development.
Background
Amartya Sen was the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. His book argues that economic development entails a set of linked freedoms:
- political freedoms and transparency in relations between people
- freedom of opportunity, including freedom to access credit; and
- economic protection from abject poverty, including through income supplements and unemployment relief.
A state of poverty will generally be characterised by lack of at least one freedom (Sen uses the term unfreedom for lack of freedom), including a de facto lack of political rights and choice, vulnerability to coercive relations, and exclusion from economic choices and protections. From this, Sen concludes that real development cannot be reduced to simply increasing basic incomes, nor to rising average per capita incomes. Rather, it requires a package of overlapping mechanisms that progressively enable the exercise of a growing range of freedoms.
Sen views free markets as an essential method of achieving freedom. His work has been criticized by those who claim that capitalism—and especially neo-liberal capitalism—reinforce unfreedoms.[1]
See also
References
- ^ E.g. Richard Sandbrook, 2000, "Globalization and the Limits of Neoliberal Development Doctrine," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 1071-1080
Further reading
- Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as freedom (1st ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198297581.
- Sen, Amartya (2001). Development as freedom (2nd ed.). Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192893307.
- Tungodden, Bertil (2001). A balanced view of development as freedom. Bergen, Norway: Chr. Michelsen Institute (Working Paper Series). ISBN 8290584997. Pdf version.
- Sandbrook, Richard (December 2000). "Globalization and the limits of neoliberal development doctrine". Third World Quarterly. 21 (6). Taylor and Francis: 1071–1080. doi:10.1080/01436590020012052.
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