Lecture 6. Development as Freedom

November 14, 2006 at 5:55 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

‘the pro-market people […] don’t take the market sufficiently seriously, because if they did they would make it easier for people to enter the market. For that you often need state action, through land reform, microcredit, education and basic health care. These are very important areas for state action which make the market economy itself more efficient and more equitable.http://www.indiatogether.org/interviews/sen.htm “He’s peculiarly shy about talking politics publicly. It’s a kind of self-denial,” says Meghnad Desai, director of the centre for the study of global governance at the LSE. “It’s also a generational thing. Good economists, when he started out, didn’t get into politics. So he prefers to be subversive in a technical way.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,3605,465796,00.html Amartya Sen

A gentle liberal or an alternative economist? 

 Freedom as goal  

Capacity 

Freedom as an aid to growth

  

Democracy and Famine  

Women and Development

 Environmental accounting  

Ambiguity 

Failure to deal with enclosure.    

Further Reading

Sen, A.  (1999) Development as Freedom.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.Seminar Questions

1. Why does Sen argue that ‘development is freedom’?

2. How does Sen criticise classical economics?

3. Can Sen be termed an alternative economist? 

Useful Links

http://www.proxsa.org/resources/ghadar/v4n1/sen.htm  Marxist critique

www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,3605,465796,00.html 

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