Summary of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 There is a connection between opulence and achievements, but the link may or may not be strong and depend on many other circumstances. The issue is not the ability to live forever on which Maitreyee concentrated, but the capability to live a good life while you are alive.
#2 The usefulness of wealth is in the things it allows us to do. But this relation is not exclusive or uniform, since the impact of wealth on our lives varies with other influences. Development must be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy.
#3 There are many ways in which people are deprived of their freedom. For example, many people in third world countries lack basic opportunities of health care, or functional education, or gainful employment, or economic and social security.
#4 Economic development has many dimensions, including economic security. Political liberty and civil freedoms are also important on their own, and do not have to be justified indirectly in terms of their effects on the economy.

Sujets

• Business Development
• Economics
• Development
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 25 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822521384
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

There is a connection between opulence and achievements, but the link may or may not be strong and depend on many other circumstances. The issue is not the ability to live forever on which Maitreyee concentrated, but the capability to live a good life while you are alive.

#2

The usefulness of wealth is in the things it allows us to do. But this relation is not exclusive or uniform, since the impact of wealth on our lives varies with other influences. Development must be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy.

#3

There are many ways in which people are deprived of their freedom. For example, many people in third world countries lack basic opportunities of health care, or functional education, or gainful employment, or economic and social security.

#4

Economic development has many dimensions, including economic security. Political liberty and civil freedoms are also important on their own, and do not have to be justified indirectly in terms of their effects on the economy.

#5

The view of freedom that is being taken here involves both the processes that allow freedom of actions and decisions, and the actual opportunities that people have, given their personal and social circumstances. Unfreedom can arise through inadequate processes or inadequate opportunities.

#6

The importance of individual freedom is critical in the concept of development. Freedom is not only the basis of the evaluation of success and failure, but it is also a principal determinant of individual initiative and social effectiveness.

#7

The approach used in this book is different from more traditional economic policy analysis, such as the economic concentration on the primacy of income and wealth rather than on the characteristics of human lives and substantive freedoms, the utilitarian focus on mental satisfaction rather than on creative discontent and constructive dissatisfaction, and the libertarian preoccupation with procedures for liberty without regard for their consequences.

#8

The shift in perspective is important when analyzing poverty in developed and developing countries. The presence of massive unemployment in Europe, for example, is not well reflected in income distribution statistics because it is treated as a deficiency of income that can be made up through transfers by the state.

#9

The connection between mortality and income is not as clear-cut as it seems. While African Americans in the United States suffer from relative deprivation in terms of income per head, they are absolutely more deprived than the low-income Indians in Kerala, and the Chinese, in terms of living to ripe old ages.

#10

The black male population in particular American cities such as New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, D. C. , is being overtaken by people from China and Kerala at much earlier ages.

#11

The freedom-centered perspective has a generic similarity to the common concern with quality of life, which focuses on the way human life goes rather than just on the resources or income that a person commands.

#12

The impact of commodity consumption on the various functionings of people was also considered by others. For example, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, the great mathematician, converted commodities into their function-related characteristics: amounts of wheat and other grains into their nourishment equivalent, amounts of all meat into equivalent units of beef, and amounts of all beverages into units of wine.

#13

The market mechanism is another subject that calls for some reclaiming of old heritage. The relation of the market mechanism to freedom and economic development raises questions of two distinct types. First, a denial of opportunities of transaction can be a source of unfreedom in itself. Second, markets typically expand income and wealth, which is a source of economic opportunities.

#14

The discipline of economics has tended to shift away from focusing on the value of freedoms and towards focusing on utilities, incomes, and wealth. This narrowing of focus leads to an underappreciation of the full role of the market mechanism.

#15

The importance of freedom of employment and working practice is crucial to understanding the valuations involved in the transition to market economies. In fact, this is one of the cases in which Marxian analysis and libertarian concentration on freedom have a similar approach.

#16

The presence of labor bondage and indebtedness in precapitalist societies creates a particularly tenacious form of unfreedom. Seeing development as freedom allows a direct approach to this issue that is not parasitic on the fact that labor markets also increase productivity.

#17

There is room for valuation in determining the relative weights of different types of freedoms in assessing individual advantages and social progress. Valuations are involved in all such approaches, even though they are often made implicitly.

#18

The issue of participation is also central to some of the foundational questions that have plagued the reach of development theory. The question of authority and legitimacy is unavoidable in deciding what to choose if some parts of tradition cannot be maintained along with economic or social changes that may be needed for other reasons.

#19

The approach of development as freedom has far-reaching implications not only for the ultimate objectives of development, but also for processes and procedures that have to be respected.

#20

The process of development is not fundamentally different from the history of overcoming unfreedoms. It is not being suggested that there is some unique and precise criterion of development in terms of which the different development experiences can always be compared and ranked.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

There is a distinction between two general attitudes to the process of development: one sees it as a fierce process, with much blood, sweat, and tears; the other views it as a friendly process, with mutually beneficial exchanges.

#2

The approach of this book is more compatible with the latter approach than with the former. It is mainly an attempt to expand people’s real freedoms. Development in this view is the process of expanding human freedoms, and the assessment of development must be informed by this consideration.

#3

The importance of human freedom as the preeminent objective of development must be distinguished from the instrumental effectiveness of different kinds of freedom to promote human freedom.

#4

There are five types of instrumental freedoms: political, economic, social, transparency, and protective security. These freedoms contribute to the overall freedom people have to live the way they would like to live. They are not only the primary object of development but also its principal means.

#5

The fourth category of freedom is social interactions. In this sense, society operates on some basic presumption of trust. Transparency guarantees deal with the need for openness that people can expect. When that trust is seriously violated, the lives of many people may be adversely affected.

#6

The fact that the entitlement to economic transactions is a great engine of economic growth has been widely accepted. But many other connections remain underrecognized, and they must be seized more fully in policy analysis.

#7

The central role of individual freedoms in the process of development makes it important to examine their determinants. Individual freedoms are influenced by the social safeguarding of liberties, tolerance, and the possibility of exchange and transactions.

#8

There are many different interconnections between the different instrumental freedoms. Their respective roles and influences on one another are important aspects of the process of development. In the chapters to come, there will be opportunities to discuss several of these interconnections and their extensive reach.

#9

The impact of social arrangements on the freedom to survive can be strong and may be influenced by different instrumental connections. The point is sometimes made that economic growth, which raises the level of per capita income, is not dependent on social arrangements since there is a close relationship between income per head and life expectancy.

#10

There are two types of success in the rapid reduction of mortality: growth-mediated and support-led. The former process works through fast economic growth, and its success depends on the growth process being wide-based and economically broad.