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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