Overview

Development economics, political theory, and ethics long carried on their own scholarly dialogues and investigations with almost no interaction among them. Only in the mid-1990s did this situation begin to change, primarily as a result of the pioneering work of an economist, Amartya Sen, and a philosopher who doubled as a classicist and legal scholar, Martha Nussbaum. Sen’s Development as Freedom (1999) and Nussbaum’s Women and Human Development (2000) together signaled the emergence of a powerful new paradigm that is commonly known as the “capabilities approach” to development ethics. Key to this approach is the recognition that citizens must have basic “capabilities” provided most crucially through health care and education if they are to function effectively as agents of economic development. Capabilities can be measured in terms of skills and abilities, opportunities and control over resources, and even moral virtues like the virtue of care and concern for others. The essays in this collection extend, criticize, and reformulate the capabilities approach to better understand the importance of power, especially institutional power. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Sabina Alkire, David Barkin, Nigel Dower, Shelley Feldman, Des Gasper, Daniel Little, Asunción Lera St. Clair, A. Allan Schmid, Paul B. Thompson, and Thanh-Dam Truong.

Full Product Details

Author:   Stephen L. Esquith (Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University) ,  Fred Gifford (Profesor of Philosophy, MIchigan State University)
Publisher:   Pennsylvania State University Press
Imprint:   Pennsylvania State University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9780271036625

ISBN 10:   0271036621
Pages:   216
Publication Date:   15 June 2015
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Institutions and Urgency Stephen L. Esquith 1. Instrumental Freedoms and Human Capabilities Sabina Alkire 2. The Missing Squirm Factor in Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach A. Allan Schmid 3. Institutions, Inequality, and Well-Being: Distributive Determinants of Capabilities Realization Daniel Little 4. Development Ethics Through the Lenses of Caring, Gender, and Human Security Des Gasper and Thanh-Dam Truong 5. A Methodologically Pragmatist Approach to Development Ethics Asuncioń Lera St. Clair 6. Social Development, Capabilities, and the Contradictions of (Capitalist) Development Shelley Feldman 7. The Struggle for Local Autonomy in a Multiethnic Society: Constructing Alternatives with Indigenous Epistemologies David Barkin 8. Capabilities, Consequentialism, and Critical Consciousness Paul B. Thompson 9. Development and Globalization: The Ethical Challenges Nigel Dower Contributors Index

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Author Information

Stephen L. Esquith is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. Fred Gifford is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Graduate Specialization in Ethics and Development.

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