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Program for today. Introduce part 2 of the module Start with a dialogue: Development Discuss the importance of value judgments in debates about the meaning and choices in Development (normative) Relate development with important concepts:
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Program for today • Introduce part 2 of the module • Start with a dialogue: Development • Discuss the importance of value judgments in debates about the meaning and choices in Development (normative) • Relate development with important concepts: • Human development, Capabilities, Functionings, Agency, Freedom • Introduce the Human Development & Capability Approach • Introduce Sen.'s thesis: “Development as Freedom”
“The word development has many meanings as there are listeners*” * cited by Alkire and Deneulin, 2009 • What do you understand by the word ‘development’? • The more we reflect on it, we discover that the term is ambiguous and value-laden
Regardless of any particular framework, many would view development as follow: • Development as a multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral process, involving social, economicand political change aimed at improving people’s lives. Development processes use and manage natural resources to satisfy human needs and improve people’s quality of life. • Those who hold these views, may still range from Marxist to Neoclassical Ideologies
Different views of what is development: Two examples: • A country is considered developed because its inhabitants command higher incomes per capita and because investment and employment rates are higher than in other regions • Economic growth and productive investments are considered indicators of development here
Different views of what is development (2): • In an other view concerns for people’s health and education are important key indicators of the development of a country • In this example health and education are as key indicators on the foreground of what development means
“Limitations to the GDP”, extracted from a speech given by Robert Kennedy on January the 4th, 1968: • “ (….) The GDP of the US is the largest in the world. Truly we have a great gross national product, almost 800 billion dollars, but can that be the criterion by which we judge this country? Is it enough? For the gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife and television programs, which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. And the gross national product, the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither wit nor courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our duty to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile (…).” • Trackback:http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/20thcentury/68-01kennedy-speech.html
Legitimating development on 3 levels of analysis: Development legitimately involves different kinds of analyses: • Normative approach: development debates and policies are normative or ethical. Based on value judgments in that they clarify how groups ought to behave in order to create improvements • Not value-free, but instead ideological • Herein lies the rationale/motivation behind choices and actions in terms of policies,
Legitimating development on 3 levels of analysis (2): 2. Empirically-based approach: It requires learning from the past and analyzing existing data. This approach refers to the empirical study of development: data studies, hypothesis testing, and other kinds of description and analysis E.g. • http://www.censo2010.aw/images/stories/results/percentage%20of%20population%20with%20diploma%20after%20primary%20education%20by%20country%20of%20birth.pdf
Legitimating development on 3 levels of analysis (3): 3. Development is predictive: analysis must be able to predict how a situation could change over time in certain ways • E.g. by applying techniques of scenario planning and trends analysis • Although different in approach, normative, positive and predictive approaches are all interconnected
Normative, positive and predictive approach to development are all interconnected • One needs to have an empirical and predictive analysis in order to make any normative assessments and vice versa • Yet normative analysis is fundamental and in some ways prior to predictive and empirical analysis. • Let’s look at an example: defining poverty
E.g. different definitions of poverty may influence how we measure poverty and the actions we take in terms of policies* “ Definitions of Poverty A variety of ways to define urban poverty are available, each with their own strengths and deficiencies: • income-based definitions: This approach seeks to specify a level of income per capita in a household below which the basic needs of the family cannot be satisfied. It shares the difficulties of the next class of definitions of imposing an official's or observer's view of necessities. It does not acknowledge variation in costs of similar goods for different consumers. The vital importance of non-market household production and non-monetarized exchanges in poor families is not counted. • basic needs approaches: A set of minimal conditions of life, usually involving the quality of the dwelling place, degree of crowding, nutritional adequacy and water supply are specified and the proportion of the population lacking these conditions is used to estimate the degree of poverty. The advantage of this approach is that different conditions can be specified appropriate to different settings. However, this reduces comparability of estimates in different sites. Similarly, it does not take into account the willingness of people to accept various tradeoffs deliberately (e.g., a lower quality dwelling for reduced transportation time and expense to work) • participatory definitions: In this approach, respondents from communities are themselves invited to identify their perceptions of their needs, priorities and requirements for minimal secure livelihood. Some sacrifice of comparability of estimates in different communities or at different times is traded for better information on the identified demands of the individuals themselves. At times such analyses supplement and reinforce the more quantitative measures; at other times they reveal a very different experienced reality. A study in Rajasthan, India, identified 32 conditions which individuals felt necessary for a satisfactory minimal lifestyle. Comparison of interview results over a decade revealed that despite reductions in income of the residents, and little change in living conditions of the kind generally surveyed in basic needs estimates, significant improvements had occurred in experienced quality of life.” *UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund
The normative approach of development affects choices and actions • Normative approaches to development are central to the shaping of policies, but not enough to create it • Normative approaches affect policy decisions (some examples): • They shape the data we collect • They influence our analysis • They give certain topics greater or less political salience • They feed or hinder social movements • They are ethical and philosophical credible and CONTESTED! • They influence the trade-offs we make in terms of development
Bottom-line • Ideas about what development should be, matter. • Different ways of understanding what development should improve lead to different policies and consequences. • Conflicts of values and interests are common on the level of trade-offs and choices and actions to be taken: • E.g. how will the policy decision affect economical progress?versus • how will the policy affect people’s quality of life?
brainstorm session on the meaning of ‘development’ by class of 2010
What is the meaning of ‘successful’ development? • The Human Development and Capability Approach (HDCA) starts with a shift in perspective: • (1) From an approach where the objective in development is economic growth • the unit of analysis here is the economy • (2) To an approach where the objective of development is to expand what people are able to do and be, what we might call their real Freedoms • The unit of analysis here is human wellbeing and human freedoms
Development always goes hand in hand with trade-offs • When we ask ourselves what is the next step to be taken in terms of actions and policies, we are always making choices: trade-offs: • In the first approach (economy is the primer indicator of progress): policy must consider which groups of the population (distribution) to focus on, in which period of time in what order of priority (dynamics) • In the second approach(the one who focuses on human development): trade-offs have to been made between which aspects of people’s life to focus on(dimension)
Shift: Human development and income • HD focuses on: “what makes life worthwhile”: people! • The meaning of income changes: income not as an end on itself, but as an instrument: • Aristotle: “wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else” • That people matter does not mean that income does not. Income is obviously an important instrument in enabling people to realize their full potential
Human development • Human development: the process of widening people’s choices at the level of their achieved well-being(UNDP, 1990, p9) • To enhance people’s capabilities in the present and in the future, in all areas of their life: • social, political, economic and cultural • Amartya Sen is great influencer of the HDCA philosophy • Central goal: enabling people to become agents in their own lives and in their communities
Important notion in Human Development • Choices relate to our values (normative!) • We have different values and often disagree • HD is because of this engaged in an ongoing conversation about what would be most valuable for us to do next • Dialogue: participative and co-creating the futureare important tools in development
Critical issue: Values are heterogeneous • Because of human diversity itself, values are heterogeneous: diverse • Still, development in a given society tends to reflect its most cherished values: • Equity, harmony with nature, peace and order, material wealth, children well-being etc… • Is this true? Do we agree on a couple of universal values?
Assignment: exploring our values (check wiki) • A Value = “ an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode (Rokeach, 1973)” • of conduct or end-state of existence”. T • Assignment 3 is a survey on human values. Please follow the instructions complete the short survey on the values you value the most. • The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) is an instrument which was designed by the social scientist Rokeach to operationalize the value concept. This instrument has been used for measuringpersonal and social values.
Key terms in HDCA • Functionings are defined as ‘the various things a person may value doing or being (Sen, 1999). Functionings are valuable activities and states that make up people’s well-being • E.g. health, well-nourished, being safe, being educated • Capability refers to the freedom to enjoy various functionings. The various combination of functionings (beings and doings) that a person can achieve
Key terms in HDCA (1) • Agency: is the ability to pursue goals that one values and has reason to value. An agent is ‘someone who acts and brings about change’ (Sen, 1999): • Self-determination, authentic self-direction, autonomy, empowerment, voice • Participation is important in the concept of agency: not just the individual counts, but what one can do as a member of a group, a community, a society, the world.
Human development as a process Guiding principles: • Equity: justice, fairness, impartiality • Efficiency: the optimal use of existing resources • Participation and empowerment: process in which people act as agents: individually as in groups • Sustainability: durability of development in all spheres: environmental, social, political and financial
Key questions when selecting capabilities: • Which capabilities do the people who will enjoy them value (and attach a high priority to) • Which capabilities are relevant to a given policy, project or institution?
“Enhancing human capabilities, to life a live of dignity” Martha Nussbaum
Central human capabilities, (Nussbaum, 2000) • Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length . . . ; not dying prematurely . . . • Bodily health . . . Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; being adequately nourished . . . ; being able to have adequate shelter . . . • Bodily integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; being able to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault . . . ; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction • Senses, imagination, thought. Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think, and to reason--and to do these things in . . . a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education . . . ; being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing, and producing expressive works and events of one's own choice . . . ; being able to use one's mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech and freedom of religious exercise; being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain
Central human capabilities, (Nussbaum, 2000) • Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves; being able to love those who love and care for us; being able to grieve at their absence, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger; not having one's emotional developing blighted by fear or anxiety. . . . • Practical reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one's own life. (This entails protection for liberty of conscience.) • Affiliation.Being able to live for and in relation to others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; being able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; having the capability for both justice and friendship. . . . Being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. • Other species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. • Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities. • Control over one's environment. (A) Political: being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life; having the rights of political participation, free speech and freedom of association . . . (B) Material: being able to hold property (both land and movable goods); having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others . . .
“Development as freedom” AmartyaSen
Agency, voice and empowerment (Sen, 1999) • Development relies on people’s freedom to make decisions and advance key objectives • People themselves decide upon what kind of development they would like for themselves • When people and social groups are recognized as agents they can define their priorities as well as choose the best means to achieve them
Aruba: Are we free? • A rise in certain diseases. Think about the high numbers of AIDS infected people, or the rising count of people suffering from diabetes. (Arubans are genetically more inclined to become diabetic) • The interest in politics starts to dwindle, people don’t vote on issues but on tradition • Poverty rises in Aruba, more and more people become unable to provide food for themselves and their families • In more and more families both parents have to get a fulltime job to support themselves. They decide not to have children because they are unable to combine their careers with parenthood. • There is a rise in school dropouts. This poses economical problems because there are not enough educated people, and more people prone to poverty.
Aruba: Are we free? • Immigration keeps rising, Arubans start to get the feeling they are not at home anymore in their own country and become hostile to minorities • The world economy crashes and with it tourism, this could be lethal for the Aruban economy. • Tourism on Aruba increases, this is good for the economy but a heavy strain on the environment • The Aruban population keeps increasing at a rapid rate. Where will everybody live. The government runs out of land for ‘erfpacht’ • Drug trade on Aruba rises and with it crime rates and social problems • House prices on Aruba plummet, this is good for buyers but disastrous for homeowners.
