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BOOK
REVIEW
Revisiting a
classic
Development as
Freedom by Amartya Sen
Reviewed
by Piyush Mathur
 The issue of a new paperback
edition gives me the opportunity to consider this work
against its remarkably celebratory reception since its
original print in 1999. My retrospective overview
suggests that that reception perhaps had as much to do
with a range of external factors as with the book
itself.
Those factors include: the long-standing
reputation of Sen, both as an economist and a
general-purpose cosmopolitan intellectual; his having
been awarded the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic
Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" shortly before the
book's publication; and the contrast between what the
book delivers in the name of economics and what
economics has long come to mean to significant sections
of global intelligentsia, activists, but especially
professional economists.
By emphasizing these
reasons I do not mean to undermine Sen's significance as
an economist: I am only proposing to relocate the book
out of the haloed biographical persona of its author.
Furthermore, instead of upholding it as a
"transcendental" work of unimpeachable merit - as the
majority of previous reviewers have done - I invite
fellow readers to approach the book critically for its
contextual relevance.
Broadly, Sen
re-conceptualizes development in terms of freedom and
vice versa. This resolutely reflexive maneuver can be
simplified into the dictum - let us be free to develop,
and develop to be free - or the truism that: development
is inconceivable without freedoms, just as freedoms are
inconceivable without development.
Establishing
these symbiotic precepts may seem easy or mundane to the
naive; to the suave, on the other hand, it is instantly
clear that Sen has chosen to pick a fight with an entire
range of intra and inter-warring constituencies. Those
constituencies variously: find and declare development
and freedom incompatible - at least in degrees - and
thus prioritize one over another; define either or both
of the two phenomena either too narrowly or too broadly
to be realistic; define them such that they could be
used as alibis for parochial or misguided objectives;
and/or view them in culturally prejudicial and
historically inaccurate terms. In the last instance, for
example, some of those constituencies may view democracy
as singularly "Western", and deem dictatorial pursuit of
economic goals as a foremost, natural, or
"understandable" choice for peoples of non-Western
cultures.
Sen does not dismiss almost any of the
constituencies he undertakes to examine. Instead, they
enter his domain as notional and/or methodological
extremities, attain salvation through his empirical and
intellectual moderation and audit, and ultimately find
their virtuous relevancies harnessed for a
comprehensively democratic redefining of development and
development economics.
As part of that process,
Sen divides freedom into two main kinds: "instrumental",
and "substantive". "Substantive freedoms" refer to
formative tenets of a general, lived environment that
allows individuals to realize and develop their
self-cherished capabilities. "Instrumental freedoms", on
the other hand, are the means for generating and
strengthening such an environment, and include "economic
opportunities, political freedoms, social facilities,
transparency guarantees, and protective security" (pg
xii). Sen argues that development should be viewed as -
and planned in terms of - the furtherance of both
instrumental and substantive freedoms.
In order
to assert and demonstrate the rationality of his
proposition, and to effect his hypothesis, Sen
critically appreciates some dominant evaluative
frameworks for how they define and measure development.
His analysis reveals that those frameworks carry
varyingly truncated conceptions of development owing to
their own limited and/or exclusionary informational
bases (pgs 55-66). So, on one hand, Sen acknowledges the
positive significance of: "the 'economic' concentration
on the primacy of income and wealth"; "the 'utilitarian'
focus on mental satisfaction"; and, "the 'libertarian"
preoccupation with procedures for liberty" (pg 19). On
the other hand, he criticizes the "economic
concentration" for neglecting "the characteristics of
human lives and substantive freedoms"; utilitarians for
neglecting "creative discontent and constructive
dissatisfaction"; and libertarians for neglecting the
"consequences that derive from" the procedures they
promote (pg 19).
In reference to the last case,
for instance, Sen points out that "even gigantic famines
can result without anyone's libertarian rights
(including property rights)being violated. The
destitutes ... may starve precisely because their
'entitlements' - legitimate as they are - do not give
them enough food." (pg 66)
Alternatively, Sen
argues for, and articulates, a far more expansive
"information base" - and proposes his "capability
approach to justice" (pgs 54-60; 25). This framework
retains meritorious elements from the previous
approaches, but chooses "substantive individual
freedoms" and "free and sustainable agency" -
essentially a cross between individual free will and
active responsibility - as the primary indicators of
development (pgs 18; 190-203).
The framework
also renders: poverty as individuals' "capability
deprivation" (pgs 87-110); market as the "basic ...
arrangement [for] mutually advantageous activities" and
interaction - hence, a sign of freedom (pg 142);
democracy as the quintessential means for people to
express their economic needs and interests truthfully
and adequately; famine as a result and symptom of
undemocratic polity, capability deprivation, and income
inequity - rather than the fallout primarily of food
shortage or free marketing; overpopulation as an
attribute of gender inequity and subordination of
women's choices and interests; culture (normatively) as
a matter of individual choices rather than authoritarian
dictates; individual rationality (normatively) to be
inclusive of "canny pursuit of sympathy ... and
promotion of justice" (pg 270); market capitalism as the
best bet for realizing development as freedom - for
being "extendable by an appropriate development of
ethics" (pg 267); responsibility as a direct correlate
of freedom; and development as "a momentous engagement
with freedom's possibilities" (pg 298).
Notably,
Sen excludes any analysis of profit, and oversimplifies
the meaning and reality of market by disregarding the
variety of its forms and dimensions. Hence, while
promoting market capitalism as the most viable economic
system, Sen ignores the effects on development
specifically of a capitalistic market, and of the new
international finance capital. This is an interesting
omission given that many important "freedom struggles"
may not be about how to enter the (globalized) market,
but about how to stay out of them. For example, the
spate of farmers' suicides in southern India can be
attributed to their inability to be competitive
producers in the newly "globalized" agricultural market.
Sen also seems convinced that free markets can
neutralize traditional identities and orthodoxies. Here,
he bypasses indications from previous research that
markets have only so much to do with cultural
liberalization; and, even there, they are as likely to
harden, or generate newer, orthodoxies as to loosen
them. Likewise, while pleading to focus "on the freedoms
generated by commodities", Sen ignores the constricting
effects of commodity fetishism, status-symbolism, and
commodification itself (pg 74).
Because it has
little conception of this strand of freedom (or
constriction), Sen's book ends up being more didactic
than either empirical or democratic. That didacticism is
aggravated by his: ignoring the possibility of
traditional communitarian - rather than individual,
corporate, or state-rights over ecological heritage;
overlooking the threat that the globalized market and
intellectual property regimes pose to indigenous
knowledge and products; and failing to account for the
domestic economic impact of international power
relations.
On the methodological and conceptual
fronts, Sen successfully establishes the relevance of
development economics to all economies (and not just
Third World). He also succeeds in showing a compelling
way to "democratic" development through conceptual and
ideological bridge-building and pragmatic compromise.
However, his peculiar theoretical reflexivity lets him
occupy discursive, empirical, historical and normative
spaces in an overlapping fashion: and not always with
enough analytical justification.
That makes it
difficult for the reader to decide when - and when not -
to distinguish between his two implicit positions of
"development is freedom" and "development should be
freedom". Potential responses to this dilemma of
distinction between representative realism and normative
idealism ramify for the larger realities, philosophies
and criticisms of development; they are also apt to test
Sen's honesty about analytical and historical anomalies
to his overarching thesis of Development as
Freedom.
Thus, Sen's contention that the
"process of development ... is not essentially different
from the history of overcoming ... unfreedoms" appears
to represent a politically corrected, rather than
actual, history of development (pg 33). Even some
spectacular contemporary cases - such as the dam
controversies of China and India - provide a very
different profile of development than Sen typically
admits. On that count, Sen's normativity is more Utopian
than realistic, and some of his historical derivations
are only chastened rational reconstructions.
Accordingly, his redefinition of rationality betrays ad
hocism.
Perhaps Sen's biggest contribution lies
in his trying to bring economics out of its parochial
empiricism and disciplinary insularity: into a broader,
yet traditional, framework of political economy. But
that is also something that has been attempted equally
well - though with very different orientations - by the
otherwise unpopular economists from JNU, New Delhi, as
well as by feminist economists and sociologists from
around the world. In that sense, this book is as much a
mark of Sen's originality as it is a reflection on the
dismal state of mainstream economics. And for all that,
I deem it a mandatory read for all thinking adults.
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; ISBN:
0-19-289330-0; 366 pages; price US$10.50.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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