Capabilities, Power, and Institutions Toward a More Critical Development Ethics

Stephen L. Esquith

ISBN 10: 0271036621 / ISBN 13: 9780271036625

Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010

About this Item

216 pages. 9.00x6.00x0.63 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # x-0271036621

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Capabilities, Power, and Institutions Toward a More Critical Development Ethics
• Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271036621
• ISBN 13: 9780271036625
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.34 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

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.