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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN num: 9780385720274
ISBN number: 0385720270
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: August 15, 2000
Publishing house: Anchor
Release Date: August 15, 2000
Sale Popularity Level: 1920
Studio: Anchor
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By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development--for both rich and poor--in the twenty-first century.
Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority of people--he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically restain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.
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Rated by buyers 
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I was disappointed with this book. It's really not the least bit insightful or helpful--opening your eyes driving through any slum would yield the observations available here.
Look for something else if you're considering this book, or borrow it from a library instead of purchasing.
Rated by buyers 
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Development as Freedom dives into the concept that both the result and mechanism of development is the growth of actual freedoms that people enjoy. It is no good to be rich slave.
The book dives headfirst into various development theories that both support and oppose this idea and Amartya Sen navigates them all with ease. He does a great job explaining varying economic theories to someone like me who has no economic background. If you are interested in international development work this is a must-read.
Rated by buyers -
Amartya Sen's book answers a question that current development practices beg: Development for the sake of what? He provides grounding for his claim that freedom is both the process to vibrant development, and the goal.
Sen distinguishes his speculative new approach on economic development, from the most traditional:
* Approaches that focus their attention in achieving some levels in development's proxy variables - per capita income; income distribution and poverty levels or health, education, and safety indexes-
* Approaches based in levels of social satisfaction (levels of utility) based in individual/subjective "maps" of preferences.
* And finally, others approaches focused in the capacity of a particular community to achieve what Sen calls substantive freedom -centralized welfare approach- or procedural freedom -libertarian approach-.
Sen speculation seems to be relevant in many ways:
1. First, there is no doubt we are in a moment of enormous changes and mayor crises. Our mass production, oil based civilization is coming to an end with all the resistance, violence and waste it implies. Our national democracies -and its institutions such as legislation, justice, presidency and other more decentralized as media, lobbyist networks, or intelligence- have showed significant weaknesses in addressing global issues, and a systematic tendency to favor elites' games. There are mayor power shift opening the space for extended cultural re-valuations of values based in the emerging preeminence of China and India.
2. Second, there is an emerging new universe hold together by the internet and it capacity to sustain digital communities and digital worlds that have proved that is possible to create massive and sophisticated non-market value. These emerging universes embody a new culture of collaboration that is influencing and been influenced by the traditional forces of the molecular world. The technological force nurturing these changes has many resemblances with the historical opening produce by Gutenberg print press in 1450.
3. Third, there is some resignation with the current technocratic approaches to development such as those represented by Jeffrey Sachs.
4. Fourth, the collapse of the old order and the emergence of a new order may damage the possibilities to express the ethical ideals of the modern civilization -individual freedom- by enforcing control with new technologies and old institutions, or it may contribute to create a new Digital Renascence, or it may bring something new we are no able to see yet. A new understanding of freedom and human agency.
5. Putting at the center of the economic development conversation -as Sen does- the notion of development as expanding freedom, the notion of freedom itself, and the expansion of freedom to non-human life it seems to be a powerful tribute from the best of the past to the emerging and unbirth future. Sen is bringing a new invigorating perspective to an old conversation.
Rated by buyers -
If you only have a passing interest in development theory, you may find this book terribly boring and hard to read. Certainly, he doesn't go out of his way to be entertaining.
But if you are looking for real innovation in thought and discusion on this issue, then this book is a must read. It really added a new voice to the discusion of international development, and is oft cited and referred to in papers on the topic.
If you want to get up to speed on the modern debate on development theory, pick this up, read it, critique it in your own mind, really think about it, and move on.
Rated by buyers -
This is a good book by great economist. But, if you are not an economist, like me, you may suffer a bit through the general discusion on economic philosophies through the very first few chapters. Once into the later part of the book where modern case studies and data illustrate his point, I found his argument very deep and interesting.
Amartya Sen chooses to describe poverty not as a lack of resources, but as a lack of freedoms. Those freedoms include choosing where to live and work, with whom to associate, freedom to choose our leaders and decide the rules we live by, and many others. This key point is useful in that it does not focus solely on maximization of wealth as a way out of poverty. The problem with poverty is not lack of money, but that lack of money means that people are not free to make their own way in life. They may be trapped being at the mercy of nature, an opressive government, or an economy cripled by bad policy. The conclusion therefore, is that money alone cannot fix the real problem. Government reform, economic liberalization, and the general increase of personal freedoms is the true end we are striving for. Increasing incomes is one of several necessary steps to be accomplished and not an end in and of itself.
Sen's thesis in this work is often reduced by others to simple phrases like "democracies never have famines" or other simplistic phrases that are not entirely accurate with what Sen is actually arguing. You can find exceptions to some of these simple summaries, but the whole of Sen's argument remains very compelling describing the roles and responsibilities of individuals, institutions, and governments in achieving development and real progress.
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