7 Development as freedom

Abstract

Development as Freedom (1999), the seminal text authored by the 1998 Nobel Laureate economist, Amartya Kumar Sen, expresses one such emergent dominant narrative that has found a global resonance in the twenty-first century. The revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East in 2011, for example, were predominantly seen as being driven by the aspirations for freedom, democracy and social justice; themes strongly embedded in the work of Sen. In Development as Freedom Sen argues for development as the expansion of the ‘real freedoms’ that people may enjoy and have reason to value. In the text, he rehearses his longstanding challenges to competing views on the meaning of social welfare and development and offers his work as a better analytical frame, than, for example, Utilitarian, Rawlsian, Marxist, or rights centric libertarian standpoints on development. Indeed, Sen posits that this framework of ‘development as freedom’ should act as a foundational and universal principle for all peoples in order to better facilitate the aspirations of the multifaceted forms of social contestation, protest and resistance against inequality – from race and gender struggles for equal freedoms, to de-colonial and popular uprisings for local and global social justice.