Development as Freedom

In reading Development as Freedom written by Amartya Sen, I could not help but feel quite titillated and enthralled by his work. The importance of embedding economics in the larger context of other socio-cultural and political factors in order to address developmental concerns serves as the central argument of Sen’s work. Hence, Sen presents a beautiful piece which challenges economic growth as the primary mode of addressing development, nevertheless, the lack of the mention of power as noted by Vincente Navarro does prove to be quite fatalistic in Sen’s sincere attempts to deconstruct the functional nature of development.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sen’s critical analysis of economic theory which largely functions on individual agency and free market competition. In his chapter on justice, Sen analyzes how the “utility” derived from a individual gaining a particular good lacks contextualization indicating that all individuals in all circumstances, whether ill, poor, rich and/or disabled will gain the same amount of “utility” from a particular good. I recently noticed this same pattern in my modest attempts to analyze economic models which indicated that all individuals with “agency” will have the same desires and will act in the same exact way. This concept seemed quite baffling to me for various reasons. Primarily, economic models assume that individuals have the “agency” to act in their own free will and therefore will choose strictly for their own profit. The overarching expectation of this type of behavior in all possible circumstances is actually a suffocation of this “agency” that an individual possesses. Secondly, Sen’s concern of the ambiguity of individual “agency” also serves as an important point of discussion as “agency” is constructed by an array of complex interrelated factors such as income, gender, and social standing among other factors which are often undermined by economic theories.

Sen strongly establishes the inherent relationship which exists between different forms of social, physical, economic, political freedoms and their respective relations to the process of development. Vincente Navarro’s critique of Sen’s work notes the lack of a scale between these different forms of freedoms as an indication of weakness. In contrast, I propose to think that Sen may have intentionally left out a distinct scale deliberately in order to emphasize that these freedoms tend to heavily bleed into each other. Hence, establishing a clear cut scale would not only have been highly presumptuous but also restricting in the light of his argument which seeks to present development as a mosaic of larger economic, political and social factors which contributes to its overall functioning. Navarro is right to point out that Sen’s weakness in further elaborating on these relationships is a point of limitation, nonetheless; his lack of a decisive ranking order should not be used as sign of failing but should be seen as intentional.

It is fascinating to note that Sen’s work is not the first piece of work which lacks the emphasis of power relations and power structures in the context of society. We were faced with this fatalistic problem only last week in reading Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Hence, this trend leads me to one primary conclusion. The discussion of power and power relations in a body of work can make the arguments more substantial but they can also make them murky and can consequently create hindrance of presenting clear and coherent arguments. Nevertheless, this leads to various harmful consequences in the context of Sen’s work. The lack of the contextualization of power relations weakens his fundamental argument that development can only take place with the culmination of an array of factors that go beyond economic growth. By largely ignoring the omnipotent presence of power and power structures, he falls into similar traps of oversimplification of social, economic and political relations as the various institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund he is quick to criticize. Because the discussions of power and power relations are often times implicit and difficult to assess from a strictly objective perspective, Sen’s arguments about development are more neatly aligned because of the absence of these very factors.

The deconstruction of development which goes beyond the economic growth model to include the contextualization of social, cultural and political factors is Sen’s most thought provoking argument. Hence, Sen’s strengths lie less in his actual work but what his work symbolizes in the larger context of development. Sen’s emphasis of freedom with its relation to development proves to be a fundamental strength in his work as it serves as the driving force for the majority of his arguments. Even though Sen’s overall body of work does challenge the current development discourse, one cannot help but notice some of the larger inconsistencies and drawbacks of his arguments.