Forthcoming volume: Capabilities, Power, and Institutions
Submitted by admin_Malavisi on Mon, 2010-04-05 11:57
IDEA member Stephen Esquith together with Fred Gifford are the editors of the forthcoming volume:
CAPABILITIES, POWER, AND INSTITUTIONS Toward a more critical development ethics.
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 signalled 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, Asuncion Lera St. Clair, A. Allan Schmid, Paul B. Thompson, and Thanh-Dam Truong.
Working Paper on Development Ethics
Submitted by ideacms on Tue, 2009-06-16 22:57
We are pleased to alert you to the latest ISS working paper 459,
DEVELOPMENT ETHICS THROUGH THE LENSES OF CARING, GENDER, AND HUMAN
SECURITY by Des Gasper, Associate Professor
of Public Policy Management, and Thanh-Dam Truong, Associate Professor
of Women, Gender and Development, at the Institute of Social Studies.
Abstract
Thinking about ethics of development and ‘human development’ must
both treat development in a global perspective and yet reflect on the
content of ‘human’. The paper explores some faces of globalization by
using a gender perspective, in order to consider reproduction
(psychological and emotional as well as biological) and the activities
and attitudes of care that give moral resources for response to
systemic tragedy, not only for identifying and understanding it. There
now exist globally interconnected systems of vulnerability and
capability, for which matching systems of human security, care and
responsibility are needed in order to protect human dignity. The
discourse of ‘human security’ helps here by better grounding an agenda
of basic human needs, in an ethnography of ordinary lives rather than
only an abstracted accounting of deficiencies or an elevated language
of opportunities. It must be emotionally and existentially grounded
too. We examine the potential contributions here of three diverse
bodies of thought: the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism; the work of
philosopher-anthropologist Ananta Giri; and feminist care ethics.
Keywords
Development ethics, Buddhism, care ethics, globalization, human development, human security, migration, vulnerability.
Click here to download the full text of the working paper
You can access the complete list of working papers by clicking here.
Start your searches at http://www.Focuss.Info
SamanthaPost author
Working Paper on Development Ethics by Des Gasper
Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability and Deliberative Democracy
David Crocker, one of the founding members of IDEA has just published a book titled, “Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability and Deliberative Democracy.”
This volume is a work in global development ethics. It explains, justifies, applies and extends ethical reflection on development goals, policies, projects and institutions from the local to the global level.
Working Paper on Development Ethics by Des Gasper
From the Focuss.Info searchengine for workers, researchers andstudents in development – http://www.Focuss.Info:
We are pleased to alert you to the latest ISS working paper 456, DENIS GOULET AND THE PROJECT OF DEVELOPMENT ETHICS: Choices in Methodology, Focus and Organization by Des Gasper, Associate Professor of Public Policy Management at the Institute of social studies. You can access the profile of Des by clicking here.
Abstract
Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was a pioneer of human development theory and the main founder of work on “development ethics” as a self-conscious field that, by his definition, treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning, and practice. The paper looks at aspects of Goulet’s work in relation to four issues concerning the project of development ethics—[1] scope, [2] methodology, [3] roles, [4] organisational format and identity. It compares his views with subsequent trends in the field and suggests lessons for work on human development. [1] Goulet’s definition of the scope of development ethics remains serviceable and allows us to combine a view of it as social change ethics (including global change ethics) with yet a relatively specific primary audience of those who recognize themselves as working in development studies or development policy. [2] His approach in development ethics espoused intense existential immersion in each context and was often deeply illuminating, but was limited by the time and skills it requires and its relative disconnection from communicable theory. [3] Goulet wrote profoundly about ethics’ possible lines of influence, through prophetic force and more routinely through incorporation in methods, movements, and education. His own ideas did not become sufficiently embodied in methods and methodologies, but some have become so thanks to other authors. [4] Goulet saw development ethics as a new discipline or subdiscipline. However the required types of immersion, in particular contexts and/or in understanding and changing the methods and systems that structure routine practice, have to be undertaken by people coming from and remaining close to diverse disciplinary and professional backgrounds. Development ethics is and has to be, he gradually came to accept, not a distinct subdiscipline but an interdisciplinary field.
Keywords
development ethics, Denis Goulet, human development, interdisciplinarity
Click here to download the full text of the working paper
You can access the complete list of working papers by clicking here.
International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) 
Forthcoming volume: Capabilities, Power, and Institutions
Submitted by admin_Malavisi on Mon, 2010-04-05 11:57
IDEA member Stephen Esquith together with Fred Gifford are the editors of the forthcoming volume:
CAPABILITIES, POWER, AND INSTITUTIONS Toward a more critical development ethics.
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 signalled 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, Asuncion Lera St. Clair, A. Allan Schmid, Paul B. Thompson, and Thanh-Dam Truong.
For further information go to:
http://www.psu.press.org
Working Paper on Development Ethics
Submitted by ideacms on Tue, 2009-06-16 22:57
We are pleased to alert you to the latest ISS working paper 459,
DEVELOPMENT ETHICS THROUGH THE LENSES OF CARING, GENDER, AND HUMAN
SECURITY by Des Gasper, Associate Professor
of Public Policy Management, and Thanh-Dam Truong, Associate Professor
of Women, Gender and Development, at the Institute of Social Studies.
Abstract
Thinking about ethics of development and ‘human development’ must
both treat development in a global perspective and yet reflect on the
content of ‘human’. The paper explores some faces of globalization by
using a gender perspective, in order to consider reproduction
(psychological and emotional as well as biological) and the activities
and attitudes of care that give moral resources for response to
systemic tragedy, not only for identifying and understanding it. There
now exist globally interconnected systems of vulnerability and
capability, for which matching systems of human security, care and
responsibility are needed in order to protect human dignity. The
discourse of ‘human security’ helps here by better grounding an agenda
of basic human needs, in an ethnography of ordinary lives rather than
only an abstracted accounting of deficiencies or an elevated language
of opportunities. It must be emotionally and existentially grounded
too. We examine the potential contributions here of three diverse
bodies of thought: the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism; the work of
philosopher-anthropologist Ananta Giri; and feminist care ethics.
Keywords
Development ethics, Buddhism, care ethics, globalization, human development, human security, migration, vulnerability.
Click here to download the full text of the working paper
You can access the complete list of working papers by clicking here.
Start your searches at http://www.Focuss.Info
Working Paper on Development Ethics by Des Gasper
Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability and Deliberative Democracy
David Crocker, one of the founding members of IDEA has just published a book titled, “Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability and Deliberative Democracy.”
This volume is a work in global development ethics. It explains, justifies, applies and extends ethical reflection on development goals, policies, projects and institutions from the local to the global level.
Working Paper on Development Ethics by Des Gasper
From the Focuss.Info searchengine for workers, researchers andstudents in development – http://www.Focuss.Info:
We are pleased to alert you to the latest ISS working paper 456, DENIS GOULET AND THE PROJECT OF DEVELOPMENT ETHICS: Choices in Methodology, Focus and Organization by Des Gasper, Associate Professor of Public Policy Management at the Institute of social studies. You can access the profile of Des by clicking here.
Abstract
Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was a pioneer of human development theory and the main founder of work on “development ethics” as a self-conscious field that, by his definition, treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning, and practice. The paper looks at aspects of Goulet’s work in relation to four issues concerning the project of development ethics—[1] scope, [2] methodology, [3] roles, [4] organisational format and identity. It compares his views with subsequent trends in the field and suggests lessons for work on human development. [1] Goulet’s definition of the scope of development ethics remains serviceable and allows us to combine a view of it as social change ethics (including global change ethics) with yet a relatively specific primary audience of those who recognize themselves as working in development studies or development policy. [2] His approach in development ethics espoused intense existential immersion in each context and was often deeply illuminating, but was limited by the time and skills it requires and its relative disconnection from communicable theory. [3] Goulet wrote profoundly about ethics’ possible lines of influence, through prophetic force and more routinely through incorporation in methods, movements, and education. His own ideas did not become sufficiently embodied in methods and methodologies, but some have become so thanks to other authors. [4] Goulet saw development ethics as a new discipline or subdiscipline. However the required types of immersion, in particular contexts and/or in understanding and changing the methods and systems that structure routine practice, have to be undertaken by people coming from and remaining close to diverse disciplinary and professional backgrounds. Development ethics is and has to be, he gradually came to accept, not a distinct subdiscipline but an interdisciplinary field.
Keywords
development ethics, Denis Goulet, human development, interdisciplinarity
Click here to download the full text of the working paper
You can access the complete list of working papers by clicking here.