Reviews for Global restructuring and territorial development

The average rating for Global restructuring and territorial development based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-31 00:00:00 Ren� Gagnon Here's the thing about Amartya Sen: everything he writes oozes humility and compassion, and his optimism is both refreshing and contagious. His arguments are consistently predicated upon a genuine respect for humanity and a desire to eliminate the poverty that plagues most of the world. For this reason, it's hard not to like him. But - of course there's a but - when it comes down to the actual content and evidence of some of his works there are some gaping holes that fundamentally undermine the persuasiveness of his arguments. While he's not as dogmatic as some of his neoliberal peers, Sen doesn't really move very far beyond the default paradigm that takes the expansion of free markets to be the basic solution to underdevelopment. If you don't agree with that basic assumption (I don't), the rest of this book will be unsatisfying. Let's start with the good. Perhaps Sen's strongest contribution is that instead of taking low income as the primary indicator of underdevelopment (and by extension economic growth as development), he identifies the expansion of freedom as both the means and end of development.  Efforts to overcome poverty should be based upon the removal of “unfreedoms” that prevent people from making full use of their capabilities, and by increasing the opportunities individuals have to take responsibility for and act as authors of their own lives.  So far so good; this is a welcome departure from the prevalent focus on material deprivation and the overemphasis on structures.  Certainly, personal choice and responsibility should be key to development strategies that respect the dignity of the human condition beyond individuals’ productive capacities. The problem is that this emphasis on freedom is tethered to an understanding of free-market capitalism – as an ethic and as a system of exchange – that draws heavily from classical economics, and which is presented by Sen as the only intellectually defensible position (see his uncharacteristically acerbic dismissal of other approaches that “[dust:] up generically anti-market positions from the distant past”).  Essentially, the freedom to participate in capitalist markets is also seen as a substantive freedom, a virtue in and of itself and the ultimate goal of development. This strategy prevents Sen from affording anything close to enough theoretical or empirical consideration to the structural impediments that delimit the boundaries of agent-oriented transformation; he completely neglects to take into account the extent to which capitalism produces and reinforces asymmetrical relations of power not only supra- and internationally but within states themselves.  The result is that while he writes of the importance of norms and institutions, and while he recognizes some forms of structural oppression such as patriarchy, Sen doesn't extend his analysis to incorporate the crucial fact of class domination.  Instead, the entire argument is premised upon an understanding of capitalism that is both dated and revisionist: dated in the sense that he relies on 18th century theories of classical economics without updating or contextualizing the arguments for the 21st century, and revisionist insofar as he completely ignores the experiences of those who did not benefit from the emergence of this economic system (ie. peasantries that were brutally destroyed). He's all but forced to acknowledge this when in the very same paragraph he notes that “despite its effectiveness, capitalist ethics is, in fact, deeply limited in some respects, dealing particularly with issues of economic inequality, environmental protection and the need for cooperation of different kids that operate outside the market.”   At the risk of stating the obvious, these are rather significant issues that are being bracketed, and leaves me to wonder just what capitalism is so good for if it can't address them in any meaningful way. For someone so concerned with justice and inequality, it's certainly odd that the victors of liberal capitalism inform Sen’s normative approach to development, not those it annihilated The fact that Sen ignores the power imbalances produced by capitalism is especially important given the interconnectedness of the freedoms he identifies, for just one point of deviance in this virtuous circle of development is enough to upset the desired equilibrium.  For example, Sen argues that because of universal reason and rationality “there is no reason why vested interests must win if open arguments and permitted and promoted.”  What he doesn't address is that capitalism structures these institutions, ie how highly concentrated media ownership limits the free flow of information that he deems crucial for transparent democratic decision-making (c.f. contemporary Venezuela). The point is not that such structures of power and entrenched interests are impossible to change, but that Sen doesn't even begin to address how such a transformation would be possible given the conditions of capitalism as it's currently entrenched in the world system.  This failure to account for the limits of agency also points to a larger and, in my opinion, more devastating flaw in Sen’s argument: his understanding of capitalism as a self-regulating, ahistorical system based on a universal ethic of market exchange.  Although he notes that “today’s prejudices (in favour of a pure market system) certainly need to be investigated and […:] partly rejected,” he doesn't actually interrogate these prejudices or convincingly justify his selection of which aspects of capitalist orthodoxy are to be rejected and which are to be retained.  For Sen, “within its domain, capitalism works effectively through a system of ethics that provides the vision and the trust needed for successful use of the market mechanism and related institutions.” As Polanyi argues (much more convincingly, in my opinion), this ideal vision of capitalism bears little relation to the flaws and contradictions of capitalism as it functions in reality; the insecurity and violence brought by capitalism engenders resistance among its victims and create protective countermeasures that further interfere with the autonomy of markets. This is ignored by Sen, who writes of the need to anticipate unintended consequences but can't explain how to do this or why it's happened so rarely. To be fair, Sen tries to distance himself from his more rabid neoliberal brethren when he admits that some regulation is necessary to keep the economy stable and to provide important means-tested public goods such as health care and education.  But in his steadfast advocacy of capitalism as the key to freedom and insistence that anything more than minimal state involvement in the economy will be detrimental to development, Sen forecloses not just the possibility that other strategies could exist, but that alternatives do exist.  This was most striking to me when he makes the important point that women’s work within the home is largely undervalued and ill-recognized, because rather than directly challenging patriarchal attitudes or considering the sort of decommodification that has met with great success in social democratic regimes, Sen argues that the solution is for women to enter the market in order to become more independent and socially recognized.  Obviously nobody should be prevented from entering the market economy if they so choose, and some may very well benefit, but it doesn't follow that the best way to empower women is to incorporate them into the mutually supportive systems of capitalism and patriarchy.  The market conditions of sex trafficking and the exploitation of migrant domestic workers would certainly suggest otherwise. I guess Development as Freedom is good for what it is - a liberal call for "kinder" development strategies than those traditionally pursued by IFIs like the World Bank. This is an attractive normative position, but it's not sufficiently convincing when confronted with the realities of structural inequality, highly entrenched vested interests, and the counterprotective movements that emerge in response to contemporary global capitalism.  If I can get just as utopian as Sen is for a moment, I think that instead of advocating for freedom within capitalism, he'd be better served by focusing on development as liberation from capitalism, which clearly hasn't been successfully rehabilitated to serve or empower the poor for centuries despite the best efforts of many other well-meaning liberals.  Otherwise, schmucks like Bono will just continue to run their mouths and get richer while doing so.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-09-27 00:00:00 William Schulte Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen Development as Freedom is a 1999 book about international development by the economist Amartya Sen. Amartya Sen was the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. His book argues that economic development entails a set of linked freedoms: Political freedoms and transparency in relations between people. Freedom of opportunity, including freedom to access credit; and Economic protection from abject poverty, including through income supplements and unemployment relief. تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و دوم ماه ژوئن سال 2007 میلادی عنوان: توسعه به مثابه آزادی؛ نویسنده: آمارتیا سن؛ مترجم : وحید محمودی؛ ناشر: انتشارات دانشگاه تهران؛ سال چاپ: 1394؛ نوبت چاپ: چهارم؛ شابک: 96460201718؛ عنوان: توسعه یعنی آزادی؛ نویسنده: آمارتیا سن؛ مترجم: محمدسعید نوری نائینی؛ تهران، دانشگاه تهران، 1394، در 542 ص؛ فهرست مطالب: مقدمه – توسعه به مثابه آزادی؛ فصل اول – چشم انداز آزادی؛ فصل دوم – هدف و ابزارهای توسعه؛ فصل سوم – آزادی و پایه های عدالت اجتماعی؛ فصل چهارم – فقر به مثابه محرومیت از قابلیت؛ فصل پنجم – بازار، دولت و فرصت های اجتماعی؛ فصل ششم – اهمیت مردم سالاری؛ فصل هفتم – گرسنگی و دیگر بحرانها؛ فصل هشتم – نقش فاعلی زنان و تغییرات اجتماعی؛ فصل نهم – جمعیت، غذا و آزادی؛ فصل دهم – فرهنگ و حقوق بشر؛ فصل یازدهم – انتخاب اجتماعی و رفتار فردی؛ فصل دوازدهم – آزادی فردی به مثابه مسئولیت اجتماعی؛ توسعه به مثابه آزادی کتابی نوشته «آمارتیا سن» اقتصاددان برنده ی جایزه ی نوبل است که در سال 1999 میلادی منتشر شد. موضوع این کتاب توسعه بین‌المللی است. این کتاب در ایران توسط دانشگاه تهران در سال 1394 هجری خورشیدی به چاپ رسیده‌ است. «آمارتیا سن» برنده ی جایزه نوبل در اقتصاد در سال 1998 میلادی است. این کتاب استدلال می‌کند، که توسعه ی اقتصادی مستلزم مجموعه ای از آزادیهاست، که به یکدیگر مرتبط هستند: آزادی‌های سیاسی و شفافیت در روابط بین مردم؛ آزادی برخورداری از فرصت‌ها از جمله آزادی برای دسترسی به اعتبار مالی؛ حفاظت مردم از فقر، از طریق درآمد مکمل، و کمک‌ هزینه‌ های بیکاری. در این کتاب فقدان حداقل یکی از شکلهای آزادی به عنوان فقر محسوب می‌شود. «سن» نتیجه می‌گیرد که توسعهٔ واقعی، تنها به معنای افزایش پایه ی درآمد، یا افزایش میانگین درآمد سرانه نیست. «سن» بازار آزاد را، به عنوان یک روش ضروری، برای دستیابی به آزادی می‌داند. این مسئله مورد انتقاد افرادی است، که ادعا می‌کنند سرمایه‌ داری، و به ویژه سرمایه‌ داری «نئو-لیبرال» تقویت‌ کننده ی فقدان آزادی است. ا. شربیانی