From Development Theory to Practice

Séverine Deneulin

Chapter 5 in The Capability Approach and the Praxis of Development, 2006, pp 118-139 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Sen’s freedom-centred approach to development is an approach which is concerned with ‘the expansion of substantive human freedoms’ (Drèze and Sen, 2002, p. 3), which holds ‘individual agency [as] ultimately central to addressing these deprivations [of substantive human freedoms]’ (Sen, 1999b, p. xi), and which ‘cannot be dissociated from participation’ (Sen, 1999b, p. 249). I have argued in the previous chapters that, for the capability approach to be a guiding theory for development praxis, for it to provide theoretical insights for orienting policies towards the removal of unfreedoms, it will need to be ‘thickened’ with a certain vision of the good life, with certain moral principles which assess the extent to which political freedom has been conducive to the removal of unfreedoms, and with an analysis of the structure of a country’s socio-historical agency (an analysis of a country’s collective capability to remove unfreedoms). The next chapters will illustrate these theoretical arguments. More specifically, they will illustrate that, without an explicit acknowledgment of the central role of socio-historical agency in promoting human well-being, without thickening the capability approach with socio-historical narratives which render an account of that agency, the capability approach does not shed sufficient light on the processes through which some countries have more successfully than others promoted human freedoms.

Keywords: Development Theory; Latin American Country; Dominican Republic; Capability Approach; Illegal Immigrant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-62725-3_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230627253

DOI: 10.1057/9780230627253_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().