Ubuntu and Capabilities Approach: Basic Doctrines for Calibrating Humanitarian Action

Rapatsa Mashele
Additional contact information
Rapatsa Mashele: LLB (UL) LLM (UCT) PhD student, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

European Review of Applied Sociology, 2016, vol. 9, issue 12, 12-19

Abstract: This article explores prospects of using Ubuntu and Capabilities Approach to expand the scope of humanitarian action, to design one which serves humanity better even in the absence of disaster to essentially fulfil human development needs. It is considerate of the fact that humanitarian works contributes immensely in determining the extent to which humanity thrives. The traditional view on humanitarianism presupposes action-driven initiatives geared towards devising interventions to restore or reinforce human social order, improve livelihoods and quality of life. In sociological terms, human development is dependent on realizing and safeguarding, amongst others, human well-being, civil liberties and social security. The article utilizes core values enshrined in Ubuntu, Africa’s historic philosophy of life, and Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach as tools of analysis, with the view to expressing how to operationalize what should be considered stable humanitarian conditions and human well-being. Owing to persistent socio-economic challenges, especially the poverty problem, it is asserted that humanitarian action ought to depart from being a post-disaster intervention strategy, to being a pro-active and preventative pre-disaster orientated action, intended to nurture well-being and resultantly enable human development.

Keywords: humanitarianism; human well-being; human capabilities; poverty; Ubuntu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/eras-2016-0002 (text/html)

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:vrs:erapso:v:9:y:2016:i:12:p:12-19:n:2

DOI: 10.1515/eras-2016-0002

Access Statistics for this article

European Review of Applied Sociology is currently edited by Ciprian Panzaru

More articles in European Review of Applied Sociology from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().