Development as Freedom

Sen, Amartya

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-28787-8_94

Cited by 971 publications

(1,526 citation statements)

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“…This approach also seeks to examine the underlying social and psychological processes and practices by which resilience may be achieved. One of the major outcomes of developing resilience is the development of "human capabilities" (Sen, 1999) which are seen as vital for developing freedom and thus "health" in a broad, holistic sense.…”

Section: The Concept Of Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Additive and subtractive resilience strategies as enablers of biographical reinvention: A qualitative study of ex-smokers and never-smokers

Ward

Muller

Tsourtos

et al. 2011

Social Science & Medicine

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Additive and subtractive resilience strategies as enablers of biographical reinvention: a qualitative study of ex-smokers and never-smokers AbstractThe notion of developing resilience is becoming increasingly important as a way of responding to the social determinants of poor health, particularly in disadvantaged groups. It is hypothesized that resilient individuals and communities are able to "bounce back" from the adversities they face. This paper explores the processes involved in building resilience as an outcome in relation to both quitting smoking and never smoking. The study involved 93 qualitative, oral-history interviews with participants from population groups with high and enduring smoking rates in Adelaide, Australia, and was essentially interested in how some people in these groups managed to quit or never start smoking in the face of adversities, in comparison to a group of smokers. Our key findings relate to what we call additive and subtractive resilience strategies, which focus on the practices, roles and activities that individuals either "took on" or "left behind" in order to quit smoking or remain abstinent. The theoretical lenses we use to understand these resilience strategies relate to biographical reinforcement and biographical reinvention, which situate the resilience strategies in a broader "project of the self", often in relation to attempting to develop "healthy bodies" and "healthy biographies".

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Section: The Concept Of Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Additive and subtractive resilience strategies as enablers of biographical reinvention: A qualitative study of ex-smokers and never-smokers

Ward

Muller

Tsourtos

et al. 2011

Social Science & Medicine

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“…As Amartya Sen (20) has eloquently argued, we should acknowledge that capabilities are valuable because of what they make us free to do, while recognizing that different people will choose to use their capabilities differently. For this reason, a definition of health that avoids Nordenfelt's reliance on the elusive idea of happiness and instead appeals to Nussbaum's basic capabilities seems well placed to incorporate a useful degree of objectivity while nonetheless leaving ample room for individual variation.…”

Section: The Pragmatic Theory Of Intelligence Means That the Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intelligence and Transparency in Health Technology Assessment

Richardson

2016

Int J Technol Assess Health Care

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Current thinking about the methodology of health technology assessment (HTA) seems to be dominated by two fundamental tensions: [1] between maintaining a tight focus on quality-adjusted life-years and broadening its concern out to pay attention to a broader range of factors, and [2] between thinking of the evaluative dimensions that matter as being objectively important factors or as ones that are ultimately of merely subjective importance. In this study, I will argue that health is a tremendously important all-purpose means to enjoying basic human capabilities, but a mere means, and not an end. The ends to which health is a means are manifold, requiring all those engaged in policy making to exercise intelligence in a continuing effort to identify them and to think through how they interrelate. Retreating to the subjective here would be at odds with the basic idea of HTA, which is to focus on certain objectively describable dimensions of what matters about health and to collect empirical evidence rigorously bearing on what produces improvements along those dimensions. To proceed intelligently in doing HTA, it is important to stay open to reframing and refashioning the ends we take to apply to that arena. The only way for that to happen, as an exercise of public, democratic policy making, is for the difficult value questions that arise when ends clash not to be buried in subjective preference information, but to be front-and-center in the analysis. Keywords: Concept of health, Final ends, Capabilities, Subjective preferences, Deliberative democracy The pragmatic theory of intelligence means that the function of mind is to project new and more complex ends-to free experience from routine and from caprice . . . . Action restricted to given and fixed ends may attain great technical efficiency; but efficiency is the only quality to which it can lay claim. Such action is mechanical (or becomes so), no matter what the scope of the pre-formed end . . . . But the doctrine that intelligence develops within the sphere of action for the sake of possibilities not yet given is the opposite of a doctrine of mechanical efficiency. Intelligence as intelligence is inherently forward-looking; only by ignoring its primary function does it become a mere means for an end already given (1).In this study, I offer some observations and arguments about how to think about the contribution of health technology assessment (HTA) to policy making. 1 To this outsider, current thinking about the methodology of HTA seems to be dominated by two fundamental tensions: between maintaining a tight focus on quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and broadening its concern out to pay attention to a broader range of factors, and between thinking of the evaluative dimensions that matter as being objectively important factors or as ones that are ultimately of merely subjective importance. I hope to show how these tensions can be put to productive use. Doing so, I will argue, will require practitioners of HTA to remember that health is a means, not an end, an...

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“…In this research we are interested in the social sustainability of infrastructure. We define this as infrastructure that supports basic human capabilities (such as life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; concern for other species; play; control over one's environment 15,16 . However, this excellent philosophical definition does not tell us much about how to design socially sustainable infrastructure.…”

Section: Social Sustainability Of Sanitation Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

The Internal Social Sustainability of Sanitation Infrastructure

Kaminsky

Javernick‐Will

2014

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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While the construction of sanitation infrastructure is one of humankind's greatest public health and environmental engineering achievements, its benefits are not yet enjoyed by all. In addition to the billions of people not yet reached by sanitation infrastructure, at least half of systems constructed in developing contexts are abandoned in the years following initial construction. In this research, we target the problem of post-construction onsite sanitation infrastructure abandonment in rural Guatemala using legitimacy and status theory. Legitimacy and status are established theoretical concepts from organizational theory that reflect cultural alignment and normative support. Crisp set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA), which uses Boolean algebra to discover combinations of theoretical conditions that produce an outcome of interest, allowed us to describe the various pathways that have caused socially sustainable uptake. We find that three combinations of legitimacy and status theory explain 85% of household cases at a consistency of 0.97. The most practically useful pathway covers 50% of household cases and shows that the combination of consequential legitimacy (a moral understanding of outcomes) and comprehensibility legitimacy (a cognitive model connecting outcomes to processes) is a powerful way to achieve socially sustainable sanitation infrastructure. AcknowledgementsThis paper was developed under STAR Fellowship Assistance Agreement no. FP917283

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Development as Freedom

Cited by 971 publications

References 0 publications

Additive and subtractive resilience strategies as enablers of biographical reinvention: A qualitative study of ex-smokers and never-smokers

Additive and subtractive resilience strategies as enablers of biographical reinvention: A qualitative study of ex-smokers and never-smokers

Intelligence and Transparency in Health Technology Assessment

The Internal Social Sustainability of Sanitation Infrastructure

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