Human Development and Social Power

Perspectives from South Asia

Ananya Mukherjee Reed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415775526
• eBook ISBN: 9781135973223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

In South Asia and beyond, human development continues to be in a state of crisis. Each successive Human Development Report (HDR) and the pervasive global failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals are constant reminders of this crisis. An equally, and even more distressing dimension of human development is its great unevenness. Even in cou

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Conceptualizing Human Development

Towards a social power approach

Much of the existing literature treats human development as an undifferentiated concept. While there are broad principles of agreement between different human development scholars, it is important to recognize that multiple notions of human development may be possible, and indeed necessary. Let me begin by identifying three major notions of human development prevalent in the current literature:

• human development as the enhancement of opportunity, capability and freedom (the capability approach, hereafter);
• human development as redistribution and reduction of inequality (the human face approach, hereafter); and
• human development as a process of reconfiguration of the matrices of social power (the social power approach, hereafter).

Of these, the first two comprise the dominant institutionalized approaches to human development. The third exists more as a critique than as a fully formulated approach within the human development paradigm. I will make a modest effort here to give it such a formulation. The formulation takes selective elements from both 1 and 2 but is significantly different in its epistemological and normative commitments.

The plan of the chapter is as follows. In the first section, I will critically examine in some detail the first two approaches that I mentioned above. What emerges from this examination, I argue, is the need to reconceptualize human development along three interrelated axes, namely, social justice, difference and agency. In the second section I will suggest such a reconceptualization. In the third and final section, some general conclusions are presented.

Human development: dominant themes and approaches

Situated within a liberal normative and epistemological framework, the capability approach is also the approach that most intimately informs the strategies of major development organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and has emerged as the dominant approach within the paradigm. The core ideas of the approach are: universalism; a liberal and pluralist notion of the state; the priority of individual freedoms; formal equality; emphasis on individual agency; and a vision of liberal capitalism as a context in which opportunity and freedom are generated and individual human agency thrive. As is well known, the primary philosophical formulation of the capability approach has been developed by Amartya Sen; Nussbaum has been one of the foremost authors to develop the approach from a gender perspective. Mahbub ul Haq, best-known for his formulation of the Human Development Index (HDI) and the founding of the Human Development Reports, also shared the main epistemological and political premises of the capability approach, although his own formulation of human development differed somewhat from Sen and Nussbaum.

As we know, capability takes as its point of reference what ‘people are actually able to do or be’. A person’s capability refers to the feasible set or sets of functionings that circumstances allow him or her to achieve. As Sen says, ‘capability is thus a kind of freedom: the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations (or less formally put, the freedom to achieve various lifestyles)’ (Sen 1999: 75). Drawing upon this notion of capability, Sen has argued that freedom should be considered as both the end and means of development. The task of social change, in this view, consists primarily in eradicating ‘unfreedoms’ that prevent the enhancement of capabilities.

Nussbaum, in elaborating the capability framework from a gender perspective, has argued that ‘Sen’s “perspective of freedom” is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad’. In her view, before the approach can offer a valuable normative perspective, ‘we must make commitments about substance’ (Nussbaum 2003: 33). Nussbaum then goes on to specify ‘a definite set of capabilities’, which she claims, are ‘the most important ones to protect’:

Although this list is somewhat different from Rawls’ list of primary goods, it is offered in a similar political-liberal spirit: as a list that can be endorsed for political purposes, as a moral basis for central constitutional guarantees, by people who have otherwise very different views on what a complete good life for a human being would be …. A list of central capabilities is not a complete theory of justice. Such a list gives us the basis for a decent social minimum in a variety of areas. (Nussbaum 2000: 74–5)

The idea of a decent social minimum is also found in Sen, and in successive Human Development Reports (HDRs hereafter). In choosing which freedoms and capabilities need to be prioritised within the framework of a human development strategy, Sen has suggested using Adam Smith’s evaluative criteria, ‘the ability to appear in public without shame’ (Sen 1999: 74). In Sen’s view this criteria allows for social needs and priorities to accommodate cultural difference and human diversity. This ability, Sen has argued, is a distinct point of departure of the capability approach, from others such as the basic needs approach, which seek to guarantee specific commodity bundles irrespective of cultural or material differences. The Reports, in their actual task of human development policy formulation, have given priority to four specific types of capabilities: knowledge, health, a decent standard of living and human freedoms (HDR 1990: 10). In the HDR of 2004 another dimension has been added, namely, cultural liberty.

Let me turn now to the human face approach. First formulated in the seminal volume Adjustment with a Human Face, the main proponents of this approach are authors such as Cornia, Jolly and Stewart (1987). Central to this analysis was a critique of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), and, more broadly, the imposition of contractionary economic policies on the developing world. The broad epistemological framework from which this approach is derived is that of Keynesian international institutionalism. Its argument is that a framework of ‘managed’ international capitalism with adequate degrees of state sovereignty is a necessary condition for human development. State sovereignty is considered essential to enable governments to pursue expansionary fiscal policy for protecting the most vulnerable of its citizens from economic shocks. Thus, the HDRs that adopted this approach focused on the impact of the dissolution of the Keynesian institutional framework on the developing world. Globalization, in this analysis, was seen to have deepened many of the systemic inequalities which already existed between and within nations (UNDP 1997; UNDP 1999). Thus, if globalization were to enable human development, it must have a ‘human face’. In other words, the imposition of neo-liberal economic policy could not take priority over the basic requirements of those whose quality of life is rendered vulnerable as a result of these policies. What is recommended rather, is an expansionary macroeconomics, extensive social protection and social security, compensatory programmes for the poor, and targeted social policy that would protect vulnerable groups from the adverse effects of economic growth.

In effect then, the human face approach does not disagree with the formation of capability as a goal of human development. However, it argues that the formation of capability cannot occur unless the broader political economic context is addressed. In particular, it sees the reduction of inequality (understood as a multidimensional phenomenon) as a fundamental goal of human development. Two points are critical to note in this discussion of inequality. First, much of the human face approach sees inequality as an effect of international economic policy and not merely as a distributional issue. Second, while it does not disagree with Sen’s seminal notion of capability inequality, its view of inequality is somewhat broader and more compatible with the notion of structural inequality (discussed below).

In his Tanner lectures, Sen develops an elaborate critique of the notions of equality based on the real incomes/commodities and suggests capabilities as the alternative basis for conceptualizing equality. The goal of this reconceptualization is to transcend the narrowness of those models of equality which concern themselves with specific commodities and specific distributional configurations. As Sen argues, ‘Differences in age, gender, special talents, disability, proneness to illness, and so on can make two different persons have quite divergent opportunities of quality of life even when they share exactly the same commodity bundle’ (Sen 1999: 69). In other words, access to the same commodity bundles does not guarantee equality. While it is undoubtedly true capability inequalities may be more important than the equality of commodity bundles, this in itself cannot preclude the question as to why commodity bundles of different people – or different social groups – are so unequal. This, in fact, has been a central question in the problematic of development. Unfortunately, much of conventional development has sought to answer this question by focusing on the issue of distribution (and its patterns of mediation by the state or the market or a combination of both) but have laid inadequate emphasis on the underlying structures that produce that inequality. The human face approach is inclined towards an emphasis on the latter, albeit in the end it cannot escape the contradictions of Keynesian institutionalism. In other words, what the human face approach appears to focus on are the fallacies of global institutions, but not the underlying structures that cause those fallacies. As such, as typical of the Keynesian view, it argues that once appropriate policies for ‘managing’ globalization are in place, it can indeed be made compatible with human development. As the HDR 1999 states:

What area of policy is most important for managing globalisation? Harmonising global competition and free market approaches with steady and expanding support for human development and human rights in all countries, developed and developing. This is at the heart of a new perspective, a new global ethic, and a new approach to globalisation. And it requires a range of actions, from the broad to the specific. (HDR 1999: 97)

The Report goes on to identify a number of broad-ranging institutional changes that can realize the objectives of the ‘new global ethic’. These involve measures such as the social audit of multinational corporations (MNCs); democratizing the structure of international institutions; debt forgiveness; and fairer rules of trade. Implicit here is the assumption that governments, corporations, donors and similar other development actors with different and conflicting interests can come to an agreement about human development. We see this reflected in the successive calls for a ‘global compact’ in the various international forums, including the HDRs. There are two methodological points to note about the nature of convergence that such global compacts seek. First, they rely on moralistic and voluntaristic forms of agency, the limitations of which are evident from the persistent failure of these compacts. Second, this assumption of convergence eliminates from the analytical framework the embeddedness of social conflict, the conflictual nature of social relations, and the deep asymmetries of power that constitute the dynamics of development. The most pertinent example is perhaps of the UN Global Compact which calls for the active involvement of corporations in sustainable human development in collaboration with the United Nations. The conflict between the structural interest of corporations and the rest of society has been one of the central themes in critical political economy. The Global Compact purports to be an institutional solution based on a ‘global ethic’ that can reconcile these contradictory interests. Can it succeed? I discuss this more below and then more fully in Chapter 6.¹

Continuing from this brief summary of the two dominant approaches, I now wish to develop a fuller critique of them along three principal themes:

1. their underlying conception of social justice;
2. the understanding of difference; and
3. the understanding of agency.

Critique of the dominant approaches

Social justice

Following Iris Young, I will argue that the paradigm of social justice which informs the capability approach is a distributive paradigm of justice.

The distributive paradigm defines social justice as the morally proper distribution of social benefits and burdens among society’s members. Paramount among these are wealth, income and other material resources. The distributive definition of justice often includes, however, non-material social goods such as rights, opportunity, power and self-respect. (Young 1990: 16)

As Young explains, the focus on distribution ignores and tends to obscure the institutional context within which those distributions take place; this ‘institutional context’ involves particular constellations of ‘structures or practices, the rules and norms which guide them, and the language and symbols that mediate social interactions within them, in institutions of state, family and civil society, as well as the workplace’ (Young 1990: 22). This emphasis on patterns of distribution is typical of liberal models of justice as Marx had pointed out (Marx 1875; cited in Young 2004: 2000).² Indeed, the precise goal of policy approaches premised on the liberal distributive model is to accommodate political demands within existing structures of property rights, gender relations, and divisions of labour and cultural norms.

At first instance, it might appear contradictory to claim that the capability approach draws upon a distributive model. Is the hallmark of the capability approach not that it focuses on doings and beings and the freedom to achieve them, instead of the commodities and resources that people can access or possess? Yes, indeed. In my reading, however, though the capability approach transcends the view of development as distribution of commodities and resources, it is unclear that it transcends the distributive model itself.

I referred above to Sen’s critique of the notions of equality based on real incomes/commodities and his alternative conceptualization of equality. The goal of this reconceptualization was to transcend the commodity and distributive ‘fetish’ of conventional models of equality, including that of the Rawlsian model. However, Sen’s own notion of capability equality, as Sen himself says, remains in the end committed to the basic Rawlsian concern with distribution: ‘The focus on basic capabilities can be seen as a natural extension of Rawls’s concern with primary goods, shifting attention from goods to what goods do to human beings’ (Sen 1979: 218). In my reading, this ‘extension’ renders the purported transcendence from the distributive model incomplete. Instead of commodities themselves, we now focus on the freedoms generated by goods as commodities. The goal of human development then becomes the guaranteeing of certain threshold levels of freedoms (and associated levels of commodities).

The distributive underpinning of the model is also reflected clearly in the distinct choice of focus on capabilities rather than functionings. As Nussbaum has clarified:

Where adult citizens are concerned capabilities and not functionings is the appropriate political goal. It is perfectly true that functionings, not simply capabilities, are what render a life fully human, in the sense that if there were no functioning of any kind of human life, we could hardly applaud it, no matter what opportunities it contained. Nonetheless for political purposes it is appropriate that we shoot for capabilities and those alone. Citizens must be left free to determine their own course after that. (Nussbaum 2000: 87)

Sen and Nussbaum prioritize two specific types of distribution: access to opportunities (such as primary education) and the distribution of guarantees or rights. Large development organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which take the capability approach as the basis for its human development strategies, take as their goal the delivery of minimal commodity bundles consisting of health, literacy and a certain threshold of incomes. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) signify exactly the same objective of delivering a comprehensive yet minimal set of basic commodities and opportunities required for capability development.

I do not take issue with the view that such distributional guarantees are necessary. The problem, however, is that the distributive model itself is unable to point to adequate mechanisms and/or social processes which can guarantee these distributions. The only two mechanisms compatible with its normative framework are those of rights or entitlements and voluntarist action by institutions. I will address the question of voluntarism in the discussion of agency below. Let me briefly comment on the question of rights. As Young argues, ‘rights are not fruitfully conceived as possessions. Rights are relationships, not things; they are institutionally defined rules specifying what people can do in relation to one another. Rights refer to doing more than having, to social relationships that enable or constrain action’ (Young 1990: 25). In other words, the actual viability of rights, or in Sen’s terms their potential power as instruments which can remove ‘unfreedoms’ and thereby bring about development, is dependent on the underlying structures and the social relations that are implied by them. This reveals in turn, the (perhaps irresoluble) contradiction between ‘a moral discourse [of freedom] and the real world of competition, finance and inequality’ (Bagchi 2000: 4414). As Bagchi argues, given the existing capitalist order, unqualified or unspecified freedoms of exchange can actually increase the potential for exploitation of certain social groups, in ways that directly contradict the requirements of human development. As such, in order for Sen’s freedom-centred model to succeed in realizing human development, Bagchi suggests that there is a need to eschew the lingering ambiguity in Sen with respect to those elements of g...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures and tables
• Permissions
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Human development: has the paradigm failed us?
• 1 Conceptualizing Human Development: towards a social power approach
• 2 Human Development in India: a profile of unevenness
• 3 Explaining Uneven Human Development in India: a social power perspective
• 4 Human Development in Pakistan and Bangladesh: a profile
• 5 Uneven Human Development in Pakistan and Bangladesh: a social power perspective
• 6 Conclusions: agency, human development and social power
• Notes
• Bibliography