This is my first post in steemit, so please bear with me and excuse me for any mistakes I made, especially the grammar (English is not my native language)
I'm writing this post according to what I read in the book by Amartya Sen, titled: "Development as Freedom" written in 1999
it is also a gesture of thanks to the author, as the book really helped me with my thesis.
So basically,
what I managed to grasp during the time I was researching this book is that the author: Sen, is giving us this simplified picture using understandable language, that was directed to anyone regarding their background, about the connection between these 2 concepts (freedom and development) and how should we view them in the context of the later (development)
This book gives out a pretty bold statement regarding freedom in a deveopment context, it encourages us to view development as a process, a process of expanding the real freedom that the people can enjoy, and by the real freedom mentioned before, we are talking about "human freedom", so it will tend to differ from the typical economic view on development that focuses on growth and GNP, incomes, and other similar context.
Sen argued, by viewing development as a process of expanding freedom, it is by the definition given to us by that statement, that development should also be viewed as the process of eradicating the sources of unfreedom (poverty, poor economic and political opportunities, tyranny, famines, illness, and others)
these threats, in which they created unfreedom condition towards human, are the main focus that should be fought by development. By doing this (expanding people's freedom), development can be used to uphold the quality of life of the people. We will discuss this later on, for now, I will bring up the reasons for why freedom is "central" in the process of development.
the book wrote that there are 2 reasons for this particular context:
evaluative reason - any type of progress in development should be done in terms of whether the freedom that people enjoy are enhanced or not.
The effective reason - the achievement of development itself is dependent on the free agency of people, in other words, the freedom that they can enjoy.
these 2 reasons are the key point of view in grasping the whole information that was given to us by the book, we should always wear this 2 reason as a glasses to view the other concepts that were given to us in the book so we could easily get the idea of understanding.
Those reasons really pointed out how central the role of freedom in development because how it was used to feed each other. any types of development should be evaluated to the freedom context, and to keep on pushing the progress of development, it is crucial to keep the people feeling, and enjoying freedom.
With the 2 reasons acting as a foundation, Sen carried us through the book with what types and kinds of action should development be made, what kind of instruments should be used, who are the actors who should be driving the development, what other concepts and theories that correlated with this view, and so on.
it is an interesting read and quite understandable, Sen won a noble prize for writing this book and was used as the main subject in addressing the late MDG's purposed by the UN. I personally think it is still quite fitting for the development agenda that are being used right now (SDG's) even though it is shifting to a more planet-friendly approach. There are still a lot of concepts are compatible with the present state of development worldwide.
I'll continue this post in another time, and wait for responses. if anyone of you is interested, be sure to comment and I'll try my best to explain what I'm saying in this post.
Cheers.
