2006 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND CAPABILITY ASSOCIATION
29 AUGUST - 1 SEPTEMBER
GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS
Today I registered for this conference and the accompanying summer school. The Human Development and Capability Association is an organisation based around Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's "capabilities approach". To summarize it in his words:
Development can be seen ... as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing on human freedoms [or capabilities] contrasts with the narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product, or with the rise in personal incomes, or with industrialization, or with technological advance, or with social modernization.
The conference will focus on the links between the ideas of freedom and justice. Quite a change from the narrow confines of economics. Some of the models we treat are fascinating, but there is an underlying idea of justice that rarely changes: the most just outcome (we would say the outcome that maximizes social welfare), is the one that generates the highest total level of utility summed across all members of society. This begs two questions: First, why do we talk about utility, which is usually seen as a measure of happines or desire satisfaction, instead of substantive freedoms? And second, even if we stick to utility, why is it that only the total amount of utility is counted and not the distribution of utility, say towards or away from the weakest members of society? No easy answer, but it will be nice to get a broader view. The whole thing will be complemented by the summer school's focus on quantitative measurement relating to the capability approach. It will also be nice to visit Groningen for the first time. It's a small university town, and everybody who's been there seems to have something good to say about it.
http://www.philos.rug.nl/hdca2006/index.htm
http://fas.harvard.edu/~freedoms/index.cgi
29 AUGUST - 1 SEPTEMBER
GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS
Today I registered for this conference and the accompanying summer school. The Human Development and Capability Association is an organisation based around Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's "capabilities approach". To summarize it in his words:
Development can be seen ... as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing on human freedoms [or capabilities] contrasts with the narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product, or with the rise in personal incomes, or with industrialization, or with technological advance, or with social modernization.
The conference will focus on the links between the ideas of freedom and justice. Quite a change from the narrow confines of economics. Some of the models we treat are fascinating, but there is an underlying idea of justice that rarely changes: the most just outcome (we would say the outcome that maximizes social welfare), is the one that generates the highest total level of utility summed across all members of society. This begs two questions: First, why do we talk about utility, which is usually seen as a measure of happines or desire satisfaction, instead of substantive freedoms? And second, even if we stick to utility, why is it that only the total amount of utility is counted and not the distribution of utility, say towards or away from the weakest members of society? No easy answer, but it will be nice to get a broader view. The whole thing will be complemented by the summer school's focus on quantitative measurement relating to the capability approach. It will also be nice to visit Groningen for the first time. It's a small university town, and everybody who's been there seems to have something good to say about it.
http://www.philos.rug.nl/hdca2006/index.htm
http://fas.harvard.edu/~freedoms/index.cgi
posted by Nick Vikander at 5/20/2006
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