Ann Bernstein
executive director, Centre for Development and
Enterprise, South Africa; author, The Case for Business in Developing Economies
Sabina Alkire
director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development
Initiative (OPHI); author, Valuing Freedoms: Sen's capability approach and
poverty reduction
Anil Gupta
professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad;
founder, Honey Bee Network; executive vice chair, National Innovation
Foundation
Stewart Wallis
executive director, new economics foundation (nef);
author, A Radical New Vision for World Trade
Bruno Waterfield
Brussels correspondent, Daily Telegraph; author, No
Means No!
Chair: Angus Kennedy, head of external relations,
Institute of Ideas; chair, IoI Economy Forum
Blurb:
20 years ago the UN published the first and hugely
influential Human Development Report. Drawing on the work of philosopher and
economist Amartya Sen, it had the 'single goal of putting people back at the
centre of the development process... going beyond income to assess the level of
people's long-term well-being'. Today the resulting measures are familiar:
literacy, female schooling, urbanisation, equality and even happiness are argued
to be at least as important as GDP and income. Last year, Sen's Idea of Justice
expanded on his view that it is human 'capabilities' - the range of things we
can do or be in life - that is core to our notion of justice, explicitly
rejecting the attempts of thinkers like John Rawls to develop an objective
standard of justice based on things we can all agree on.
From the late 1940s to the late 1970s there was a
broad consensus that development meant transforming poor rural countries into
rich urban ones through increased industrialisation and economic growth. Often
this went hand in hand with a belief that justice would be best served by
affording people more freedom. Today, in the context of widespread acceptance
of economic and natural limits, development more often refers to the
alleviation of the most extreme forms of poverty and to reducing inequality. In
the context of fast-growing middle-income countries like China, Brazil and
India, there is great stress placed on the need for inclusive or harmonious
development. In these countries, increasing prosperity seems to shine an
embarrassing light on the persistence of social inequality, leading to demands
for governments to redistribute wealth and ensure basic levels of provision.
The battle lines in the contemporary debate on social
justice appear to be drawn between those who argue for a focus on felt
injustices, happiness and lived experience, and those who insist on the
relevance of statistical indicators, model building and transcendental
abstractions like Justice. Between those who rail at the excesses of wealth in
the hands of the few and those who believe more growth can still benefit the
poor as well.
Is it right to focus our efforts on tackling what
appear to be obvious and immediate cases of injustice? Poverty, disease,
oppression? Lack of basic education and healthcare? Through redistribution of
wealth and granting of entitlements? Or should we try to raise up the standards
of all? Is the challenge to build capabilities in relation to actual material
circumstances or to transform those material circumstances and maybe ourselves
in the process? Must we become happy with our lot or let our unhappiness be a
spur to get what we haven't got? When we talk of justice do we need to ask,
justice for whom?
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