Rejecting fashionable subjectivist and cultural relativist approaches, this important book argues that human beings have universal and objective needs for health and autonomy and a right to their optimal satisfaction. The authors develop a system of social indicators to show what such optimization would mean in practice and assess the records of a wide range of developed and underdeveloped economies in meeting their citizens' needs.
'An ambitious and very welcome book...[which] combines a tight argument and a wide-ranging application...This will prove a major text not just in terms of the theory presented and the data that is summarised but in the research questions it poses.' - Nigel Parton, Times Higher Education Supplement '[A] scrupulous and sophisticated case...for the ascription of universal needs...What is important and original...about [Doyal and Gough's] project is that it not only tells us what our basic needs are...but offers empirical criteria for the meeting of these goals...' - Kate Soper, New Left Review
Innehållsförteckning
PrefacesIntroductionPART I: RELATIVISM AND THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN NEEDWho Needs Human Needs?The Inevitability of Human NeedsThe Grammar of Human NeedsPART 2: A THEORY OF HUMAN NEEDThe Basic Needs of PersonsSocietal Preconditions for Need SatisfactionHuman Liberation and the Right to Optimal Need SatisfactionOptimising Need Satisfaction in TheoryPART 3: HUMAN NEEDS IN PRACTICEMeasuring Need SatisfactionHealth and Autonomy IntermediateNeeds Societal Preconditions for OptimisingNeed SatisfactionCharting Human WelfarePART 4: THE POLITICS OF HUMAN NEEDTowards a Political Economy of Need SatisfactionThe Dual Strategy.
