Ethics of Development

Des Gasper is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, a centre of development studies where he is currently Dean of teaching. He is co-author (with Raymond Apthorpe) of Arguing Development Policy (Frank Cass, 1996).

Des Gasper's critical survey of the field of 'the ethics of development' is not a difficult read and can be appreciated as much by the general reader as by students of development … a helpful source book for a module on the subject area.

• Preface; 1. What is the Ethics of Development?; 1.1. Why Development Ethics? Cases and Questions; Extreme poverty amidst immense riches; Health and sickness, needs and profits; Towards a 'calculus of pain': recognising varieties of suffering and violence; The infliction of costs on the weak: the examples of dams, famines, debt, and structural adjustment; Global obligations and universal values?; What is development?; 1.2. What? On Meanings and Agenda; The core agenda of development ethics; Emergence and contributors; Definitions; 1.3. How? On Methods and Roles; Methods; Possible roles of development ethics; Global or Southern?; 2. The Meaning of 'Development'; 2.1. Purposes and Themes; 2.2. Ahistorical Definitions; Usages across the disciplines; Usages in development studies; 2.3. Historically Specific Conceptions Of Development: On Change, Intervention and Progress; 2.4. On Improvement: Issues in Normative Ahistorical Definition; Development as opportunity or as achievement?; Universalism and relativism; Commonality?; 2.5. Conclusion; 3. 'Efficiency & Effectiveness'; - Mainstream Development Evaluation in Theory & Practice; 3.1. Introduction: Mainstream Value Positions, and Alternatives; 3.2. Effectiveness Towards What and For Whom?; Effectiveness towards what?; Effectiveness for whom?; 3.3. Efficiency in Terms of Which Values ?; What is efficient depends on what one's values are; Tacit variants of economic efficiency: Paretian and utilitarian; Concepts of efficiency and practices of victimization; 3.4. Setting Economic Efficiency in Social and Environmental Context; Limitations of a separate concept of economic efficiency; Economic efficiency confined to a delimited role within a human and physical context; Means and ends; 3.5. Understanding Value-Systems; Comparison of value positions in development evaluation; The structure of market-oriented arguments; 'Consumer sovereignty'; 3.6. Conclusion: Beyond Economism; 4. 'Equity' - Who Bear Costs and Who Reap Benefits?; 4.1. Sacrificing the Weak; 4.2. Aspects of Equity; Criteria of distributive equity; An application to the regulation of grazing in Zimbabwe; An application to selection for resettlement in Zimbabwe; Positive discrimination; 4.3. A Deeper Analysis of Concepts; Sen's framework for understanding different distributive criteria; Land, returns, and the fruits of effort; Whose are the international debts?; 4.4. Assessing the Different Interpretations; Equality of what? Why equality?; Selecting from or interrelating the principles; Socio-political contexts; 4.5. Conclusion; 5. Violence and Human Security; 5.1. The Reemergence of Violence and Security as Central Concerns; 5.2. Development and Violence as Value-relative? On Concepts; 'Violence'; 'Development' and peace; 5.3. Development as Value-Damaging?; Varieties of violence; Violence and the economy; 5.4. Downgrading the Cost of Violence and Denying Alternatives; Market theory: only interests, no passions; The downgrading and defining away of costs and alternatives; 5.5. Real Alternatives and Painful Choices; Notions of tragedy, evil, dilemma; Towards a calculus of pain with a respect for persons?; 6. Needs and Basic Needs; 6.1. First Things First; 6.2. The Language of Need; Meanings and syntax of 'need'; A unifying framework for needs ethics and policy; Meanings of 'basic'; 6.3. A Richer Picture of Persons; Do we need a picture of persons?; A better empirical base for prediction and evaluation; Reinterpretations of poverty, luxury, and limitless demand; 6.4. Dangers in Needs Theories and Ethics; Passive and pacifying?; Overextended?; 6.5. The Discursive and Practical Strategy of 'Basic Human Needs'; A required basis for other ethics; Steps in operationalization; A programmatic alternative to economism; 6.6. Conclusions: Beggars can't be Choosers; 7. 'Human Development': Capabilities and Positive Freedom; 7.1. From Basic Needs to a Fuller Philosophy of Development; 7.2. The UNDP Human Development School; The Human Development Reports; Human Development and Human Rights; 7.3. Sen's Capability Approach and 'Development as Freedom'; Freedom and Reason; Development as Freedom; Components of the capability approach; Policy orientation; 7.4. Doubts and Alternatives; Sen's picture of persons, capabilities and freedom; Nussbaum's capabilities ethic; For and against a universal list of priority capabilities; 7.5. Conclusion; 8. Cultures and the Ethics of Development; 8.1. Can One Criticise Cultures and Yet Avoid Ethnocentrism?; Agenda; Introductory cases; Is liberalism illiberal?; 8.2. Culture: The Underlying Issues; Conceptions of 'culture'; Roles perceived for culture; Natural man, plasticine man, and nurtured natural man; The uneasy balance between individual rights and group rights; Women's right to employment?; 8.3. Communitarian Ethics and Cultural Relativism; The texture of communitarian ethics; Walzer's worlds; Communitarianism is based on poor sociology; Cultural relativism is inconsistent; The centrality of internal criticism; 8.4. Cases and Procedures; Criteria for just decisions; An overview of cases; 8.5. Conclusion; 9. Epilogue; Bibliography.