E-development is often pursued with unquestioned assumptions about its contribution to human development. This paper draws upon Amatya Sen’s capability approach to provide some theoretical reflections on e-development. It is argued that the capability approach allows us to take into account a variety of important issues surrounding ICT adoption for development. It also proposes the capability a...

Amartya Sen’s capability approach to human welfare recognizes the impact of social institutions on human capabilities. But as an evaluative framework, it does not analyze the role of institutionalized power in causing or perpetuating inequalities in individual opportunities to achieve. Drawing on authors who are receptive to the capability approach and who have examined the political aspects of...

Mahatma Gandhi was visiting Rabindranath Tagore’s School in Santiniketan, just outside Calcutta, India. A young girl approached him for an autograph. In her book he penned this entry: “Never make a promise in haste. Having once made it fulfil it at the cost of your life.” His words have crossed my mind more than once, especially the first part of the entry “never make a promise in haste” during...

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This note points to certain similarities of orientation and outcome between Derek Parfit’s quest for a theory of beneficence and Amartya Sen’s quest for a suitable realvalued representation of poverty. It suggests that both projects, in a certain sense, have been instructive failures. Using Sen’s own work, the note also suggests a logically natural way of dealing with some of the problems in po...

The capability approach to human development, proposed by Amartya Sen and others, is now a prominent perspective within welfare economics and development economics. I argue that the capability approach, like Post Keynesianism, can be situated within the Cambridge economic tradition, a tradition grounded on classical economics, and characterized by an ontological focus on themes such as openness...

This paper is part of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative's Research in Progress (RP) series. These are preliminary documents posted online to stimulate discussion and critical comment. The series number and letter identify each version (i.e. paper RP1a after revision will be posted as RP1b) for citation. Please cite these papers as Author Last name, First name, " Title " (Year)...