Relativity

One aspect of Sen’s argument that immediately caught my attention was his constant focus on relativity. In today’s society, poverty is generally associated with lack of income. At a young age, I was taught to think of poverty in terms of income, and I know that the majority of people automatically link poverty to lack of money. I naturally think that those in third world countries or stereotypically “poor countries” such as India or Africa are poorer than people in the United States. Maybe this thinking roots from the ethnocentric environment that we live in. However, Sen stimulated my thinking when he made the point about relativity: although people in poorer countries may have less money or income, they may have more relative opportunities or more happiness. It wouldn’t surprise me the United States has the highest documented rate of depression. There is such a wide gap between the rich and poor in America. It is the proximity of those with extreme monetary wealth to those with relatively much less money that accounts for this relative poverty and thus depression.

I feel that Sen’s main points are extremely important for our country to emphasize and reconsider when thinking about development. We are all so caught up in monetary wealth and development in terms of industrialization and technological advancement. Sen’s redefinition of development as freedom allows us to think about what we are actually trying to achieve in life, which many economists have forgotten.

I like that Sen tries to refocus our thoughts of development in terms of freedom, capabilities, and opportunities, but it’s still hard for me to grasp how Sen would advise a country to further develop. There are so many varying factors contributing to development on both a macro and micro level, that its difficult to wrap my head around how to actually become more advanced as a society, as a country, and as a world.

Some questions that arose while reading these chapters related to Sen’s focus of development as freedom. I understand what freedom is, but because freedom is an idea rather than a tangible thing, its hard for me to understand development as freedom for a few reasons. If we think of freedom in terms of freedom of beliefs, and people in some countries believe in dictatorship, how can this work in terms of development? Or if certain religious groups are free to believe that women are inferior, their capability freedom may decease and gender inequality will result, which Sen assumes is bad in terms of development. Although Sen believes that these women lack certain freedoms, the women themselves may be happy with their lives due to the society that they’ve been raised in. I feel that it is too difficult to understand development as freedom because there is so much intercultural bias involved, as well as contrasting values. This goes back to the question of how to determine which values or freedoms are more important than others.