Development Education and
Research and Development
ethics
Dr Su-ming Khoo,
Dept of Political Science and
Sociology, NUI Galway
Synopsis
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Meanings of development
Key ethical themes
The ethical turn in development
The landscape since the 1990s and
globalization/ Alter-globalization
• Discussion- the contribution of philosophy
Key Reading
• Gasper, (Des 2004) The Ethics of
Development: From Economism to
Humanism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press
• Seers, Dudley (1979) ‘The meaning of
development’ reprinted in S. Corbridge
(ed) (1995) Development: Critical
Concepts in the Social Sciences
Routledge
Additional Reading
• Cowen and Shenton (1995) ‘The Invention of Development’ in S.
Corbridge (ed) Development: Critical Concepts in the Social
Sciences. London:Routledge
• Dower, N (1998) ‘Aid Trade and Development’ pp137-57 in World
Ethics: A New Agenda. Edinburgh University Press
• Toye, John (1993) Dilemmas of Development –reflections on the
counterrevolution in development economics. Oxford: Blackwell
• Chatterjee, Deen K (2004) The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and
the Distant Needy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Goulet, Denis (1995) Development Ethics: A Guide to Theory and
Practice London: Zed
• Goulet, Denis (1983) ‘Obstacles to Development- an ethical
reflection’ World Development 11 (7) 7-26
• Nederveen Pieterse, J (2001) Development Theory:
Deconstructions/Reconstructions. London: Sage
• Polanyi, K (2004) The Great Transformation
• Tucker, Vincent (ed) (1997) Cultural Perspectives on Development.
London: Frank Cass/ EADI
Development
• Conventionally seen as a post-1945
discipline, applied to “Third World”
contexts
• Roots in Enlightenment project and its
contradictions - “dark side” of modernity
• Positivist, Utopian AND critical, dystopian
views
• An emergent and contested concept
• A conative concept – “striving”
What do we mean by
‘development?
• Economic growth
Dudley Seers (1979) critique
– What is happening to poverty?
– What is happening to unemployment
– What is happening to inequality?
• UNDP defines human development as ‘the enlargement
of peoples choices’
• A. Sen (1999) Expanding freedom and removing various
types of unfreedom as means and ends of development
• BUT does this involve strong universalism? (Nussbaum,
Global Ethic)
Key ethical themes
• Since development is concerned with choices, it is also
concerned with differing conceptions of value (the “good
life”)
• Relationships between means and ends
• Deprivation and inequality
• Violence and structural violence
• The public intellectual, public goods and public interest
• Representing the (less powerful) other
• What about cultural difference?
• “Helping” and the nature of duties and obligations
The ethical turn in development
• Critiques of development in theory and practice
have a basis in ethical concerns
• Means-ends debate since 1960s
• Critiques of Eurocentrism, neocolonialism,
cultural imperialism
• Human costs of neoliberalism – disillusionment
and the 1980s “lost decade”
• “Post development” - the end of development?
The landscape since the 1990s
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Post Cold War scenarios
Globalization and Alter-Globalization
The rediscovery of “Civil society”
“Global governance” or Global Ethics?
Inequality, violence and non-sustainability
are still the biggest problems
• What about cultural difference?
Globalization – beliefs, policies,
outcomes
• Neoliberal globalization
• FREE MARKETS are
BEST
• Society must politically
REORGANIZE
production and social
relations to free markets
• All countries,
communities, people
benefit - symmetry
• Market Utopia
• ‘alter globalization’
• Free markets can be
obnoxious
• Society must politically
re-organize production
and social relations to
govern markets
• Polarization and
asymmetry are the status
quo - must be addressed
• Stark Utopia
Lessons from the past “belle époque”.
“…the idea of a self-adjusting market implied
a stark utopia. Such an institution could
not exist for any length of time without
annihilating the human and natural
substance of society; it would have
physically destroyed man and transformed
his surroundings into a wilderness” (Karl
Polanyi, 1944: 3)
Polarization AND deprivation – the poor ARE falling
further behind and the incomes of 40% are too low
1992
UNDP HDR1992, 2005
2005
The contribution of philosophy
• ‘The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in
escaping the old ones…’ J. M. Keynes
• ‘The significant problems that we face cannot be
solved at the same level of thinking we were at
when we created them.’ A. Einstein
• Humanism
• The resources of critique
• Conceptions of justice