What I'm reading now, cont....

Perhaps I should pick a new heading, since I read a fair amount....WIRN, perhaps?

Currently, thanks to sheaves of reading material from fellow Yalies, I am enjoying a small debate on what is good developmental theory. Apparently, the Nobel Prize delegates discovered this guy before I did (hey, med school wasn't the best for my liberal arts education) because he won in 1998. I fully agree with their choices, however, because his observations are profoundly obvious, usually the sign of a great thinker in my book (cf, gravity, etc). His basic premise is that development should be increasing the freedoms of the people that are going through it; freedom becomes both the desired end of development as well as the means through which development occurs. This would be freedoms in the broadest sense -- from want, fear, premature death (shades of FDR here), oppression, and the list goes on.

Although I would argue as a Christian that what we do with those freedoms has more bearing on being human that the freedoms themselves, and I would also state that many people have made poor choices with their freedom -- I fundamentally agree with Sen that as a developmental theory, this makes the most sense to me. Moreover, it provides a useful framework within which to hang my work in Africa: helping to ensure one of those freedoms. Unfortunately, as I think Sachs would point out, you need a synergy of multiple freedoms being addressed simultaneously, with poverty at the base of many of them, for development to become forward moving and sustainable.

All that to say, I need to read faster so that I have less to pack.