At the core of development is human development By Essam Montasser This short note is about a number of things. First, it is about Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics, social philosopher and above all a great humanist. Professor Sen gave a lecture to a conference in Paris on 17 January organised by the Third Forum on Human Development entitled, "Cultural Identity: Democracy and Global Equity." The subject matter of the lecture and its broader context is of obvious interest for Egypt, a country trying to redefine its civic idea and political culture, aiming to lay the foundations of a "new republic" based on an "open society". Accordingly, this note is as much for Egypt as it is about Amartya Sen's enlightening ideas. Egypt's government and society, in the last 50 years, turned inwardly in both thought and action. But lately the country started to show signs of restiveness and intensifying social tension, asking for change. The immediate trigger could be attributed to concurrent internal and external events making Egyptians realise that they had lagged a great deal behind the rest of the world, both materially and culturally. Hence they started to question loudly the viability, and even legitimacy, of their prevailing political regime, government system and social order. These developments must have constituted the motive behind the president's latest initiative heralding his intention to undertake political reforms aimed towards establishing a genuine liberal democracy. Looked upon from an evolutionary point of view, this is a natural outcome, regardless of any immediate triggers -- internal or external -- which may have brought it to the surface. After half a century of growth and structural change, the social order started to show signs of organic maturity, with distinct social and economic class formations symptomatic of early capitalist development. The resulting differentiated group and individual interests require, as Durkheim once argued, parallel changes in government. A government system with a narrow compass ("one size fits all") is consequently weakened and is naturally pressured to give way to a more representative one, encompassing intra- societal diversity. Especially given the overall malaise characterising the prevailing order and its performance. An added explanation is offered by Weber's customary "rationalisation process", which accompanies cultural change, globalisation and development. Weber identified rationalisation as a natural globalisation solvent, implying that cultures and values become less prone to extreme and narrow internal traditional perspectives, and more and interactive globally. Now let me turn to Sen's views in this regard. First, he begins by emphasising that "the human development approach is to see human beings in terms of their well-being and freedom" -- his "idea of ideas", which of course departs sharply from concentrating only on material aspects such as income. He then proceeds to point out that more recent approaches have been broadened to "pay attention to variations of cultures, beliefs and particular styles of living", adding that it is "perfectly natural to consider cultural freedom within the list of capabilities that human beings have reason to value." Then he proceeds to define his concept of "cultural freedom", distinguishing it from "cultural conservation". He looks at cultural freedom as a dynamic concept that evolves with cultural exchange and global contestation, in contrast to cultural heritage that relates to inherited traditions. While social and political suppression, he notes, constitute a "denial of cultural freedom", societal cultural conformism resulting from lack of knowledge and understanding of others would also retard and inhibit development. He then proceeds to elaborate on the relation between cultural freedom and democracy, explaining its linkages with cultural identity. "While democracy is often seen as just an arrangement for voting, it is, broadly-speaking, a system of public reasoning -- what is sometimes called government by discussion. The democratic arena can be a good ground for discussing the claims of different demands that compete for our attention." Sen, in the same vein, alludes to global equity, or lack of it. In this regard he clarifies that anti-globalisation is not a symptom of the lack of a global identity, or its rejection. On the contrary, he opines: "if a sense of global identity is [lacking] then why are the anti- globalisation protesters so upset about global inequality? Why should people from one part of the world worry about the fact that people in other parts of the world are having a raw deal? The anti- globalisation movement is, in fact, a global phenomenon, both in terms of the subject of its concern, and in terms of participation." Lastly, he concludes by referring to social choice that constitutes the glue tying political, social and cultural processes to their desired ends: "it is a motivation for exploring how a society of many human beings can live together and decide together." Allow me to conclude this note by pointing out that ideas are important and they are not ideologies. Also, there are ideas, and for that matter orders, that generate other ideas and orders. They, whether capital ideas or simple ones, are like tools that people devise to cope with the world they are living in. They are often produced not necessarily by individuals but by groups of individuals through social interchange. They are social products: true social capital. * The writer is Professor of Political Science, AUC.
