Human Development: Which Way Now?

ABSTRACT

The capability approach to human development, which has been very influential within the United Nations Development Programme, has been instrumental in bringing out an emphasis on final goals of development connected to the expansion of human freedom. Because these final goals are also seen as means for further development, there is a tendency to neglect other means of development, such as changes in the productive structure and in the distribution of power within the relations of production. Here I assess the intellectual origins of the capability approach to human development, and its influence on development discourse. I argue that it is important to bring back to development discourse, and to the capability approach to human development in particular, a concern with productive structures that characterised earlier approaches to development centred on industrialisation. This requires a greater focus on how power relationships in productive systems influence human capabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Human development
• human capabilities
• productive systems
• power relationships
• economic theory

Acknowledgements

For extremely valuable comments and suggestions I am most thankful to João Paiva Silva, Liliana Fernandes, Marisa Tavares and the editors and anonymous referees of this journal.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Nuno Ornelas Martins has a PhD in Economics by the University of Cambridge, and a licenciatura in Economics by the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto), where he also obtained his habilitation in History of Economic Thought. He currently teaches at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa various courses, such as History of Economic Thought and Social Philosophy and Ethics. He also taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of the Azores. He is a member of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group (CSOG) interdisciplinary research network, and of the editorial board of various academic journals. He published the book The Cambridge Revival of Political Economy in 2013 (London and New York, Routledge), and co-edited the book Contributions to Social Ontology (London, Routledge) in 2007. He has also published numerous articles in academic journals on the topics of Political Economy, Social Ontology and Human Development.

ORCID

Nuno Ornelas Martins http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7966-6435