Denis Goulet and the Project of Development Ethics: Choices in Methodology, Focus and Organization

Abstract

Denis Goulet (1931–2006) was a pioneer of human development theory and a founder of work on ‘development ethics’ as a self‐conscious field that treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning, and practice. The present paper looks at aspects of Goulet's work in relation to four issues concerning this project of development ethics — scope, methodology, roles, and organizational format and identity. It compares his views with subsequent trends in the field and suggests lessons for work on human development. While his definition of the scope of development ethics remains serviceable, his methodology of intense immersion by a ‘development ethicist’ in each context under examination was rewarding but limited by the time and skills it requires and a relative disconnection from communicable theory. He wrote profoundly about ethics' possible lines of influence, including through incorporation in methods, movements and education, but his own ideas wait to be sufficiently incorporated. He proposed development ethics as a new (sub)discipline, yet the immersion in particular contexts and their routine practices that is required for understanding and influence must be by people who remain close to specific disciplinary and professional backgrounds. Development ethics has to be, he eventually came to accept, not a distinct (sub)discipline but an interdisciplinary field.

Keywords:

• Development ethics
• Denis Goulet
• Human development
• Interdisciplinarity

Notes

1. On other aspects of Goulet's work, see his own overviews (for example, Goulet, 1976, 1995, 1997a, 2006b), before proceeding to, especially, The Cruel Choice (Goulet, 1971a). On the ethical principles he advocated — (1) self‐determination, individual and collective; (2) ‘decent sufficiency’ of basic goods for all; (3) solidarity; and (4) non‐elite participation and democratic decision‐making — in ways that anticipate and can still enrich much of the later work on human development, Crocker (2006) and chapters 4, 5 and 8 in Goulet's (1995) Development Ethics provide introductions. Crocker makes comparisons with the later work and also suggests where it has advanced on Goulet.

2. Appendix 3 to The Cruel Choice outlined its four stages. The approach is similar to the ‘Verbal Image’ form of reporting presented by Howard Richards (1985), which aims to give a broad picture, a description and understanding of how a program works in its societal context, not a focus only on a few aspects taken out of their context. It thus tries to ensure coverage of non‐measurable impacts, to grasp the human meanings in situations, and to make sense, to outsiders and insiders, of what has happened; and to have insiders systematically check the ‘verbal image’ that is constructed on the basis of their contributions. See Richards (1985, pp. 79–85; also Lee and Shute, 1991).

3. Thus the important 1976 presentations that form chapters 3 and 4 of his 2006 book Development Ethics at Work were not extended later to relate to the wealth of relevant material from contemporary social science and philosophy.

4. See Gasper (2006) for a complementary discussion of these themes.