Des Gasper
Biographic Data
| ID | 458319 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Des Gasper |
| GIVEN NAMES | Des |
| FAMILY NAME | Gasper |
| SIGNATURE | DES GASPER |
| AFFILIATIONS | Erasmus University Rotterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4614-5454 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 276 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Reflections on global ethics at the possible end of an era
The Journal of Global Ethics after Twenty Years
Solidarity and Human Insecurity: Interpreting and Extending the HDRO’s 2022 Special Report on Human Security
The 2022 UNDP Special Report on human security marks an overdue return to this focus in Human Development Reports work. It adds solidarity to the established headline strategies for human security, namely protection and empowerment. While it does not theorise solidarity far, nor connect much to relevant literatures, nor explore implications in detail, it provides an opening of doors. We comment first on the Report’s general significance. It prese…
Global social challenges for development studies in the Crisis in the Anthropocene
This panel discussion session explores some of the central dimensions of the Crisis in the Anthropocene that constitute global social challenges in the context of development studies. The conference theme highlighted the profound human impact on our blue-green-brown planet, that is already breaching planetary boundaries and pushing us beyond the roughly 1.5°C tipping point. This threatens liveability and sustainability in many localities and regi…
Amartya Sen as a social and political theorist – on personhood, democracy, and ‘description as choice’
Economist-philosopher Amartya Sen's writings on social and political issues have attracted wide audiences. Section 2 introduces his contributions on: how people reason as agents within society; social determinants of people's (lack of) access to goods and of the effective freedoms and agency they enjoy or lack; and associated advocacy of self-specification of identity and high expectations for 'voice' and reasoning democracy. Section 3 considers …
Making Strange’: Discourse Analysis Tools for Teaching Critical Development Studies
Critical development studies require not just a critical attitude, but also usable tools. This article suggests some forms of discourse analysis that can add substance to critical development studies’ aspirations and that can yet be learnt and used by students without specialist background. Central are tools for ‘making strange’ (defamiliarization), so that we view both texts and social realities in a fresh independent way and start to discern be…
Rethinking Human Development and/as Human Security for the Anthropocene: An Analysis of the United Nations Development Programme Trilogy of Reports 2020–2022
Three recent reports from the United Nations Development Programme reconsider human development thinking and revive UN human security thinking: the 2020 Human Development Report (HDR 2020); the 2022 Special Report (SR 2022) on human security; and the 2021/2022 Human Development Report (HDR 2022). The trilogy marks an overdue return to human security thinking. HDR 2020 builds a sense of common human fate, employing the notion of the Anthropocene. …
Reconciling well-being and resilience for sustainable development
Investigating L.-J. Lebret as a pioneer of human development thinking and global development ethics
Louis-Joseph Lebret (1897–1966) was a progenitor and co-founder of ‘development ethics’ as a self-declared field of research, public conversation and activism. He comprehensively articulated the fu
L.-J. Lebret: A human development ethics grounded in empirical social research and a global perspective
Three themes in the work of Louis-Joseph Lebret (1897–1966) have especial relevance for current development ethics: first, the importance of counterbalancing a disciplinary philosophical or theological orientation with strong bases in empirical life-experience, practical learning and social sciences; second, the necessity to study capitalism not only ‘development’, and concrete life-needs not only a generalised notion of ‘freedom’; and third, the…
Comparing two pioneers of development ethics: Louis-Joseph Lebret and Denis Goulet
This paper discusses the respective contributions to development ethics made by Louis-Joseph Lebret (1897–1966) and his pupil and successor Denis Goulet (1931–2006). Sections 2 and 3 present steps in the emergence of a field of development ethics, and introduce the work of Lebret and Goulet, noting similarities and contrasts. Sections 4 and 5 clarify different senses and forms of ‘development ethics’, to then discuss who might be called ‘father o…
The Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach
This landmark handbook collects in a single volume the current state of cutting-edge research on the capability approach. It includes a comprehensive introduction to the approach as well as new research from leading scholars in this increasingly influential multi-disciplinary field, including the pioneers of capability research, Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. Incorporating both approachable introductory chapters and more in-depth analysis re…
The road to the Sustainable Development Goals: Building global alliances and norms
Several insider accounts of the formation of the Sustainable Development Goals suggest that the process (the procedures used and the emergent organizational and governance system features) was as important as the resulting goal-set. The paper looks at both aspects, and relationships between them: the rising influence of Southern nations (seen in the roles played by Colombia, Brazil, some African countries and the G77); the partial transcendence o…
The Human and the Social: A Comparison of the Discourses of Human Development, Human Security and Social Quality
Citizens and Citizenship
The past generation has seen a switch to restrictive policies and language in the governance of migrants living in the Netherlands. Beginning in 2010, a new government with right-wing populist backing went further, declaring the centrality of proposed characteristic historic Dutch values. In this article, we investigate a key policy document to characterize and understand this policy change. Discourse analysis as an exploration of language choice…
One world or two? Science–policy interactions in the climate field
This article assesses how science–policy interactions are conceptualized in the social sciences with special reference to climate change and the IPCC. In terms of the dimension of distance (or proximity) between science and policy, we discern two ideal-type cases: a ‘two-worlds’ and a ‘one-world’ perspective. The first understands science and policy as independent spheres separated by a clear gap, while the second perceives science and policy as …
Moving Development and Security Narratives a Step Further: Human Security in the Human Development Reports
During the last 20 years, the idea of human security has been spreading globally and locally, albeit unevenly. One factor in this growth has been the role of Human Development Reports as sources of alternative narratives to understand social problems and progress. This paper describes how National and Regional Human Development Reports have generated a rich and analytically fruitful set of approaches to examining and responding to contextual thre…
Synthesizing a policy-relevant perspective from the three IPCC “Worlds”—A comparison of topics and frames in the SPMs of the Fifth Assessment Report
Human security thinking in practice: Personal Security’, ‘Citizen Security' and Comprehensive Mappings
This paper describes the introduction of an emphasis on ‘personal security’ in human security thinking and practice, as part of the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to compartmentalize the pursuit of security. It reviews the past 20 years of attention to ‘personal security’: both in compartments that consider organized physical violence or threats to personal safety and property (‘citizen security’), and as parts of more wide-ranging examination o…
Migration, Gender and Social Justice: Perspectives on Human Insecurity
This book is the product of a collaborative effort involving partners from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America who were funded by the International Development Research Centre Programme on Women an
Capabilities, Gender, Equality: Towards Fundamental Entitlements
Questions of gender, injustice and equality pervade all our lives, and as such, the capabilities or 'human development' approach to understanding well-being and basic political entitlements continues to be debated. In this thought-provoking book, a range of authors provide unique reflections on the capabilities approach and, specifically, Martha C. Nussbaum's contributions to issues of gender, equality and political liberalism. Moreover, the auth…
Future global ethics: Environmental change, embedded ethics, evolving human identity
Work on global ethics looks at ethical connections on a global scale. It should link closely to environmental ethics, recognizing that we live in unified social-ecological systems, and to development ethics, attending systematically to the lives and interests of contemporary and future poor, marginal and vulnerable persons and groups within these systems and to the effects on them of forces around the globe. Fulfilling these tasks requires awaren…
Human Security Analysis as a Framework for Value-Oriented Governance: The Example of Climate Change
Good governance’ may be viewed as governance which effectively promotes human rights, human security and human development. The paper discusses human security analysis, which in certain ways offers an integration of these ‘human’ perspectives and also a ‘social’ orientation, combining a person-focus with systematic investigation of the environing systems of all sorts: physical, cultural, organizational. The importance of such analysis is illustra…
La ética del desarrollo humano y las Frontiers of Justice de Martha Nussbaum
Approaching Development Projects from a Human Development and Capability Perspective
textabstractThis paper discusses the relevance of the human development and capability approach for development project planning, management and evaluation. With reference to the set of five other studies that it introduces, the paper suggests in which areas insights from human development and capability thinking offer advances and in which areas such thinking needs to link with and be complemented or corrected by thinking from other sources and …
Is Sen's Capability Approach an Adequate Basis for Considering Human Development
Sen's capability approach (SCA) has supported valuable work on Human Development (HD). It has brought attention to a much wider range of information on people's freedoms and well-being than in most earlier economic planning; but it also has troubling features and requires modification and enrichment. This paper first identifies the approach's components, the contributions of the HD Reports, and the doubts about whether SCA has a sufficient concep…
Development as Freedom v - V and as What Else
To what extent can Amartya Sen's ideas on freedom, especially his conceptualization of development as freedom, enrich feminist economics? Sen's notion of freedom (as the capability to achieve valued ends) has many attractions and provides important opportunities to analyze gender inequalities. At the same time, Sen's recent emphasis on freedom as the dominant value in judging individual well-being and societal development also contains risks, not…
Discourse Analysis and Policy Discourse
Human security thinking in practice: Personal Security’, ‘Citizen Security' and Comprehensive Mappings
This paper describes the introduction of an emphasis on ‘personal security’ in human security thinking and practice, as part of the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to compartmentalize the pursuit of security. It reviews the past 20 years of attention to ‘personal security’: both in compartments that consider organized physical violence or threats to personal safety and property (‘citizen security’), and as parts of more wide-ranging examination o…
Approaching Development Projects from a Human Development and Capability Perspective
textabstractThis paper discusses the relevance of the human development and capability approach for development project planning, management and evaluation. With reference to the set of five other studies that it introduces, the paper suggests in which areas insights from human development and capability thinking offer advances and in which areas such thinking needs to link with and be complemented or corrected by thinking from other sources and …
The framing of climate change and development: A comparative analysis of the Human Development Report 2007/8 and the World Development Report 2010
Subjective and Objective Well-Being in Relation to Economic Inputs: Puzzles and Responses
Systematic, large discrepancies exist between direct measures of well-being and the measures that economists largely concentrate on, notably income. The paper assesses and rejects claims that income is satisfactorily correlated with well-being, and addresses the implications of discrepancies between income measures and measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and objective well-being (OWB) and also between subjective and objective well-being measu…
Reconciling well-being and resilience for sustainable development
The Human and the Social: A Comparison of the Discourses of Human Development, Human Security and Social Quality
This paper presents a structured comparison of the social quality approach with the UNDP-led 'human development' approach and its sister work (especially in the UN system and Japan) on 'human security'. Through clarification of their respective foci, roles and underlying theoretical and value assumptions, the paper suggests that partnership of the social quality approach with these 'human' approaches appears possible and relevant for each side
One world or two? Science–policy interactions in the climate field
This article assesses how science–policy interactions are conceptualized in the social sciences with special reference to climate change and the IPCC. In terms of the dimension of distance (or proximity) between science and policy, we discern two ideal-type cases: a ‘two-worlds’ and a ‘one-world’ perspective. The first understands science and policy as independent spheres separated by a clear gap, while the second perceives science and policy as …
Deepening Development Ethics: From Economism to Human Development to Human Security
Citizens and Citizenship
The past generation has seen a switch to restrictive policies and language in the governance of migrants living in the Netherlands. Beginning in 2010, a new government with right-wing populist backing went further, declaring the centrality of proposed characteristic historic Dutch values. In this article, we investigate a key policy document to characterize and understand this policy change. Discourse analysis as an exploration of language choice…
Pioneering the Human Development Revolution: Analysing the Trajectory of Mahbub ul Haq
Mahbub ul Haq's work to coordinate, establish and propagate the human development approach offers an example of effective leadership in promoting more ethical socio-economic development. This article reviews Pioneering the Human Development Revolution-An Intellectual Biography of Mahbub ul Haq (edited by Haq and Ponzio), and extends themes from the United Nations Intellectual History Project to examine Haq's contributions in terms of four aspects…
Synthesizing a policy-relevant perspective from the three IPCC “Worlds”—A comparison of topics and frames in the SPMs of the Fifth Assessment Report
Rethinking the Quality of Universities: How Can Human Development Thinking Contribute
University quality and its measurement have been strongly on the agenda of university policy since the 1980s. There is no consensus about what a good university is, but increasingly priority has been given to a narrow focus on contribution to supporting economic production and growth, as part of an economy-centred and market-centred conception of society. We argue that a human development approach is also very often relevant in educational policy…
Movements of the 'We: International and Transnational Migration and the Capabilities Approach
We consider cross‐border migration through the lens of the capabilities approach, with special reference to transnational migration and to implications for the approach itself. Cross‐border migration has profound and diverse effects, not least because it accelerates change in the nature of political community. A capabilities approach can be helpful through its insistence on multi‐dimensional, inter‐personally disaggregated, reflective evaluation.…
Drawing a Line’ – Ethical and Political Strategies in Complex Emergency Assistance
Ethics and the Conduct of International Development Aid: Charity and Obligation
Des Gasper, 'Ethics and the Conduct of International Development Aid: Charity and Obligation', Forum for Development Studies, 1999: 1, pp. 23–57. Ethical debate around development aid has gradually grown and diversified, and a field that spans some aspects of policy, organisational and personal practice has partly emerged. After characterising this trend, the paper considers: (1) The key question of the types of obligation, if any, involved in ai…
Development ethics – Why? What? How? A formulation of the field
The paper assesses the rationale, contributions, structure, and challenges of the field of development ethics. Processes of social and economic transformation involve great risks and costs and great opportunities for gain, but the benefits, costs, and risks are typically hugely unevenly and inequitably distributed, as is participation in specifying what they are and their relative importance. The ethics of development examines the benefits, costs…
Entitlements Analysis: Relating Concepts and Contexts
Sen's entitlements approach has attracted much attention and imitation, including attempted extensions beyond its original context in the explanation of famines. It has evolved in various ways as it is applied to new regions, purposes and subjects - beyond South Asia, to policy design and to matters of routine hunger, environment, gender and overall intra-societal distribution. For analysis of famines, the approach provides a valuable set of conc…
Analysing Policy Arguments
The road to the Sustainable Development Goals: Building global alliances and norms
Several insider accounts of the formation of the Sustainable Development Goals suggest that the process (the procedures used and the emergent organizational and governance system features) was as important as the resulting goal-set. The paper looks at both aspects, and relationships between them: the rising influence of Southern nations (seen in the roles played by Colombia, Brazil, some African countries and the G77); the partial transcendence o…
Fashion, Learning and Values in Public Management: Reflections on South African and International Experience
New Public Management (NPM) has shaken up sleepy and self-serving public organisations. But it was spread like a religion: assumed to be modern, relevant and universally superior, despite having relatively little empirical backing. NPM has now lost much of its gloss, as experience of the massive transaction costs of radical reforms and of their often unfulfilled prerequisites mounts. An untried package was sold and bought. This paper looks for le…
From Valued Freedoms, to Polities and Markets the Capability Approach in Policy Practice
Cet article considère les concepts et les hypothèses sur lesquels repose la perspective politique développée par Amartya SEN. Il examine d’abord sa conception de, et sa préoccupation pour la liberté, ainsi que la priorité qu’il leur accorde. Il explore les fortes similitudes entre le travail de John Stuart MILL et celui de SEN. Il situe l’approche de la liberté de Sen en relation avec son idée de société et sa conception limitée de la communauté.…
From ‘Hume's Law’ to Problem- and Policy-Analysis for Human Development. Sen after Dewey, Myrdal, Streeten, Stretton and Haq
Much of Amartya Sen's work has been policy-related, but his methodology of policy analysis has not been explained in detail. Action-related social science involves value-imbued procedures that guide choices. This theme was explored by Streeten and Stretton, and earlier by Dewey and Myrdal. Assisted by Jean Drèze, Sen has evolved a form of policy analysis guided by humanist values rather than those of mainstream economics. Features of this methodo…
Rural Growth Points and Rural Industries in Zimbabwe: Ideologies and Policies
A Rural Service Centre which provided all basic infrastructure, had a strong residential component and offered a wide range of services would automatically attract rural non-farm activities. This is the term applied to the whole range of activities connected with trading, manufacturing, construction, transport and government and other services. improved infrastructure is the key to more rural manufacturing. The deficiency in manufacturing may the…
Entitlements Analysis: Relating Concepts and Contexts
Sen's entitlements approach has attracted much attention and imitation, including attempted extensions beyond its original context in the explanation of famines. It has evolved in various ways as it is applied to new regions, purposes and subjects - beyond South Asia, to policy design and to matters of routine hunger, environment, gender and overall intra-societal distribution. For analysis of famines, the approach provides a valuable set of conc…
Development Ethics — An Emergent Field?
‘Development ethics’ is attracting increasing attention. An association has existed since 1984 which now uses the acronym IDEA (International Development Ethics Association). Already fairly well established in the Americas, it is extending more widely. IDEA’s president recently published a survey article in ‘World Development’ (Crocker, 1991a), citing a notable number of relevant publications.
Analysing Policy Arguments
Essentialism In and About Development Discourse
Discourse Analysis and Policy Discourse
Culture and Development Ethics: Needs, Women's Rights, and Western Theories
Can development ethics avoid presuming that European cultures have universal validity and yet also avoid treating every distinct culture as sacrosanct and beyond criticism? While work on 'culture and development' valuably stresses the importance of cultural differences and identity it has often been hindered by conceptual limitations when faced with the ambiguities, variety, conflict and change within societies. This article queries a communitari…
Violence and Suffering, Responsibility and Choice: Issues in Ethics and Development
Drawing a Line’ – Ethical and Political Strategies in Complex Emergency Assistance
Ethics and the Conduct of International Development Aid: Charity and Obligation
Des Gasper, 'Ethics and the Conduct of International Development Aid: Charity and Obligation', Forum for Development Studies, 1999: 1, pp. 23–57. Ethical debate around development aid has gradually grown and diversified, and a field that spans some aspects of policy, organisational and personal practice has partly emerged. After characterising this trend, the paper considers: (1) The key question of the types of obligation, if any, involved in ai…
Anecdotes, Situations, Histories - Varieties and Uses of Cases in Thinking about Ethics and Development Practice
Referring to a wide variety of case studies, anecdotes and abstracted choice situations, this article considers the range and roles of different types of cases presented in trying to understand tensions, conflicts and choices in development. Since various purposes are legitimate and complementary (including sensitization, theorization, and informing decision-making) so too are various styles and uses of cases: some real and some hypothetical, som…
Is Sen's Capability Approach an Adequate Basis for Considering Human Development
Sen's capability approach (SCA) has supported valuable work on Human Development (HD). It has brought attention to a much wider range of information on people's freedoms and well-being than in most earlier economic planning; but it also has troubling features and requires modification and enrichment. This paper first identifies the approach's components, the contributions of the HD Reports, and the doubts about whether SCA has a sufficient concep…
Development as Freedom v - V and as What Else
To what extent can Amartya Sen's ideas on freedom, especially his conceptualization of development as freedom, enrich feminist economics? Sen's notion of freedom (as the capability to achieve valued ends) has many attractions and provides important opportunities to analyze gender inequalities. At the same time, Sen's recent emphasis on freedom as the dominant value in judging individual well-being and societal development also contains risks, not…
The Ethics of Development: From Economism to Human Development
Preface 1. What is the Ethics of Development? 1.1. Why Development Ethics? Cases and Questions Extreme poverty amidst immense riches Health and sickness, needs and profits Towards a 'calculus of pain': recognising varieties of suffering and violence The infliction of costs on the weak: the examples of dams, famines, debt, and structural adjustment Global obligations and universal values? What is development? 1.2. What? On Meanings and Agenda The …
Securing Humanity: Situating ‘Human Security’ as Concept and Discourse
The label ‘human security’ has attracted much attention since the 1994 Human Development Report, but there are numerous conflicting definitions and agendas, and widespread scepticism. The Ogata–Sen Commission report Human Security Now has proposed a unified yet flexible definition and agenda. This paper specifies the Human Security Now concept as the intersection of: a concern with reasoned freedoms; a focus on basic needs; and a concern for stab…
Beyond the International Relations framework: An essay in descriptive global ethics
Discussions of global ethics—about the types of ethical claim made on individuals and groups, not only states, by individuals and groups around the world—have had to move beyond the categories inherited in the International Relations discipline. Many important positions are not captured by a framework developed for discussion of inter-state relations. The blindspots seem to reflect an outmoded expectation that (i) giving low normative weight to n…
Deepening Development Ethics: From Economism to Human Development to Human Security
Subjective and Objective Well-Being in Relation to Economic Inputs: Puzzles and Responses
Systematic, large discrepancies exist between direct measures of well-being and the measures that economists largely concentrate on, notably income. The paper assesses and rejects claims that income is satisfactorily correlated with well-being, and addresses the implications of discrepancies between income measures and measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and objective well-being (OWB) and also between subjective and objective well-being measu…
Cosmopolitan Presumptions? On Martha Nussbaum and her Commentators
This article presents a framework for analysis of discourses on ethical cosmopolitanism, and applies it to Martha Nussbaum's Frontiers of Justice (2006), with comparisons to the views of other authors. After outlining the book's form of ethical cosmopolitanism, the article considers the psychological, philosophical and sociological presumptions, the methodology of abstraction, the implicit audiences, and the programmatic targets and implied strat…
What is the capability approach?
Adding links, adding persons, and adding structures: Using Sen's frameworks
This essay is a comment on “Sen on Freedom and Gender Justice,” by Mozaffar Qizilbash, which appeared in Feminist Economics Volume 11, Number 3, November 2005. Building on the 2003 double special issue of Feminist Economics entitled “Amartya Sen's Work and Ideas,” this paper responds to the review essay by Mozaffar Qizilbash. It identifies and illustrates various possible evaluations of a theoretical system, including that it has acknowledged str…
Human Rights, Human Needs, Human Development, Human Security: Elations ships between Four International ‘Human’ Discourses
Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical and policy discourses. Each tries to humanise a pre-existing and unavoidable major discourse of everyday life, policy and politics; each has emerged within the United Nations world; each relies implicitly on a conceptualisation of human need; each has specific strengths. Yet mutual communication, unde…
Denis Goulet and the Project of Development Ethics: Choices in Methodology, Focus and Organization
nDenis 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 paper looks at aspects of Goulet’s work in relation to four issues concerning this project of development ethics—scope, methodology, roles, and organisational format and identity. It compares his views with su…
International Migration, Multi-Local Livelihoods and Human Security: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America
Trans-local Livelihoods and Connections: Embedding a Gender Perspective into Migration Studies
The Social Field of Migration: Conflict and Contention \nThis volume examines intersections between gender, state policy, socio-cultural environment, with a focus on micro-interactions that shape the experience of migration in particular ways. It breaks from the convention that treats different social worlds of international migration as mutually exclusive legal categories. Dominant conceptions of migration produce forms of knowledge that fragmen…
Political science (61 works) · Sociology (53 works) · Law (43 works) · Philosophy (27 works) · Economics (26 works) · Law (26 works) · Epistemology (25 works) · Environmental ethics (23 works) · Social science (21 works) · Computer Science (18 works)