Suchergebnisse

A fascinating analysis of the recent history of the beautiful but troubled Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia To many in the West, the name Cambodia still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s. Sebastian Strangio, a journalist based in the capital city of Phnom Penh, now offers an eye-opening appraisal of modern-day Cambodia in the years following its emergence from bitter conflict and bloody upheaval. In the early 1990s, Cambodia became the focus of the UN's first great post-Cold War nation-building project, with billions in international aid rolling in to support the fledgling democracy. But since the UN-supervised elections in 1993, the nation has slipped steadily backward into neo-authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen. Behind a mirage of democracy, ordinary people have few rights and corruption infuses virtually every facet of everyday life. In this lively and compelling study, the first of its kind, Strangio explores the present state of Cambodian society under Hun Sen's leadership, painting a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile the promise of peace and democracy with a violent and tumultuous past.

Review of Sen's Inequality Reexamined. Outlines the idea of 'capability', considers the sub theme of the connection between freedom and control, and defends Sen against criticism made by Andre Beteille. The reworking of the idea of 'equality of opportunity' suggests a theme to renew the programmes of the Left.

When the outcome space X is a product set, the Paretian‐liberal conflict depends on a special cycle of externalities. Even if the society is countably infinite, the inconsistency vanishes if the individuals can be numbered so that person i does not care about the actions of any h<i, although we assume that the liberal constraint is binding only on finite coalitions.

This paper examines Amartya Sen's concept of sympathy and the oversimplified, ambiguous and sometimes erroneous interpretations of this concept by Sen's interpreters. In the first section, two types of sympathy can be found in Sen's 'Rational fools' essay-a contemplative and an active type of which the former has conceptual primacy. Following this, active sympathy is examined to ascertain what Sen means by 'actions based on sympathy' and why he deems these to be 'egoistic'. Sen's understanding of egoism means that sympathy is not straightforwardly assimilable to the orthodox theory of rational choice. The section after that analyses the place of altruism in Sen's work and ascertains that altruism can be aligned both with sympathy and commitment, depending on the definition one uses. The final section compares sympathy and commitment and establishes that they are to be distinguished, not according to the welfare a person expects to obtain from making choices, but according to the reason which motivates that person to make a choice.

Comments on Amartya Sen's book, Development as Freedom, acknowledging its major importance & pointing out its theoretical & political/policy problems. Sen argues that economic development measures must go beyond utilities & primary goods to measure substantive freedoms, especially the right to live the life one values. Sen's capabilities approach offers a stronger philosophical foundation than Gross National Product, Physical Quality of Life, assessment of Basic Needs, & Quality of Life, since those measures lack either recognition of the conditions of the poor or substantive philosophical justification. His measure, however, emphasizes individualism to the neglect of critical aspects of group well-being & activity, & it avoids issues of political economy that are needed to understand the impact of democracy & modern capitalism. 1 Table, 17 References. L. A. Hoffman