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The work of economist and philosopher Amartya Sen (1933-) has attracted attention in other fields too, including in political science, human geography, planning, health and social policy, and, to a lesser but growing extent, in sociology and occasionally anthropology. This paper, written as part of a project on Indian social theorists, discusses Sen's relation to social theorizing. While he is not a 'social theorist' in the sense recognized in sociology and anthropology, being grounded instead in the earlier perspectives of Adam Smith, Condorcet and J.S. Mill, much of his work, both theoretical and empirical, proves of interest to a wide range of social scientists. The paper's first main part outlines his contributions as a social analyst, under four connected headings: (1) theorization on how people reason as agents within society; (2) 'entitlements analysis' of the social determinants of people's access or lack of access to goods; (3) theorizing the effective freedoms and agency that people enjoy or lack, in his 'capability approach' (CA); (4) treatments of societal membership, identity and political life, including a liberal theory of personal identity and a strong advocacy of and high expectations for 'voice' and deliberative democracy. The second part characterizes Sen's intellectual style, marked by systematic conceptual refinement, associated emphases on complexity, heterogeneity, and individuality, including personal individuality, and a reformist optimism. The third part treats his relation to 'social theory' as considered by sociologists, including the connections, contributions and possible blind spots: in his attention to work by sociologists, in his system for theorizing human action in society, in treatment of power structures and capitalism, and in his optimistic programmatic conception of personhood that stresses the freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. The final substantial part discusses his preoccupation with public reasoning and democracy, and the focus on an arguably idealized version of the former and relative neglect of the sociology

__Abstract__ To present climate change as an issue of human security means to focus on the impacts and implications in the lives of ordinary people, not only in the agendas of armies, states or national economies. It means, for example, looking at life expectancies and patterns of nutrition, morbidity and mortality, not only at whether stressed populations might explode into armed conflict – the extreme 'Darfur' scenario. That sort of scenario and such preoccupations often reflect traditional state-centred and military-focused concerns more than person-focused ones. That poor people in most cases seem to lack the organization, cohesion or resources to initiate armed conflict does not mean that their plight is not an issue of—human—security. As part of a humanist perspective, the human security approach means looking at more also than aggregates of monetized economic variables, but rather at the contents, objective and subjective, of the lives of all of the people – at their 'do-ings' and 'be-ings', the constraints that they face, the real opportunities that they have, or lack, and the meanings that they experience – not only at the parts and the persons that are counted in money terms.

__Abstract__ What are the implications for education of the emergent global challenges of sustainability? Various studies suggest that major changes are required in predominant human values during the next two generations, to ensure politically and environmentally sustainable societies and a sustainable global order. Three required moves, according to The Earth Charter and the Great Transition study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (Earth Charter Commission; Raskin et al. 2002), are the following: from pursuit of human fulfilment predominantly through consumerism, to a focus on quality of life above quantity of commercial activity; from the predominance of possessive individualism, towards more human solidarity; and from a stance of human domination and exploitation of nature, towards an ecological sensitivity. This essay considers such a neo-Stoic project—covering, broadly speaking, the cultivation of humanity's flourishing as individuals, as collectivity, and in and towards our natural environment, each of them as desirable in themselves and in order to preserve humankind.

__Abstract__ The human development approach emerged in the late 1980s in response to the negative effects of structural adjustment programmes applied to countries in the South. Led originally by two South Asian scholars, Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen, in cooperation with a large international network, the approach is comparative in perspective and global in reach and has been incorporated into parts of the United Nations (UN) system, including the United Nations Development Programme. Over the years this approach has integrated three dimensions – human development, human rights and human security –, and looks at people's well-being or ill-being, security and insecurity, in the context of issues arising from global interconnectedness and inequities. It has had significant influence, but one constraint has been that its focus on the 'human' is accompanied by a widely recognised gap in respect of 'the social' (Apthorpe 1997, Gasper 2011, Phillips 2011). In this paper we emphasise the human security wing of the UN human development approach, for that provides the most opening from this family of 'human' discourses to issues of the 'social'. Human security discourse looks at the human impacts of globalisation and the consequences of interrelated economic, socio-political, cultural and environmental change. Many international agencies, governments and social networks have taken up human security language. These include, besides UN agencies, the Human Security Network that includes Canada, Norway, The Netherlands, a dozen other countries and many NGOs; the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and development cooperation agency; the Thai government; and, to some extent, departments in charge of EU foreign policy.

Prelude: The surprising spread of 'human security' discourse Although the language of ̳human security' that became prominent in the 1990s has encountered criticism from many sides, it has continued to gain momentum. One encounters it frequently now in discussions of environment, migration, socioeconomic rights, culture, gender and more, not only of physical security. Werthes and Debiel propose that: ̳human security provides a powerful ―political leitmotif‖ for particular states and multilateral actors by fulfilling selected functions in the process of agenda-setting, decision-making and implementation' (2006:8). I suggest that in order to understand human security discourse and its spread this specification of actors and functions should be broadened. The relevant actors include more than states and multilateral agencies. What was primarily a language in United Nations circles is now far more. Like the sister idea of human rights, human security could be becoming an idiom that plays important roles in motivating and directing attention, and in problem recognition, diagnosis, evaluation and response.

Prelude: The surprising spread of 'human security' discourse The language of ‗human security' that became prominent in the 1990s has encountered criticism from many sides, it has continued to gain momentum. One encounters it frequently now in discussions of environment, migration, socioeconomic rights, culture, gender and more, not only of physical security. Werthes and Debiel propose that: ‗human security provides a powerful ―political leitmotif‖ for particular states and multilateral actors by fulfilling selected functions in the process of agenda-setting, decision-making and implementation' (2006:8). I suggest that in order to understand human security discourse and its spread this specification of actors and functions should be broadened. The relevant actors include more than states and multilateral agencies. What was primarily a language in United Nations circles is now far more. Like the sister idea of human rights, human security could be becoming an idiom that plays important roles in motivating and directing attention, and in problem recognition, diagnosis, evaluation and response.

Ethical discourses can have great influence in national and international affairs. Neta Crawford's Argument and Change in World Politics (2002) reviews five centuries of debates over imperial conquest, slavery and the slave trade, forced labour, colonization, trusteeship and decolonization. Crawford shows how ethical discourses can gradually structure and restructure pre-analytical feelings and analytical attention and how they can interact with and influence other factors—by the range of comparisons that they make, by the categories and default cases that they introduce and defend, by the ways they reconstitute conceptions of 'interests' and perceptions of constraints. .

The concepts of need and needs are pervasive in everyday discourse, public policy, especially social policy (see e.g. Witkin & Altschuld 1995, Brazelton & Greenspan 2000), management and marketing (see e.g. Jackson et al. 2004), and international policy areas such as humanitarian aid and the Millennium Development Goals. They have a long history in humanistic economics (Lutz & Lux 1988) and parts of welfare economics (e.g. Pigou 1920), even if sometimes different words were used (Amartya Sen, interviewed in Weiss et al., 2005: 240). Needs language essays some central functions – first, to make analyses of motivation richer and more realistic, extending our explanatory repertoire beyond 'economic man'; second, to analyse instrumental roles and connections; and third to help structure and humanise policy prioritisation, and extend our evaluative repertoire beyond conventional economic measures such as per capita income. In all this, needs language attempts a communicative function too: to support the explanatory and normative work with frames that are simple enough yet robust enough to be usable, yet not too misleading, in routine professional and political discourse. Needs language is hard to order, because of how widespread and varied these roles are. Pervasive use has been frequently accompanied by casualness and obscurity. Added to currents opposed to any notion of publicly determined priorities rather than only market determined priorities, this has led to frequent opposition to the category of 'needs' in economics. Work in the past generation strengthened the structures of needs language, reinforcing it as a central medium in policy and administration and connecting it to the languages of human rights and well-being. This entry looks at the variety and nature of needs concepts, and at their relationship to research on human well-being and to ideas of human rights.

ABSTRACT 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 strengths, unrecognized strengths, remediable gaps or failings, or structural faults. The paper then looks at Sen's system as a theoretical basis for "human development" – in particular in relation to personhood, emotions, and psychological interdependence – and argues that it points in directions required for economic and social analysis, including towards theories of care, but is not itself a sufficient treatment. The paper suggests deepening Sen's system by connecting to other important languages of analysis concerning the structuring of attitudes, emotions, felt well-being, public reasoning, and politics.

Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical and policy discourses. Each tries to humanize 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, understanding and co-operation are deficient, especially between human rights and the other discourses. The paper tries to identify respective strengths, weaknesses, and potential complementarity. It suggests that human security discourse may offer a working alliance between humanized discourses of rights, development and need.

Abstract: Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical and policy discourses. Each tries to humanize 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, understanding and co-operation are deficient, especially between human rights and the other discourses. The paper tries to identify respective strengths, weaknesses, and potential complementarity. It suggests that human security discourse may offer a working alliance between humanized discourses of rights, development and need.

ABSTRACT Research and teaching in societal development ethics face potentially four fundamental types of objection: first, that ethics is obvious already; second, that it is instead impossible, on epistemological grounds; third, that it is theoretically possible but in practice fruitless; and fourth, that it is in any case politically insignificant. The paper presents qualified rebuttals of the four objections. In the process of doing so, it builds up a picture of this field of thought and practice: its modes, methods and alternative forms of organization, and some of its pitfalls and potentials, exemplars and achievements. RÉSUMÉ La recherche et l'enseignement en éthique du développement sociétal sont confrontés à quatre types d'objection fondamentales : premièrement, que l'éthique est déjà évidente ; deuxièmement que l'éthique est au contraire impossible, en raison de fondements épistémologiques ; troisièmement que c'est théoriquement possible mais pratiquement sans fruits ; et quatrièmement que c'est dans tous les cas insignifiant politiquement. Ce papier présente des réfutations de ces quatre objections. Il propose alors une image du champ de pensée et de la pratique : ses modes, ses méthodes et ses formes alternatives d'organisation, et certains de ses pièges et potentiels, de ses exemples et aboutissements.

Introduction The conceptual field of governance has grown partly as an acknowledgement of major gaps in traditional treatments of development policy and management. We see the insufficiency of focusing only on government as the State; and the need for a wider perspective of governance, understood as the 'array of ways in which interplay between the State, the market, and society is ordered' ('Insights', 23 Sept. 1997, IDS Sussex). And we realize now how ineffective or disaster-prone public policy can be when key factors conducive to effective policy formation and implementation are absent, including sufficient political legitimacy and accountability, an adequately functioning legal apparatus, systems for public expression and social learning, and peace rather than war. A governance perspective brings an expectation of a more complex approach to policy evaluation than approaches which assume no substantial interplay between State, market and society; more complex, for example, than the assessment of projects with saleable inputs and outputs as if market-based or market-inspired criteria suffice. Similarly, the significance of legitimacy, accountability and public feedback have implications for the content and procedural design of policy evaluation.

Abstract: Amartya Sen's 1998 Nobel Prize and his recent synthesis of his views in Development as Freedom provide an opportunity to assess his intellectual contribution and style. The paper identifies entitlements analysis and capabilities analysis as the areas which make him stand out for wider audiences from the economists of his generation; and considers the integrative development philosophy which he has constructed around those two areas, centering on the direct and instrumental values of freedom and democracy. Three aspects of Sen's intellectual style are discussed: first, his multi-disciplinarity and fruitful balance between vivid cases, formal theorizing, and policy relevance; second, a preference for gentle persuasion, seen in adoption of evocative but ambiguous, politically safe labels and an avoidance of seeking debate on all fronts (e.g. concerning hyper affluence); third, a continuing project to debate with and influence economists, and hence, while upgrading parts of their inadequate picture of persons, retention of other parts. His capability approach lends itself however to enrichment by deeper analyses of human agency.

ABSTRACT Faced with massive crises in the 1990s, such as in Rwanda-Zaire, aid agencies have had to make ethical and strategic choices of great magnitude. One approach seeks to compare goods and bads from agencies' involvement, and to specify a 'bottom line' beneath which bads outweigh goods so that agencies should withdraw or change their involvement. In a second approach a line is drawn between (a) an agency's area of responsibility and (b) actions and consequences which are the responsibility of others--not a bottom line but a line dividing mine from thine. The paper probes and assesses those approaches, showing problems with both but especially with the second; qualifies them by reference to issues of motivation, feasibility and organisational level, and presents some complementary types of approach; and stresses finally that effective strategic action must be guided by broad causal analysis.