Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:21:03.838Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Property and Hunger

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In an interesting letter to Anna George, the daughter of Henry George, Bernard Shaw wrote: “Your father found me a literary dilettante and militant rationalist in religion, and a barren rascal at that. By turning my mind to economics he made a man of me” (George, 1979, p. xiii). I am not able to determine what making a man of Bernard Shaw would exactly consist of, but it is clear that the kind of moral and social problems with which Shaw was deeply concerned could not be sensibly pursued without examining their economic aspects. For example, the claims of property rights, which some would defend and some (including Shaw) would dispute, are not just matters of basic moral belief that could not possibly be influenced one way or the other by any empirical arguments. They call for sensitive moral analysis responsive to empirical realities, including economic ones.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 1988 , pp. 57 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alamgir, M. 1980. Famine in South Asia: Political Economy of Mass Starvation in Bangladesh. Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn, and Hain.Google Scholar
Ashton, B., Hill, K., Piazza, A., and Zeitz, R. 1984. “Famine in China, 1958–61.” Population and Development Review 10:613–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drèze, Jean, and Sen, Amartya, editors. Forthcoming. Hunger: Economics and Policy. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton, and Friedman, Rose. 1980. Free to Choose. London: Secker and Warburg.Google Scholar
George, Henry. 1979. Poverty and Progress. Centenary edition, with foreword by Agnes George de Mille. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.Google Scholar
George, Henry 1981. The Science of Political Economy. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.Google Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. 1976. “Natural Property Rights.” Nous 10:77–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Ross. 1983. Bentham. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ram, N. 1986. “An Independent Press and Anti-Hunger Strategies.” WIDER Conference Paper. In Hunger: Economics and Policy, edited by Dreze, J. and Sen, A.. Oxford: Clarendon. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Ravallion, Martin. 1987. Markets and Famines. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Regan, Donald. 1983. “Against Evaluator Relativity: A Response to Sen.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12:93–112.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1967. “The Nature and Classes of Prescriptive Judgments.” Philosophical Quarterly 17:46–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1970. Collective Choice and Social Welfare. San Francisco: Holden Day. Reprint. Amsterdam: New Holland, 1979.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1978. “On the Labour Theory of Value: Some Methodological Issues.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 2:175–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1982a. “How is India Doing?” New York Review of Books 29, No. 20 (December 16):41–45. Reprinted in D. K. Basu and R. Sisson, eds., Social and Economic Development in India (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986).Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1982b. “The Right Not to be Hungry.” In Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 2, edited by Fløistad, G., pp. 343–60. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1982c. “Rights and Agency.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11:3–39.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1983a. “Development: Which Way Now?” Economic Journal 93:745–62. Reprinted in Resources, Values and Development.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1983b. “Evaluator Relativity and Consequential Evaluation.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12:113–32.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1984a. “Food Battles: Conflicts in the Access to Food.” Food and Nutrition, FAP 10, Tenth Anniversary Issue. (FAD, United Nations, Rome).Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1984b. Resources, Values, and Development. Oxford: Blackwell and Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1985a. “Well-being, Agency, and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984.” journal of Philosophy 82:185–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1985b. “Rights as Goals.” In Equality and Discrimination: Essays in Freedom and justice, edited by Guest, S. and Milne, A.. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1985c. “The Moral Standing of the Market.” In Ethics and Economics, edited by Paul, E.F. et al. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1986. “Food, Economics, and Entitlements.” Lloyds Book Review, No. 160, April.Google Scholar