Amartya Sen

Bio: Amartya Sen is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Poverty & Human rights. The author has an hindex of 149, co-authored 689 publications receiving 141907 citations. Previous affiliations of Amartya Sen include Trinity College, Dublin & University of Chicago.

Is Nationalism a Boon or a Curse

Abstract: nationality as one identity among rnafty that we all have. two years before India's independence, on August 15, 1945, in his last message to the nation, Subhas Chandra Bose wrote: "There is no power on earth that can keep India enslaved. India shall be free and before long".1 That confidence, based on a determined commitment to a great cause of ending imperial domination of India brings out a hugely appealing face of nationalism. It can inspire and motivate the people of a country subjected to the bondage of alien rule and to the internal loss of self-confidence that goes with such rule. Even the rousing statement about the inability of any power on earth to keep India enslaved, which Netaji articulated, can be seen in the context of the need to overcome what Rabindranath Tagore had called "the worst form of bondage" "the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves".2

La razón antes que la identidad

Abstract: Premio Nobel de Economia 1998, el filosofo y economista Amartya Sen, nacido en la India, educado en Cambridge y profesor del Trinity College, es un estudioso a profundidad de las causas de la pobreza y el subdesarrollo. Su libro Pobreza y hambrunas ha sido toda una novedad de acercamiento al problema de la miseria humana. En el, creo un indice de pobreza capaz de medir el bienestar de los individuos de una forma mucho mas precisa que a traves del ingreso promedio, formula convencional hasta entonces. Para Sen, la democracia no es un elemento mas del desarrollo sino su condicion primera. Esceptico parcial del mercado libre sin control estatal y de la globalizacion sin contrapesos educativos y de salud, Sen es tambien un convencido de que las identidades colectivas no deben estar nunca por arriba de las decisiones individuales y de la libertad personal para delinear una identidad propia. Con este ensayo, en exclusiva para Letras Libres e inedito en espanol, principia nuestro recorrido por el pensamiento liberal con ensayos ineditos en espanol de Isaiah Berlin, del israeli Avishai Margalit y del norteamericano Mark Lilla. –

On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Well-being is a complex construct that concerns optimal experience and functioning. Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. New methodological developments concerning multilevel modeling and construct comparisons are also allowing researchers to formulate new questions for the field. This review considers research from both perspectives concerning the nature of well-being, its antecedents, and its stability across time and culture.

Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices

Abstract: A doubling in global food demand projected for the next 50 years poses huge challenges for the sustainability both of food production and of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the services they provide to society. Agriculturalists are the principal managers of global useable lands and will shape, perhaps irreversibly, the surface of the Earth in the coming decades. New incentives and policies for ensuring the sustainability of agriculture and ecosystem services will be crucial if we are to meet the demands of improving yields without compromising environmental integrity or public health.

Dynamics of dark energy

Abstract: We review in detail a number of approaches that have been adopted to try and explain the remarkable observation of our accelerating universe. In particular we discuss the arguments for and recent progress made towards understanding the nature of dark energy. We review the observational evidence for the current accelerated expansion of the universe and present a number of dark energy models in addition to the conventional cosmological constant, paying particular attention to scalar field models such as quintessence, K-essence, tachyon, phantom and dilatonic models. The importance of cosmological scaling solutions is emphasized when studying the dynamical system of scalar fields including coupled dark energy. We study the evolution of cosmological perturbations allowing us to confront them with the observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure and demonstrate how it is possible in principle to reconstruct the equation of state of dark energy by also using Supernovae Ia observational data. We also discuss in detail the nature of tracking solutions in cosmology, particle physics and braneworld models of dark energy, the nature of possible future singularities, the effect of higher order curvature terms to avoid a Big Rip singularity, and approaches to modifying gravity which leads to a late-time accelerated expansion without recourse to a new form of dark energy.