Showing papers by "World Institute for Development Economics Research published in 1990"

Well-Being and the Extent of its Realisation in Poor Countries

Abstract: Two aspects of persons have alternatingly dominated the thinking of social philosophers over the centuries, each true in itself, but each quite incomplete without the other. One sees us capable of deliberation, having the potential capacity to do things. It details agency, choice, independence and selfdetermination, and thereby that aspect of our selves which fashions projects and pursues goals. The other views us as seats of utility or satisfaction; as loci of possible states of mind, attained by the extent to which desires are fulfilled, by the activities that are undertaken and the relationships enjoyed. If one vision sees us doing things, the other sees us residing in states of being. Where the former leads one to the language of freedom and rights, the latter directs one to a concern with welfare and happiness. These are related aspects of course, in fact so closely related that they have often been conflated into one without having caused any obvious damage. Consider for example that people often appeal to a category of socio-economic rights (that is, rights to certain scarce resources) when advocating policies which have an impact on the extent of absolute poverty in a society. Now, it is possible to use instead some notion of aggregate welfare and reach similar conclusions. We may, for instance, be considering the desirability of a nutrition-guarantee scheme. We could advocate it by invoking persons' wellbeing interests, such as certain types of positive rights. (See Section VI.) We could also commend it on grounds of aggregate utility. We could do this by noting first that nutrition intake is a determinant of individual welfare, that at low levels of intake it is a critical determinant, and that in the absence of such a scheme a sizeable fraction of the population would be vulnerable to food deprivation. We could thus argue that the level of aggregate welfare which

The Environment as a Commodity

Abstract: All economic activity is based ultimately on re sources found in nature Whether it is consumption The point in exposing the morphology of produced or production, or whether it is exchange, the comgoods and services is not to construct a resource modities which are involved are made of constitutheory of a value There are any number of natural ents provided by nature Thus, the ingredients of resources, and this alone precludes such an at any manufactured good are other produced goods, tempted theory from being coherent My purpose, labour time and skills, and natural resources Each rather, is to use it to express surprise at the fact that of these constituent produced goods is in turn made despite the centrality of natural resources in eco up from the ingredients that went into its manufacnomic activity, they find little room in economics ture, namely labour time and skills, natural rediscourses Interest in resource economics, more sources, and further produced goods It follows particularly environmental economics, has only that any manufactured commodity is ultimately a been intermittent, and if we are currently witness combination of labour and natural resources ing a resurgence (and this special issue is an ex ample of it), we have also just lived through a Labour too is a produced good Even raw labour is decade-long neglect, during which much valuable an output, manufactured by those natural resources research could have been done2 We are way behind which sustain life, resources such as the multitude where we should have been, and could have been,

Food Deprivation and Undernutrition in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract: Since the devastating famine of 1974, Bangladesh has successfully avoided any major disaster of this kind, in spite of serious crises in 1979 and 1984 and a succession of floods in recent years. It is nevertheless open to question whether the rural poor of Bangladesh have, over time, gained a more secure entitlement to food with which to survive temporary shocks. We have argued elsewhere (Osmani, 1991) that the non-famines of 1979 and 1984 owed much to certain fortuitous circumstances rather than to a steady improvement in food entitlement. However, using more recent information, some analysts including the World Bank (1987), Rahman and Haque (1988) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) (1988a), have suggested that there has been an appreciable improvement in rural poverty since Independence, especially in the 1980s. In the light of these recent contributions, this paper re-examines the issue of long-term changes in food deprivation and undernutrition in rural Bangladesh, in order to understand the processes underlying these changes, and suggests a few lessons for public policy.

The Critical and Sociological Approach in Middle East Studies

Abstract: To some minds, &dquo;Middle East studies&dquo; is associated with philology, interpretation of Islamic texts, and the study of Near Eastern languages. To others, it conjures up images of exoticism, local color, and despotism. It is, in all events, an area of inquiry not properly integrated into mainstream disciplines, rather isolated, and according to some critics, somewhat insular (Said, 1988). The problem is less acute in Europe than in the United States, and in the latter, more or less severe in various disciplines (for example, political science and anthropology are interested in the Middle East, while sociology is not). In general, however, it may be said that the Middle East remains an area not well understood and not always well studied.