This book is the culmination of thirty years of teaching and writing in development ethics. In the introductory chapter, I recount the stages in the emergence and evolution of development ethics and its relation to my own intellectual journey. In endnotes to each chapter I acknowledge those institutions and individuals who were important in each chapter’s origin and improvement. The present occasion enables me to express my deep gratitude to those institutions, groups, and persons who have helped shape the entire project. None of them, of course, is responsible for whatever deficiencies remain.
I benefited enormously from my twenty‐five years in the Department of Philosophy at Colorado State University. It was at Colorado State in the late 1970s that I joined colleagues James Boyd (philosophy), Gerald Ward (animal science), and, subsequently, Robert Zimdahl (weed science) in constructing arguably the first university course in international development ethics. Many CSU administrators and faculty, especially Maury Albertson, Ray Chamberlain, Loren Crabtree, David Freeman, Judson Harper, and James Meiman, supported the course and my work in development ethics. I am grateful to the many philosophy and other graduate students, especially Alison Bailey, Les Blomberg, Cynthia Botteron, Rex Welshon, William Slauson, and George Wallace, who contributed so much to my own thinking about ethics and development.
The course would not have been possible without the encouragement of my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy and its chair, Willard O. Eddy, who had a long‐term concern with issues of global poverty. Especially important was a vision of applied ethics or practical philosophy that we forged together in departmental dialogue about what philosophy should be at a land grant university. Philosophy, we came to believe, should clarify and seek to resolve public problems, and should do so in a way that is informed by good science and relevant to the ethical assessment of institutional practice. I benefited much from Richard Kitchener’s work in philosophy of technology, Dan Lyons and Jann Benson’s study of honor codes and ethical norms in US culture, Bernard Rollin’s seminal work in veterinary ethics, and Holmes Rolston’s contributions to environmental ethics. Although we often disagreed about the details, we were united by a common commitment that philosophy and public policy belonged together but would have to be changed to realize their potential.
I did much of my early work in development ethics and the capability approach when I was a Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor in the School of Philosophy at the University of Costa Rica in 1986–7 and 1992. The great kindness of my Costa Rican colleagues, our many discussions, and their examples as public intellectuals helped me learn about Costa Rica and how development ethics, even done by an outsider, might contribute to better policy and practice. I am particularly indebted to philosophers Victor Breines, Luis Camacho, Guillermo Coronado, Rafael Angel Herra, and E. Roy Ramirez. I also am grateful to sociologist Jorge Rovira Mas, “La Liga” soccer coach Minor Solís, and community organizer and writer Paula Palmer for teaching me much about Costa Rica.
Since 1993, I have had the great good fortune to teach in the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and to be a senior research scholar in both the School and the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, a research unit within the School. The School and Institute have been a perfect venue for my work in development ethics, the capability approach, and democratic theory and practice. The School provides the interdisciplinary context required for my practice of development ethics. I am indebted to the insights and concerns of fifteen years of graduate students in my courses “Moral Dimensions of Public Policy,” “Ethics, Development, and Foreign Aid,” and “Democracy and Democratization: Theory and Practice.” Among the many students who have pushed me to better arguments are Soumya Chattopadhyay, Laura Antkowiak Hussey, Daniel Levine, and Patty Joyce. My thinking on the capability approach and deliberative democracy has also benefited from the PhD proseminars, offered by the Committee on Politics, Philosophy, and Public Policy, that I co‐taught at various times with Steve Elkin, Douglas Grob, Judith Lichtenberg, Christopher Morris, Joe Oppenheimer, and Michael Slote. I have especially benefited from the insights of four PhD students who wrote theses under my direction: Peter Balint, Stephen Schwenke, Andrew Selee, and Lori Keleher. Joshua Gillerman, one of my Public Leadership students, ably helped with the page proofs.
The Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy has been a marvelous place to join with other philosophers in the conceptual analysis and normative assessment of public policy. Every part of the book shows the salutary impact on my thinking of Institute colleagues and friends: editors Arthur Evenchik and Verna Gehring, the latter who read and made many improvements at various stages of the entire manuscript; and (past and present) researchers Robert Fullinwider, William Galston, Daniel Levine, Peter Levine, Xiaorong Li, Judith Lichtenberg, David Luban, Mark Sagoff, Jerome M. Segal, Robert Wachbroit, and David Wasserman.
During a fall 2005 visiting professorship in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Valencia in Spain, I wrote the first drafts of Chapters 7 and 10. I deeply appreciate the warmth with which my Spanish colleagues welcomed me and the opportunity they provided me to teach and write. I received extremely helpful comments on several chapters from professors Jesús Conill and Adela Cortina and students Daniela Gallegos, Martín Urquijo, and Marta Pedrajas Herrero.
I am deeply grateful to my good friends and colleagues in the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) for their friendship and contributions to my work. IDEA events, since their beginning in 1984, were the venues in which many of my ideas in this volume were first tried out or refined. My special thanks to Ken Aman, Luis Camacho, Nigel Dower, Jay Drydyk, Des Gasper, Denis Goulet, Christine Koggel, Desmond McNeill, Laura Mues, Christian Parker, Peter Penz, Ramón Romero, Stephen Schwenke, Jerome Segal, and Asunción St. Clair. I also am indebted to the Human Development and Capability Association and its members for providing insightful assessments of my efforts to work out an agency‐focused version of the capability approach to development ethics. Among many others, I wish to thank HDCA members Sabina Alkire, Séverine Denoulin, Mozaffar Qizilbash, Henry Richardson, Ingrid Robeyns, and Sakiko Fukuda‐Parr for their criticisms and support of my work. I join members of both IDEA and HDCA in expressing sincere appreciation to Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum for not only founding the capability orientation but also for the continual encouragement of those of us who assess, extend, and apply it.
I gratefully acknowledge financial support I have received at various stages in the writing of this book: Fulbright (CIES), the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development, and the UNESCO Chair in Development (University of Valencia).
I also wish to thank the exceptionally kind, patient, and professional team at Cambridge University Press: Elizabeth Davey, Philip G.A. Good, and Chris Harrison, Publishing Director of Social Sciences. Jo Bramwell has been a superb copy‐editor.
Finally, I could not have completed this project without the help of many family members. Before an illness toward the end of her life (and death at age ninety‐six in August 2007), my mother Geri Crocker corrected earlier versions of many chapters. My philosopher‐lawyer brother, Larry, and my philosopher son, Davey, commented on much of the manuscript. Eddie, my dear wife of almost fifty years, helped in innumerable ways, not the least of which was extracting me from the study for a run around Lake Artemesia or a paddle on Lake Kahshe. With the hope of a better future for all the world’s children, I dedicate this volume to our wonderful children, Cathy, Amanda, and Davey, and grandchildren, Anna, Julia, and Luke.