A Broader Look. A New Approach to Poverty and Human Flourishing.

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A Broader Look. A New Approach to Poverty and
Human Flourishing.

• Julio Boltvinik (2005)

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Purpose, central value, hope

• To broaden our look in order to grasp and
  understand the complete human being.
• I conceive the realisation of human
  potentialities as the central value and do not
  confound it with material abundance (to be, not
  to have).
• As most non-poor are far away from such
  realisation, overcoming (economic) poverty will
  not translate into human flourishing (HF).
• My hope is for public policy oriented towards
  human flourishing.

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Contents of this Presentation

• Purpose, Central Value, Hope. (1)
• Foundations of the New Approach in Philosophical
  Anthropology. (5)
• Critical Assessment of Poverty Studies. (5)
• The New Approach to Poverty and Human Flourishing
  (9)
• Other Contributions (2)

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Foundations of the New Approach in
Philosophical Anthropology
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Marx-Markus Philosophical Anthropology I

• The central distinction between the human species
  and all other species lies in the fact that human
  vital activity, work, is directed towards need
  fulfilment in a mediated way (tool-making
  animal).
• This makes the human being a natural universal
  being, capable of transforming into an object of
  his needs and his activities, everything in
  nature.
• As this takes place, the human being develops his
  needs and his capacities, i.e. his human
  essential forces. The human being is a product of
  his own work (historical universal being).

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Marx-Markus Philosophical Anthropology II

• Work severs the animal fusion of subject and
  object of needs, giving birth to human conscience
  and self-conscience, which tend to universality
  (universally conscious being).
• In work, the conditions for the human being as a
  social being are also given. Human beings cant
  have a human life except in their relations with
  other human beings. Work is social both because
  men (women) work for each other, and because they
  employ means and capacities generated by the
  preceding generations (social universal being).

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Marx-Markus philosophical anthropology III

• The human being is a free being in two senses
• Liberty (negative) from the determinations and
  relations (which have become chains), possibility
  given by self-consciousness which transforms
  his/her life into an object of his/her activity.
• Liberty (positive) control by humankind over
  forces of nature (including own nature), the
  development of human creativity, of human
  essential forces which becomes an end in itself.
• Individual liberty means that the individual can
  realise objective possibilities (socially
  produced) according to his conscious decisions.

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Marx-Markus Conception of Human Needs

• Needs (except original biological needs) are as
  produced as products of work and working
  capacities.
• Production creates not only the object of
  consumption, but the mode of consumption, the
  consumption impulse and the consumer himself.
• The preceding reveals itself in the humanisation
  of biological needs and in the creation of new
  needs (e.g. learning and aesthetic needs,
  scientific curiosity).

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Marx, Maslow and Fromm Concur

• Maslow maintains that human needs are
  instintoide, as among the 3 elements of instinct
  (impulse, activity, object), human beings inherit
  only the impulse and must learn the other two.
• Fromm says that at a certain point in evolution
  life became conscious about itself, so action
  ceased to be determined by instincts.
• This break with total dominion by instinct
  coincides with the rupture represented by work as
  a mediated activity, as tool making is a
  non-instinctive activity.
• The preceding are the two sides of the same
  break, break which implies a great liberty leap
  and is central to the understanding of human
  essence.

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Critical Assessment of Poverty Studies.
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Poverty Studies. Prevailing Conditions I

• The subject is dominated by standard economists
  who simulate that utility is the constitutive
  element of poverty/standard of living, whereas in
  fact it is income (some times adjusted income).
• As a consequence, their poverty definition is a
  tautology lack of income to reach a level of
  income. It is impossible, in the scale of
  income by itself, to define a threshold with some
  human meaning.
• The arbitrariness which they show off reflects
  their conceptual poverty.

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Poverty Studies. Prevailing Conditions II

• The current of thought which originated in
  Townsends work, which seemed to broaden the
  look, has twice gone back to a narrow view a)
  When Townsend, looking for the objective PL,
  reduced his multiple indicators to the role of
  means to reveal the objective PL. b) When the
  authors applying the truly poor approach
  reduced their apparent broadness to a search for
  a coincidence between directly observed
  deprivation and low income.
• In this way, this approach concurs (implicitly)
  with the one by the standard economists in the
  following aspects a) making current income the
  only well being source b) adopting a narrow view
  of the good life which depends only on access to
  goods and services which are acquired only
  through monetizable income.

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Poverty Studies. Prevailing Conditions III

• Sens capability approach can be regarded as a
  third way. His approach looks broad but remains
  narrow.
• Although Sen rejects the subjectivity of
  utilitarism, and replaces it with more objective
  neoconcepts (which are ambiguous and
  non-operational) he remains attached to the
  mechanistic approach of neoclassical theory, for
  which well-being derives only from the
  consumption of goods.
• Capabilities do not refer to human capacities
  (skills, abilities, knowledge), but to economic
  opportunities determined by income. They are
  economic capabilities. Sen, in contrast with
  Nussbaum, avoids value judgements (even the
  obvious ones) condemning his approach to being
  sterile.

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Poverty Studies. Prevailing Conditions IV

• Fourth way approaches which incorporate other
  sources of well-being (besides current income).
• Vickery incorporates time availability
  (income-time method), while in the Index of
  Social Progress (IPS), Desai includes basic and
  non-basic assets, access to free goods and
  services and knowledge/skills. In the Integrated
  Poverty Measurement Method (IPMM), I incorporate
  all six mentioned sources.
• IPMM is an economic poverty measurement approach
  consistent with static and qualitatively equal
  needs amongst everybody. Separate and specific
  handling of every well being source is a
  reflection of everyday life. On the contrary,
  re-expressing all them as income (economic
  status approach) is artificial. This separate
  handling in IPMM, which reflects the limits of
  the market system, seems inevitable.

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The New Approach to Poverty and Human Flourishing
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The Departure Points. A Résumé. I

• Human history can be seen as the trajectory
  toward universalisation of human needs,
  capacities, social being and conscience.
• This view of the human beings essence in
  Marx-Markus, is reinforced by
• a) The concurrence of Maslow and Fromm regarding
  the difference between man and animal.
• b) The (mostly implicit) concurrence of Maslow,
  Fromm, Maccoby, Max Neef, Doyal-Gough, Nussbaum
  and Sen, regarding the complementary character of
  the passive and the active sides in human beings,
  which can be identified with the concept of human
  essential forces (needs capacities).

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The Departure Points. A Résumé. II

• The identification of multiple conceptual axes,
  two of which are of interest here the Human
  Flourishing Axis (HFA) and the Standard of
  Living Axis (SLA).
• The definition that the constitutive element of
  both axes is the development of human essential
  forces (needs and capacities).
• The perception that broaching the SLA directly
  generates both a narrow look (material needs
  only, satisfied by objects acquired with
  monetizable resources only) as well as mistaken
  assessments of SL and poverty.

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The Departure Points. A Résumé. III

• There is an enormous distance between non
  instrumental, categorical needs, on one hand, and
  desires, wants and preferences on the other. This
  distance is explained by the presence of harm
  when needs are unmet.
• Evaluation and description of many social facts
  are, and should be, entangled. Poverty facts
  cant be described without previously
  establishing what we understand by poverty, which
  implies an individual or social evaluation.

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Two Conceptual Axes Human Flourishing and
Standard of Living
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Societal Individual Levels in HFA
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Development of Needs

• We are used to think about needs in static terms
  the only thing we ask about them is if theyre
  met or not.
• Development of needs can be conceived as 1) the
  widening of their range and 2) their qualitative
  development.
• Extension not all persons have developed (e.g.)
  the seven needs of Maslows scheme. Some are
  trapped in deficit motivation, while others are
  growth motivated.
• Qualitative development humanisation/deepening
  of needs (educated ear needs good music the
  developed intellect does not satisfy the
  understanding need with religious myths).

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New Wealth/Poverty Concepts
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The New in the New Approach

• In the new approach, the following features are
  to be noted as new
• Distinction of the two axes (HFA SLA) and
  definition of the abstract (cut) procedure,
  conceived as cutting away perspectives to leave
  the economic one alone.
• Definition of the unity needs-capacities as the
  constitutive element of both axes.
• Distinction of the sub axes (societal
  individual) in each axis.
• The development of two concepts of poverty human
  economic, each one with its ser and estar
  dimensions.
• Integration of a holistic approach founded in a
  vision of the human essence.
• These breakthroughs would have been impossible
  without the critical vision of poverty studies.

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Other Theoretical Contributions

• Draft of a new aggregate measure of poverty,
  derived from the critical appraisal of
  distributional sensitive (within the poor)
  aggregate poverty measures.
• Development of a typology of satisfiers
  integrated by objects (goods and services),
  relations, activities, capacities and
  institutions.
• Development of reproduction circulation schemes
  for a typology of households as a foundation of
  the notion of well-being sources.
• Outline of a new consumer theory based on the
  notion of a hierarchy of needs.

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Main Critical Contributions

1. Critique of Doyal-Goughs theory of needs.
2. Critique of Sens capability approach, which was
   essential for an approach centred on capacities
   and needs.
3. Critique of neoclassical consumer theory.
4. Critique of poverty concepts and measurement
   methods.
5. Critical history of poverty measurements on
   Mexico.