Reclaiming Value in International Development

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Reclaiming Value in International Development

• Chloe Schwenke, Ph.D.
• Fulbright Associate Professor, Ethics and Public
  Management Programme, Department of Philosophy,
  Faculty of Arts
• Makerere University, Kampala

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The Wandegeya woman and child

• Unhealthy environment
• Begging as a way of life?

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Do I give her money?
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Considerations

• Provide a modicum of relief
• Encourage her dependency an inducement to her
  and her baby to remain in that dangerous
  environment
• Handouts may discourage her from seeking a more
  sustainable and wholesome lifestyle
• My own sense of identity and connection with
  those around me

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Where do I stop?

• Do I give her something every single time I see
  her?
• If not, why not?
• Do I invest in her welfare more substantially,
  helping her out of poverty?
• Is she motivated to pursue such a course?

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What if?

• What if she has some deeper psychological
  problems?
• What of the many, many, many more persons like
  her?
• Why this one woman and her child, and not them?

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The situation in the North

• Over 1.6 million persons in an austere and
  undignified existence
• Seeking a basic (perhaps the most basic) human
  right security
• Escape from the atrocities of the LRA
• Making human dignity and the value of a human
  life meaningless terms?

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An extreme moral dilemma

• Two decades of inhumanity and brutality
• Abduction of children for child soldiers or sex
  slaves
• Sadistic torture and mutilation of innocent
  civilians
• How to respond morally?
• Who is accountable?

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The view from Washington

• Encountering poverty a less frequent, less
  extreme experience
• Victims of conflict largely invisible
• Most development, peacebuilding, and foreign
  aid is conceived of, managed from, and taught in
  a Washington environment

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Insulating ourselves

• Washington environment makes problems of
  development and conflict remote, abstract
• Here no such excuse for moral detachment
• Yet to wealthier Ugandans and expatriates,
  victims and causes of poverty and conflict are
  often viewed as abstract phenomena
• We avoid looking the problem in the face

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The sin of abstraction?

• A useful, essential analytical method
• Maintain an objective perspective, unclouded by
  emotion
• Finding the statistical footprint of
• Global poverty and injustice
• Poor governance and corruption
• International crime and terrorism
• Brutally violent conflict
• Globalization

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Yet we seek to know

• Why are poverty, poor governance, and conflict
  such intractable problems?
• Why does the moral dimension goes largely
  unstated?
• Too painful to ponder?
• An old story?
• An insolvable but remote conundrum?
• Is confronting poverty and conflict at a personal
  level counterproductive?

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The economics lens 1

• Relatively easy to apply
• Empirical dimensions of development, governance,
  and conflict essential to our effectiveness and
  understanding
• Statistics are amoral and value-free

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The economics lens 2

• More tractable
• Less prone to emotionally clouded or sentimental
  reactions
• More relevant in our economics-based worldview?

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Through the economics lens

• The poor clearly not living quality lives
• 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation
• More than 1 billion exist on unsafe water
• 800 million persons are undernourished
• 34,000 children younger than five die each day
  from hunger and preventable disease
• More than one third of all human deaths linked to
  poverty and violent conflicts
• such deaths are mostly preventable!

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Lost from the economic lens

• The plight of one mother and child begging in
  Wandegeya
• among the fortunate ones?
• Is the mere fact of continued survival
  fortunate?
• What ought a human life to be like?

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Economism an ideology

• The prevailing worldview
• Human activity and decision-making a function
  of economics and the market
• Success and effectiveness of social, political,
  and cultural institutions judged on
• the nature of the flow of capital
• the existence of effective competition
• The maximization of profit
• The ultimate unit of measurement the
  (self-interested) individual

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The statistical trade-off

• Converting the faces and the voices of the poor
  into data
• We lose something important!
• We become less sensitive to urgency and the moral
  challenges of development

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Trading off the moral burden?

• Ignoring or abstracting away the personal
  tragedies of poverty doesnt diminish the moral
  burden it doesnt go away
• The mother and child at Wandegeya will be there
  today, and tomorrow
• The tragedy in the North continues

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Inescapable moral dilemma

• Societies defined by interdependencies
• Complex web of obligations many moral and
  ethical.
• Why is development dialogue, research, policy,
  and practice not commonly thought of in moral
  terms?

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Where is the moral lens?
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Valuing life

• Where we draw the threshold on
• Basic services?
• Basic nutrition?
• Basic human rights and freedoms?
• Basic opportunities?
• Basic human dignity?
• Or something more?
• Who ought to decide?

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The left out questions 1

• How ought we to value a human life?
• How ought we to allocate the available resources
  to those in need?
• What more ought we to do to assist others in
  need, and why?
• What responsibility do those in need have?
• Agents for their own solutions to their poverty
  and conflict?

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The left out questions 2

• When we draw the boundaries of our moral
  community, who ought to be included?
• Who left out?
• Why?
• Why ought we to care about and act to alleviate
  the plight of those less fortunate?
• The economics lens grows dark

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Morality is

• Moralities differ in their
• content rituals, sexual practices, minimizing
  harm to others
• foundational premises commands of God, human
  nature, reason
• Arbitrary morality might allow slavery,
  cannibalism, or racism

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Confusion through the moral lens?

• Moral point of view must be ordered if it is to
  be of value as a tool for improving human
  development
• Ethics is the ordering of moral value systems
• Through ethics, moral concepts can be
  systematically considered, evaluated, and applied

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But whose values?

• What does morality mean?
• For each individual
• For our society
• For our choice of priorities and actions
• Morality is about values, but whose values?
• How do we decide?

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The values landscape

• Societies are shaped by
• Cultural values
• Religious values
• Secular values
• Idiosyncratic personal values
• Societys identity a set of shared values
• Forged as much by the conflict of values as by
  their harmony

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Ethics

• The discipline that society uses to reconcile and
  reach consensus on values
• Ethics brings order and structure to moral values
  
• Deliberating on what is good or right (and
  bad and wrong), virtuous or vicious
• Creating rational and persuasive moral systems
• Considers fundamental principles that
• Define values
• Specify and assign moral obligations

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International Development Practice

• The development industry
• Economism has framed development into a business
• Development pursued using
• The rules of business
• The virtues of efficiency, effectiveness
• Accountability to those who provide the funding
  (taxpayers or contributors)

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Motivating development actors

• Different values and motivations
• Professionalism
• Ideological or political frameworks
• Few stop to reflect on values
• All share some sense of bringing aid and
  assistance to the needy
• Helping them altruism, or moral obligation?

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Guiding development actors

• How ought priorities to be set and by whom?
• How do we navigate morally between
• us vs. them
• rich vs. poor
• North vs. South
• without ethical guidance?

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Development Ethics

• Ethical reflection on the ends and means of
  socioeconomic change in poor countries and
  regions
• In what direction and by what means should a
  society develop?
• David Crocker
• Development reconceived as beneficial change,
  alleviating human misery and environmental
  degradation in poor countries, and fostering an
  environment of sustainable peace

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The ethics toolkit

• A comprehensive set of moral approaches that
  facilitate reflection and dialogue upon the many
  urgent moral concerns, motivations, obligations,
  and competing priorities associated with
  development, governance, and peacebuilding

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Development values and norms

• The subject matter of development ethics
• human dignity
• essential freedoms
• social justice
• peace
• civic virtue
• human flourishing
• the common good
• gender equality
• safety and security
• participation and inclusion

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An academic pastime?

• Choices that individuals, institutions, groups,
  and governments make significantly affect others,
  for good or for ill
• Careful evaluation needed of issues and choices
  of development, governance, and peacebuilding
• Factually
• Conceptually
• Ethically
• Choices we make may be harmful or even tragic for
  some or many persons

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The work of Development Ethics - 1

• Development ethics directly addresses fundamental
  and controversial topics
• The dignity and worth of each human being
• The moral equality of all human beings
• The moral dimensions that motivate and sustain
  development actions
• What ought to constitute peacebuilding
• What values and virtues ought to constitute the
  good of good governance
• Who ought to make development decisions

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The work of Development Ethics - 2

• The meaning of both peace and development
• The extent and nature of our moral obligations to
  and claims on others
• The moral demands of social justice
• The moral bases of legitimacy of government
• The moral justifications for broad-based
  stakeholder participation in analysis,
  deliberations, and decision-making on development
  and governance

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Turning the tables

• Development ethics places the burden of proof on
  any who would deny the validity of the claims of
  
• Those seeking common standards of international
  justice
• Those who argue for an ethic of care
• Those who argue that civic virtue is essential to
  our social, economic, political, and cultural
  institutions

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Facing the truth

• Development ethics exposes the indecency and
  moral impermissibility of poverty, violent
  conflict, and bad governance
• To all human beings
• To the natural environment

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Starting with you!

• Development ethics challenges each of us to
  reflect upon our own values and priorities
• Such a process can
• be profoundly transformative to our selves, our
  communities, our nations, and our world
• strengthen our understanding of our common
  humanity