- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Inequality Reexamined
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £4.85
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Inequality Reexamined for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £4.85, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
Sen's acute analysis and his remarkable powers of making subtle and relevant distinctions combine with his astonishing range of information to make instruments suitable for immediate political application ... compelling and elegantly argued book. (London Review of Books )
Product Description
This book brings together and develops some of the most important economic, social, and ethical ideas Sen has explored over the last two decades. It examines the claims of equality in social arrangements, stressing that we should be concerned with people's capabilities rather than either their resources or their welfare. Sen also looks at some types of inequality that have been less systematically studied than those of class or wealth.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
The idea of equality is confronted by two different types of diversities: (1) the basic heterogeneity of human beings, and (2) the multiplicity of variables in terms of which equality can be judged. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The idea of equality is confronted by two different types of diversities: (1) the basic heterogeneity of human beings, and (2) the multiplicity of variables in terms of which equality can be judged. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Everybody feels emotionally positive about the slogan of the French revolution: "Égalité, liberté et fraternite" or "Equality, freedom and brotherhood. Application of the principles is another matter. Marx doctrine was all should perform according to their ability and the results distributed according to the people's needs. The communists put up a façade for providing the same income without a link to performance. That doctrine has lost all credibility. The free market doctrine is reward based on performance. Yet no society is comfortable with poverty and crime. Poverty does not necessarily lead to crime but in practice there is a significant correlation. Amartya Sen presents a masterful analysis of the equality problem. The fundamental problem is that people are diverse and not equal, and therefore the word "equality" in the slogan means nothing unless one can answer: equality of what? He believes that inequality in outcomes when it comes to the deprived is most fruitfully seen as a capability failure. He rightly criticises many welfarists of looking at the outcomes in terms of income differentials. Many welfarists see the solution to the problem by transferring wealth from the rich to the poor. Whilst wealth differentials are important solutions to poverty, according to Sen, can only be found by tackling the problems of capability and functioning. The book contains some criticism of the "Theory of Justice" by Rawls. It is however positive criticism. The book presents useful enhancement to the concept of Rawls. The Rawls "doctrine for example focuses on the means to freedom. It is also necessary to consider the capability to use the freedom. It is not an easy book to read, even though it is written in a very lucid style. For those interested in improving the functioning of society it is worth the effort to thoroughly study it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
62 of 77 people found the following review helpful
Fantastic- and I don't agree with a word of it, either!
31 July 2001
Format:Paperback
I read this book in one sitting, and let me say it is a great book.
It is odd so few books are written on such a basic philosophical question as equality, and reading mister Sen is akin to drinking a cold glass of water for a man in a desert of political philosophy.
The prose is somewhat weak, the stye is stilted, and that oddly only seems to add to mister Sens' achievement: I never get the feeling that when I turn the next page I will be bored or watch him say something unnecessarily pedantic. The whole book is carried solely by the interesting subject at hand and mister Sens endlessly excellent commentary on it.
That having been said, I agree with none of it. I do not value equality in any way, and my politics are thoroughly aristocratic and Old Right. So perhaps the possible reader should take that into account: I have nothing but praise for mister Sens books, and this book in particular is an excellent dive. Perhaps praise from a trenchant enemy is worth more than praise from the ideologically like minded.
I will be reading it and making notes and attacks on it for a year to come, at the very least. No matter how you view equality, I advocate mister Sen without reservation. This is excellent. Please buy it.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A couple of big, big ideas you haven't heard before
30 Aug 2008
Format:Paperback
Sen, a Nobel prize winner, has had many great ideas in his career, but this book just sticks to a few of them. The big point he hits early on is that all political theories are theories of egalitarianism: The only difference is how they answer the question, "Equality of what?"
For instance, libertarians believe that everyone has an equal right to negative liberty, utilitarians believe in a right to an equal weighting in the arithmetic social well-being function, and Rawlsians believe in a right to equal "basic goods."
Where does Sen fit in? A little hard to tell from this work--he's good at the "consider this alternative" style of writing--but he emphasizes a blend of utilitarianism and Rawlsianism, one that takes seriously what it would really mean to give every human being a decent shot at a humane life. His standards are actually quite low--non-utopian to be sure--but he looks in every nook and cranny and finds much more than you'd expect.
In particular, Sen emphasizes how accidents of birth such as health create an underlying inequality across people that often can only be reversed at great expense. On a non-health-related issue, I often ask myself how many tax dollars the people of Britain had to pay to ensure that Salman Rushdie was able to enjoy his right to life and his right to free speech. The point, of course, is that it often costs quite a bit to guarantee some citizens the bare minimum of liberty.
So egalitarianism requires unequal government action, as Rushdie himself could tell you. In many different ways, Sen makes this point throughout his text.
If you're looking to read a book by Sen, I wouldn't make this the first one: Read his Development As Freedom first--it's his summary of his life's work, well written and deeply insightful. My economics students love reading Development As Freedom. But if you're looking for a second book by Sen, one that will challenge you and please you, I can recommend this book without hesitation.
For instance, libertarians believe that everyone has an equal right to negative liberty, utilitarians believe in a right to an equal weighting in the arithmetic social well-being function, and Rawlsians believe in a right to equal "basic goods."
Where does Sen fit in? A little hard to tell from this work--he's good at the "consider this alternative" style of writing--but he emphasizes a blend of utilitarianism and Rawlsianism, one that takes seriously what it would really mean to give every human being a decent shot at a humane life. His standards are actually quite low--non-utopian to be sure--but he looks in every nook and cranny and finds much more than you'd expect.
In particular, Sen emphasizes how accidents of birth such as health create an underlying inequality across people that often can only be reversed at great expense. On a non-health-related issue, I often ask myself how many tax dollars the people of Britain had to pay to ensure that Salman Rushdie was able to enjoy his right to life and his right to free speech. The point, of course, is that it often costs quite a bit to guarantee some citizens the bare minimum of liberty.
So egalitarianism requires unequal government action, as Rushdie himself could tell you. In many different ways, Sen makes this point throughout his text.
If you're looking to read a book by Sen, I wouldn't make this the first one: Read his Development As Freedom first--it's his summary of his life's work, well written and deeply insightful. My economics students love reading Development As Freedom. But if you're looking for a second book by Sen, one that will challenge you and please you, I can recommend this book without hesitation.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
The Philosphy of Economics
6 Jun 2003
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The most basic idea, that one person's equality is another's inequality, is explored in detail. Sen illuminates many of the flaws in standard economic thinking, and how the philosophical underpinnings of economics guide and distort economic reasoning.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Political Science & Ideology > Political Science
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Philosophy
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Discrimination & Racism
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Social Issues > Equal Opportunities
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
