Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical and policy discourses. Each tries to humanize a pre-existing and unavoidable major discourse of everyday life, policy and politics; each has emerged...

Thinking about ethics of development and human development must both treat development in a global perspective and yet reflect on the content of human. This paper explores some faces of globalization by using a gender perspective, in order to consider reproduction (psychological and emotional as...

The language of ‘human security’ arose in the 1990s, including from UN work on ‘human development’. What contributions can it make, if any, to the understanding and especially the valuation of and response to the impacts of climate change? How does it compare and relate...

Two authors who have been leaders of the ‘social quality approach’ that emerged in European social policy circles in the 1990s, and two authors who have worked with the ‘human development’ and ‘human security’ approaches that emerged in international development policy...

Much of Amartya Sens work has been directly policy-related, but his methodology of policy analysis has not been explained in detail. Action-related social science involves value-imbued procedures that guide the numerous unavoidable choices. This theme was explored earlier by authors close to...

Leadership is a matter that social scientists often are ambivalent about, but is important in knife-edge’ situations and when people choose direction within wide-open possibilities. ‘Good leaders’ need contexts that stimulate and discipline them, good ‘followers’/...

Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was a pioneer of human development theory and the main founder of work on “development ethics†as a self-conscious field that, by his definition, treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning, and practice. The paper looks at...