2024 October 31: 1100 EDT, 1500 GMT

Presenter Jay Drydyk, Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Ottawa

Organized by the HDCA Ethics & Development Thematic Group

Link: https://carleton-ca.zoom.us/j/92589500955

This webinar is to be an interactive discussion of the main values of development ethics. This kind of discussion goes back to Denis Goulet’s pivotal observation that the differences between good development and bad development (‘maldevelopment’) are ethical differences based on values. With this in mind, in the early 2000s I set out to review the various debates critical of development strategies and projects, to examine what values informed these critiques. This review was published as Chapter 6 of Displacement by Development: Ethics, Rights, and Responsibilities (which I coauthored with Peter Penz and Pablo Bose, Cambridge 2011) and summarized in several encyclopedia and dictionary articles subsequently. The main finding was that seven values have been prominent: worthwhile development (1) enhances people’s well-being, it does so with (2) equity/justice, it is (3) empowering and (4) environmentally sustainable, advancing (5) human rights and (6) cultural freedom, with (7) integrity against corruption. Later, when Lori Keleher and I began planning and co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (Routledge 2019), these seven values provided the central structure of the book.

But time does not stand still, nor do conflicts and critiques around maldevelopment. So now, some 20+ years after I began thinking about this, I find that the list needs to be revised. In part this is a recognition that there were some development conFlicts that were not presented adequately in the first list; in part, it is recognition that the more particular ethical problems encountered by practitioners in carrying out development projects were not presented adequately, either.

So I have some ideas about how the list might be revised, and I look forward to learning from your feedback on these ideas. To focus the discussion, I attach the entry I wrote on development ethics for Deen Chatterjee’s Encyclopedia of Global Justice, with marginal notes indicating agenda items for our discussion. These agenda items are: (1) recognizing that discussion of development ethics belongs to everyone, not just specialists like us; (2) how values emerge and function in conflicts and debates about bad development; (3) any questions or concerns or suggestions about the first three values – well-being, equity/justice, empowerment; (4) strengthening the section on environmental sustainability; (5) adding self-determination of peoples; (6) restructuring the list, expanding it to nine values, demoting corruption, adding values of accountability, trust, and respect, which have ongoing importance for practitioners; (7) whether/where/how to mention post-development; (8) any questions, comments, concerns about the section on responsibilities; (9) any other comments, questions, concerns, suggestions.

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