Amartya Sen is one of the world’s leading social thinkers, and among the most beloved public intellectuals of our time. Best known for his work on the causes of famine, he has devoted his long and distinguished career to an astonishing range of subjects in economics and philosophy – including social choice theory, welfare economics, development economics, public health, gender studies, moral and political philosophy, and the economics of peace and war. His capabilities approach to the measurement of human well-being has greatly influenced the development goals of the United Nations. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and include Choice of Techniques (1960), Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), On Economic Inequality (1973, 1997), Poverty and Famines (1981), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), Resources, Values and Development (1984), On Ethics and Economics (1987), The Standard of Living (1987), Inequality Reexamined (1992), Development as Freedom (1999), Rationality and Freedom (2002), The Argumentative Indian (2005), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006) and The Idea of Justice (2009)
Amartya Sen has served as President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now its Honorary Advisor. He has received honorary doctorates from major universities in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. Among the awards he has received are the “Bharat Ratna” (the highest honor awarded by the President of India); the Edinburgh Medal; the Brazilian Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Grã-Cruz); the Presidency of the Italian Republic Medal; the Eisenhower Medal; Honorary Companion of Honour (U.K.); The George E. Marshall Award, and the Nobel Prize in Economics. Born in Santiniketan, India, Amartya Sen is an Indian citizen.
Sen’s most recent book, The Idea of Justice (Harvard 2009), merges economics and philosophy with scholarly reflection on real-world human suffering. Sen distances himself from Rawlsian theories of global justice, which he believes are too frequently articulated in “transcendental” abstractions and are largely detached from the empirical world they aspire to heal. He urges scholars and policy-makers to work for reduction of specific injustices rather than to debate a variety of ideal end-states. He proposes an “open” and “comparative” idea of injustice that enables comparative assessment of societal arrangements without the need for transcendental principles.
Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.