The Concept, Basis and Implication of Human-Centered Development

Abstract

Our contemporary era has a critical focus on globalization. However, notwithstanding the necessary interdependence and interdetermination of the forces of globalization, these forces are deeply influenced by an economic theory, a theory known as “economic neoliberalism.” To date, this theory has not been seriously challenged. Fellows of the World Academy of Art and Science have evolved their thinking about the future of globalization. This approach stresses the centrality of human development in any economic theory that seeks to sustain globalization. The human-centered approach is an aspect of the contested theory that development needs to be human-centered and justified by a contemporary theory of human rights and development. The contemporary scene has contested the idea of a human right to development, but this idea has reemerged as a central foundation of the theory of sustainable development. Sustainable development has an important documentary foundation in socio-economic human rights. The ascendance of neoliberalism was built around the idea of the inviolability of property rights. To the extent that economic neoliberalism has tended to dominate globalization, the consequences of this economic theory have led to a global crisis of unemployment and a radical development of extreme global inequality. The article provides an introduction to economic theory founded on the salience of human capital. It examines unemployment and radical inequality in terms of the fundamentals of a human-centered economic theory. Unemployment destroys opportunity freedom. Radical inequality significantly undermines opportunity freedoms and capacity freedoms and consequently radically undermines human capital as a foundation of community prosperity. The article makes the argument of the imperative of a bill of rights based on socio-economic rights. The article concludes with the draft bill of socio economic rights that President Roosevelt believed would be necessary to ensure the universalization of freedom for all.