The Country of First Boys And Other Essays

by Sen, Amartya

• ISBN13: 9780198738183
• ISBN10: 0198738188
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Time and again Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate and polymath, has stimulated our thoughts and world-view through his ideas. In his new collection of cultural essays Sen examines social justice and welfare, by addressing some of the fundamental issues of our time like deprivation, disparity, hunger, illiteracy, alienation, globalization, media, freedom of speech, injustice, inequality, exclusion, and exploitation.

Sen's deeply informed and humane writing connects history, culture, literature, economics, and politics. Several of the essays are concerned particularly with India--its historical traditions and the issues it faces today; many--such as his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2004--engage with global concerns. All are written with a passion and conviction, a gently persuasive style, and a characteristically undogmatic engagement with differing points of view.

Most of these essays were first published in the Indian literary publication The Little Magazine. Others are published here for the first time. The book is introduced by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former Indian diplomat and governor of West Bengal, who is also the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

Author Biography

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at the University of Oxford. He received the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1998.

Table of Contents

c A Note from Amartya Sen
Introduction by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
What Should Keep Us Awake at Night
Poverty, War and Peace
The Country of First Boys
Sharing the World: Interdependence and Global Justice
Sunlight and Other Fears: The Importance of School Education as a Source of Nourishment for
Speaking of Freedom: Why Media Is Important for Economic Development
Hunger: Old Torments and New Blunders
The Smallness Thrust Upon Us
The Play's the Thing
India Through Its Calendars
What Difference Can Tagore Make