Measuring Wellbeing - Benton on Maori Development?

Excerpt taken from "Wellbeing and Disparity in Tamakimakaurau" report 1.

Click here for all the research reports:

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/well-being-and-disparity-in-tamaki-makaurau-1

Click here for pdf of the general report 

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/webdav/site/central/shared/about/maori-at-auckland/documents/Well-being%20and%20disparity%20Vol%201.pdf

6. Maori development: An interpretation

6.1 Developing human capability 

In his influential book, Development as Freedom, the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has argued cogently for the voiceless poor. It is noteworthy that Professor Sen is both an eminent economist and ethicist ñ his Nobel Prize in economics was awarded for his singular achievement in reintroducing an emphasis on ethics as a core part of that discipline. What Sen suggests is to concentrate particularly on the roles and interconnections between certain crucial instrumental freedoms, including economic opportunities, political freedoms, social facilities, transparency guarantees and protective security. Ideally, this would mean investigating societal arrangements, involving many institutions (e.g., the state, the market, the legal system, political parties, the media, public interest groups and public discussion forums) to see how these contribute towards ìenhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change, rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefitsî (Sen 2000: xii-xiii, emphasis added).

Sen calls for public action to support people in overcoming their own deprivations. This requires cooperation between researchers from different disciplines, policy-makers, decisionmakers in all sectors, legislators, and of course, the people themselves. Sen sees people as active agents of change.

6.2 Well-being as freedom
The question of well-being informs a great deal of the discussion in Volumes 3 and 4, and is discussed also in relation to official statistics in Volume 2 and Chapter 2 of Volume 5. In our view, there is a vital dimension to well-being, in fact a precondition without which it cannot be achieved or sustained. This is freedom to be, freedom to develop innate, acquired and new capacities; freedom as a right which people are both free to exercise and capable of exercising.

For public policy to make an important difference in people's lives, those who have the responsibility for formulating and implementing it need to see what they can do to expand and enhance freedom, both at the individual and societal level. Amartya Sen views the expansion of freedom ìboth as the primary end and as the principal means of development. He argues that:

Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms is constitutive of development. However, for a fuller understanding of the connection between development and freedom we have to go beyond that basic recognition (crucial as it is). The intrinsic importance of human freedom, in 
general, as the pre-eminent objective of development is strongly supplemented by the instrumental effectiveness of freedoms of particular kinds to promote freedoms of other kinds. The linkages between different types of freedoms are empirical and causal, rather than constitutive and compositional. (Sen 1999: xii) 

Sen illustrates his point with these examples:

there is strong evidence that economic and political freedoms help to reinforce one another, rather than being hostile to one another (as they are sometimes taken to be). Similarly, social opportunities of education and health care, which may require public action, complement individual opportunities of economic and political participation and also help to foster our own initiatives in overcoming our respective deprivations. If the point of departure of the approach lies in the identification of freedom as the main object of development, the reach of the policy analysis lies in establishing the empirical linkages that make the viewpoint of freedom coherent and cogent as the guiding perspective of the process of development. (op. cit., emphasis added) 

The approach advocated by Sen requires a multidisciplinary research team. What is needed, he says, is ìan integrated analysis of economic, social and political activities, involving a variety of institutions and many interactive agenciesî. Senís work has important implications, recognised for example in The [New Zealand] Treasurys paper on the inclusive economy (2001a), and some of his ideas are reflected also in comments about well-being by some of the people who participated in the ethnological study.

In relation to well-being, Sen makes an important distinction between human capital and human capability:

Consider an example. If education makes a person more efficient in commodity production, then this is clearly an enhancement of human capital. This can add to the value of production in the economy and also to the income of the person who has been educated. But even with the same level of income, a person may benefit from education ñ in reading, communicating, arguing, in being able to choose in a more informed way, in being taken more seriously by others and so on. The benefits of education thus exceed its role as human capital in commodity production. The broader human-capability perspective would note and value these additional roles as well. The two perspectives are, thus, closely related but distinct. (Sen 1999: 293- 294) 

This view is underlined by Te Kui, a participant in the ethnographic study (see Volume 3, s. 11.1). She says that the well-being of our people is at a very low ebb and it is time to take action to change this state of affairs because many have become so used to disparity and deprivation that they are no longer even conscious of it.

In my view it goes right back to the to te Maori, te mohio ki te wero take, ki te mohio ki te whakaaro. We need to be politically more aware going back to the Treaty of Waitangi, while Maori did not know the proper language, yet they had a lot to say and asked a lot of questions looked to Pākehā to give the answers. They were raring to go commercially and politically. Their well-being was at a high then but has diminished consistently ever since. We need to work on pushing it up a few notches. 

...

The research programme has endeavoured to keep looking at the bigger issues, taking the broader human-capability perspective suggested by Sen and Ackoff (which also includes the human-capital perspective) because the researchers believe this is likely to be an effective way to help people to transform their lives so they can live more deeply and at the same time contribute with enthusiasm to national development. The two founding cultures of New Zealand have much to learn from each other, but this learning can only take place if Maori are able to retain their uniqueness as a people within a strong united nation, confident to join
the rest of the free world.

Maori well-being is critically bound up with the question of the control of one's destiny, as an individual and as a member of a collectivity. There are layers of authority and control within and outside Māoridom that must be taken into account if development is indeed going to lead to freedom. Educators and researchers certainly have a role in enabling those who make policy to become reflective practitioners, and those who will be affected by it discern underlying causes and likely effects, to become radical but constructive critics and participants in a transformative process.