Sustainable Human Development

A New Territorial and People-Centred Perspective

M. Biggeri, A. Ferrannini

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137380296
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

Integrating Amartya Sen's approach with the literature on place-based territorial development processes, this book recognises the interplay between the evolution of local development systems and the expansion of individual and collective capabilities.

1

Sustainable Human Development (SHD) at the Local Level

1.1 Introduction

In recent years, conceptualizations such as “local development systems”, “valorisation of endogenous potential”, “embedded local knowledge”, “local public goods” and “place-based policy approaches” have been renewed in the academic literature. This has largely been due to contributions in economic geography – for example, the evolutionary approach (Arthur, 1994; Boschma and Martin, 2007; Boschma and Frenken, 2011), the focus on the urban and regional economy (Amin and Thrift, 1992; Storper, 1997) and the relational perspective (Bathelt and Glückler, 2003) – as well as the literatures concerning industrial districts (Scott, 1988; Becattini et al., 1990), Innovative Milieux (Camagni, 1991) and Regional Innovation Systems (Cooke, 2001). These theoretical and empirical arguments attribute increasing importance to the meso-economic level, where close relationships between “economy-institutions-society” take place (Hirschman, 1958; Cappellin and Garofoli, 1988; Becattini, 1989; Amin, 1999), and the institutional, geographical, historical and cultural characteristics of a territory shape development processes.

A fundamental factor has played a significant role in boosting the relevance of the local development approach: the change in economic, social and cultural relations as part of the globalization process. The aforementioned theoretical and empirical approaches stand in stark contrast to visions of the “end of geography” (O’Brien, 1992), the “flat world” (a level playing field where all individuals are empowered and better off – Friedman, 2005) and falling global inequality (Wilson and Dragusanu, 2008). In contrast, others point to strong evidence of increasing polarization due to convergence clubs at both high and low levels of income (McCann, 2008; Rodríguez-Pose and Crescenzi, 2008). In other words, the search for solid competitiveness in the global market ascribe ‘a greater salience to place, since firms, governments, and the public come to identify the specificity of localities (their workforce, entrepreneurs, administrations, and amenities) as an element for deriving competitive advantage’ (Amin and Thrift, 1994, pp. 6–7).

Considering the relevance of the human development (HD) paradigm within the global debate and agenda on development and well-being, it seems surprising that its synergies with the local development literature have rarely been framed together in theoretical models. For instance, consider the complexity of territorial multi-stakeholder and multilevel development processes,¹ and their socio-economic impacts in terms of people’s capabilities, or the role of individual and collective agency in the evolution of the local societies that agents are embedded in.

The objective of this chapter, therefore, is to explore how to integrate local development approaches and the HD paradigm, focusing on those territorial “enabling” or “disabling” factors that affect local systems’ evolutionary trajectories, and their effect on firms’ enhancement and people’s well-being.

The reader should note that a distinction is drawn between people’s capabilities, on the one hand, and the capabilities of firms’ or organizations’, on the other. Following Sen, people’s capabilities reflect the achievable functionings to live the kind of life they have reason to value (Sen, 1999). Here, the capabilities of firms refer to their opportunities to reach the objectives they pursue, in order to avoid conceptual overlaps with the business literature on firms’ technological and dynamic capabilities (see for instance von Tunzelmann, 2009).

The chapter is divided into six sections, including this introduction. In the second section, the chapter presents a brief review of the Capability Approach (CA) and the local development perspective, highlighting their centrality in enriching the current international debate on development and well-being, as well as the unexplored synergies that overlap between the respective core conceptualizations.

These arguments pave the way to advance a systematic integration of the two perspectives in the third section, based on the core idea that development at the territorial level can be seen as a process of enabling the local system to function in order to facilitate the expansion of the real freedoms that people enjoy in an integrated and sustainable manner.

The fourth section discusses the structural elements of analysis with reference to the notion of “Sustainable Human Development (SHD) at the local level”, and the fifth section clarifies four central, but controversial, arguments supporting the perspective advanced, in order to underline the starting point for future refinement and debate.

The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of disentangling the combination of different elements – stakeholders, resources, barriers, institutions, political spaces and willingness – that shape the evolution of territorial development patterns. It also sets the scene for the discussion of an innovative interpretative framework in the Chapter 2. Appendix 1.1, at the end of this chapter, illustrates a potential approach to frame and measure trajectories of SHD at the local level.

1.2 Unexplored synergies between the Capability Approach and the local development perspective

Following on from Alfred Marshall’s (1890) conceptualization of “industrial atmosphere” and “external and agglomeration economies”, the academic debate has devoted increasing attention to understanding local development processes and institutional mechanisms. In particular, there has been wide recognition of the increasing overlap between the economic dynamics and local social life, as well as the complex environment where productive and social relationships take place within distinctive territorial spaces (Bagnasco et al., 2001; Trigilia, 2001; Becattini et al., 2009).

The starting point for this stream of work is the idea – as previously stressed for individuals and their eco-system (see Introduction) – that it is not possible to clearly separate firms from multiple settings. They are invariably imbedded in numerous geographical, relational, cognitive, organizational, institutional, social and cultural spaces. It follows that the capacities, profits and growth of firms do not simply depend on the firm itself, but on the way they interact with their diverse settings, from the local to the global level (Becattini, 1990).

In this sense, mechanisms of cooperation and trust between economic actors, enlarged participation, the rooting of enterprises in local social reality, the dissemination and accumulation of know-how and the continuous upgrading of workers’ skills represent leading factor in the evolution of territorial development, which are often – although not always appropriately – fostered through “cluster-based” strategies² (Volpi, 2002; Nadvi and Barrientos, 2004; Asheim et al., 2006). For instance, the potential leverage effect of diffused and hidden endogenous resources and potentialities, such as entrepreneurial capacities laid in the informal sector of many developing countries (ILO, 2004; Guha-Khasnobis et al., 2006; Mehrotra and Biggeri, 2007; Pavanello et al., 2008; Basile, 2013), represents an expanding area for research and policy. If mobilized for pro-development purposes, these “hidden” resources are able to boost the local economy and address the most binding bottlenecks and constraints (Neven and Droge, 2000), especially if appropriate local public goods are provided (Sforzi, 2003; Bellandi, 2009).

Furthermore, it is important to recall the renewed attention devoted to evidence-based theoretical approaches to territorial development. For example, impact evaluation methodologies (Stern et al., 2012) and applied research to analyse local systems through diagnostic lens (Crescenzi and Rodríguez-Pose, 2011) have stressed the importance of integrating different perspectives (e.g. top-down and bottom-up) and methodologies (e.g. quantitative and qualitative) for these units of analysis.

In the last 30 years, scholars from different intellectual disciplines (Pike et al., 2011; Lazzeretti et al., 2014) have revitalized the local development perspective within the field of socio-economic research. The defining features of the local development perspective can be summarized as follows:

• Specificity – The “place-based” emphasis relies on the concept of “territory” as a distinctive eco-system (Rullani, 2014), with its complex array of history, culture, geography, resources, knowledge and institutions.

• Inter-sectoral – The local context is analysed as an integrated system and seen as a unique assembly where economic, social and political processes interrelate with each other and involve the whole community.³

• Cross-disciplinarity⁴ – In contrast to mainstream economics (which is firmly rooted in a single discipline), this approach requires the simultaneous contribution of productive and social, cultural and technological, geographical and environmental, and political and anthropological perspectives, avoiding a rigid separation of disciplines, which can be misleading in terms of formulating policy.

• Dynamism – Change, adaptation, resilience and innovation⁵ represent the enabling processes and conditions for local systems to evolve (Schumpeter, 1934 and 1975; Nelson and Winter, 1982; Becattini, 1989; Dei Ottati, 1996).

These arguments involve neither a unique focus on geographical proximity nor active local government as sufficient conditions for systemic competitiveness at the local level. On the one hand, the strengthened relevance of proximity for interactive learning and innovation refers not only to the geographical dimension but also to cognitive, organizational, social and institutional interaction (Boschma, 2005), the merits or detriments of which have to be assessed in accordance with local conditions. On the other hand, local public and private stakeholders from different sectors have resumed a crucial role in planning and in ensuring development strategies that favour endogenous potentialities (Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2011). As Sforzi (2005) has pointed out, local development is mostly conceived of as a “strategy for territorial policy”, which seeks to alleviate the most binding structural constraints – which are experienced locally – to economic activity and community well-being (Barca et al., 2012). In this respect, the social empowerment of territorial communities is strengthened, which sharply contrasts with the tendency to “globalise” cultural norms, social behaviours and development models.

However, within the literature on local economic development and territorial systems, a crucial limitation seems to characterize many contributions to this field. This limitation involves an unbalanced analytical focus on competitiveness factors and growth processes, along with a corresponding vacuum regarding any kind of systemic analysis that integrates economic and social aspects of development. On one hand, although there is wide evidence that growth alone is not a sufficient condition to sustain long-standing development goals⁶ and the expansion of people’s well-being (especially for the most vulnerable social groups), attention is mostly devoted to economic factors that represent only part of the picture. On the other hand, the social dimensions and factors (including social capital, education and health, and participation), as well as institutional and governance mechanisms, are often reduced entirely to their instrumental role in promoting growth processes, rather than representing fundamental dimensions of development themselves with intrinsic value for individuals and communities as a whole.⁷

In this regard, the people-centred human development paradigm appears to provide fundamental insights, derived from the core conceptualization of the capability approach (see also chapter 2). According to Sen (2009, p. 17), ‘the capability approach proposes a change – a serious departure – from concentrating on the means of living to the actual opportunities of living in itself’, that is, human flourishing in terms of functionings and capabilities (see also section 2.2).⁸ Human development is therefore conceived as a process of expanding the capabilities – abilities and opportunities – of people to lead the kind of life they have reason to value⁹ (Sen, 1999 and 2009; Nussbaum, 2000). This notion of development is based on the ‘Aristotelian/Marxian conception of the human being as a social and political being, who finds fulfilment in relations with others’ (Nussbaum, 2006a: 85).

Nonetheless, within the theoretical and empirical literature on HD, the meso level and its corresponding features have still not received sufficient attention (Deneulin, 2008; Mehrotra, 2008; Stewart, 2013)¹⁰ : opportunities and achieved functionings at the local level have been almost neglected compared to the capabilities of individuals. In this regard, it is not sufficient to link the expansion of individual freedoms and agency to collectives and groups through forms of collective action and membership (Anand, 2007), and to social and environmental conversion factors. Individuals, families and communities are inexorably embedded in institutional, cultural, social, geographical and economic terms within their territorial society, which can lead to the adaptation of values and preferences (Clark, 2012a). Indeed, ‘a basic observation of sociology and psychology is that the individual and the community “penetrate” one another and require one another, and that individuals are not able to function without deep links to others’ (Etzioni, 1993, p. 65). This entails the evolution of territories and the expansion of agents’ freedoms with mutual feedbacks. Following Polanyi (1974), this view stresses the embeddedness of the economy in social relations, overturning the idea of social relations being embedded in the economic system.

According to Mehrotra (2008, p. 389), ‘Sen’s formulation of the capability approach focuses exclusively on the individual, ignoring the collective cap...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Prologue
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Sustainable Human Development (SHD) at the Local Level
• 2. The Sustainable Territorial Evolution for Human Development (STEHD) Framework
• 3. The Role of Multilevel Governance for SHD at the Local Level
• 4. International Development Cooperation at the Local Level: The UNDP ART Global Initiative
• 5. Enabling Factors for Local Economic Development: Local and Regional Development Agencies
• 6. A “Policy-Enabling Space” for SHD at the Local Level
• 7. Final Remarks and Future Perspectives for SHD at the Local Level
• Annex A: List of UNDP Human Development Reports on Local Development Issues
• Notes
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index