Review Articles 161 Friedman constructs his arguments with the aid of specific examples from his extensive fieldwork, demonstrating the power of relying on mate- tial conditions of existence. These examples also show that the material conditions of existence reside in the study of production and reproduction, of processes rather than social institutions. Social institutions in the mode of structural functionalism categorize and dehistoricize the subject and ren- der it timeless, but lifeless. In its fascination with the primitive, the postmodern detracts from what is essential to bring about a solution to the crisis. Friedman is quite critical of postmodernism and this is well and good. His sober analysis of cultural identity and global process shows the possibilities of new projects coming to the fore. But these remain within a dominant modernist project (East Asia, the Pacific Rim, etc.,) adapting to crisis in various ways and putting up with cultural pluralization (multiculturalism) in one form or another. This is utter chaos; but under conditions of empire nonetheless. Friedman’s contribution to our understanding of global systems is quite significant. However, it is imperative that we should look into the interplay between social movements, cultural identity and global processes in order to be more specific about “potential new projects” (p. 252) that could chal- lenge a crisis-ridden global capitalist system and not merely adapt to it. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), Reviewer: Andrew Davidson. Social scientists have been exploring the historical and comparative organi- zation of contemporary capitalism for a long time. A central theme of these studies has been what is development and what kinds of social relations should it engender. The debate, as Sen reminds us in Development as Free- dom, is not as clear-cut as it may seem. The consensus that has emerged about the basic processes underlying contemporary patterns of develop- ment and goals has been realized at rather a disengaged distance. As Nair (1999) observes: Max Planck, the originator of the quantum theory of physics, once said that sci- ence makes progress funeral by funeral—the old are never converted by a new doctrine; simply replaced by a new generation. In the social sciences it often takes several generations to dislodge obsolescence. In the meantime, serious mistakes can and are made, hurting the lives of millions of hapless people. In Poor countries, like India and Pakistan, the mistakes can be costly. And the funerals premature and unnecessary—funerals, not of social scientists, who162 Review Articles usually operate from a safe haven, but of the designated beneficiaries of devel- opment policies formulated on the basis of faulty premises and paradigms. What does this portend for the analysis and understanding of develop- ment, especially in today’s increasingly interconnected or globalized world? Although Sen does not explicitly use the concept, globalization, his understanding of development is clearly articulated against the backdrop of global realties, and represents an interesting contribution to contemporary thinking about globalism and global processes. Originally prepared as a series of discussion papers for the World Bank, Development as Freedom directly challenges the shibboleths of development economics. Sen quickly departs from long-standing economic thought, taking issue with develop- ment fetishism and its focus on economic growth to the exclusion of indi- vidual economic well-being and political freedom, or more aptly phrased, unfreedoms that leave people little choice and opportunity to exercise “their reasoned agency” as “citizens and participants in the social, political and economic life of the community.” To this end, Sen presents a wide-ranging account of development that integrates ethics, values and economic theory, drawing inspiration from what the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss termed bricolage by bringing together diverse ideas in a way that exceeds the boundaries imposed by conventional wisdom. While the globalized capitalist economy is not new, contemporary glob- alization is a different phenomenon. In this respect, the debate over devel- opment in a globalizing world, as Sen so lucidly shows, is not simply about the mechanics or rhetoric of ongoing transformations within capitalism. At the forefront are contested images of what constitutes ‘the good life’ and whether development is “expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.” Sen is particularly concerned with the types of social relations, institutions and human values upon which freedom is conceived, both as the means to and as a goal of development. It has been commonly assumed that check- ing social and political rights is a luxury that society can ill afford, until some critical level of economic prosperity is first achieved. According to Sen, this is clearly wrong. To the contrary, Sen argues that both social and political freedom are in fact conducive to economic growth. Located within this perspective, Freedom as Development can provide an expansive reflec- tion on the relationship between development and globalization. Globalization and its supportive norms comprise some of the more puzzling ontological scapes in development theory, especially the enigmatic division of economy, society, culture, and polity, as well as between struc- ture and agency. Discourses on globalization (and development) have beenReview Articles 163 framed from both within a modernist framework of grand narratives and total structures, and from within postmodernism, emphasizing the primacy of location and diversity through an actor/agency approach. In Sen's view, development is both global and local, but his emphasis is on individual freedoms, characterized by people having the “freedom to lead the kind of lives they value, and have reason to value.” Nevertheless, Sen makes clear that market freedoms by themselves are insufficient to the task at hand because individuals are not free if they suffer hunger, illiteracy, homeless- ness, or illness. He does not naively accept what he calls the new supersti- tion of absolute faith in market solutions. Instead, Sen argues strongly for the socially constructive role of the state in addressing issues of education, health, social assistance, and unemployment. In short, he supports the state’s role in creating a protective and caring social environment to enable individual freedom. Sen provides a unique blend of classical economic thought with moral philosophy, reminiscent, in Sen's own characterization, of the integrative approach propounded by the likes of Adam Smith and Marx. The dominate theme running throughout Sen’s book is quite simple; people’s social and economic circumstances or freedom, determines what goes on their plate, clothes their bodies, fills their minds, hears their complaints, and heals their illnesses. But therein lies the rub. To achieve development, according to Sen, requires the removal of poverty, tyranny, lack of economic oppor- tunities, social deprivation, neglect of public facilities, and the mechanisms of repression. According to Sen, successful development captures the com- plex inter-relatedness of economic, social, political, and cultural variables, and requires that all are addressed simultaneously. These freedoms are interconnected and together provide a synergy to generate and sustain development. This multi-pronged strategy for development is a daunting endeavor, but worth the effort. For Sen, development cannot occur through the freedom of markets alone. It must be matched by real individual freedoms, This may be news to those bunkered within the World Bank, but for most social scientists and development practitioners he is ‘preaching to the converted. Perhaps it is not what he says but who he is—a respected economist and Nobel prize winner—that makes his critique powerful in the era of globalization. Themes of empowerment, equity, and freedom have been around for many years; sadly few seemed to listen. Nearly thirty years ago, Geoffrey Currey,' an Australian economist, proved all too prescient when he wrote:164 Review Articles But development is basically about people, and it ought to be defined as such. In this sense, development could be defined ... as the expansion of opportuni- ties for the realisation of human creative potential, the giving to all its members of society the greatest possible latitude for the exercise and expansion of their faculties. It is a liberating process of change. NOTE 1, “The Definition of Development,” in Showcase State: The Illusion of Indonesia's ‘Acceler- ated’ Modernisation, ed. R. Mortimer. Sydney, 1973, Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Reviewer: Sergio Fielder. Appadurai's Modernity at Large provides a cultural perspective on the impact and political possibilities of globalization. As an academic born into a middle class family in Bombay, but now working at a U.S. university, Appadurai positions himself as a postcolonial intellectual. He writes about the subject as someone whose own identity and professional life has been affected by the cultural instabilities and displacements engendered by glob- alization. He points out, like others have done before him, that globaliza- tion is not a new process: modern capitalism has always been a global system. Appadurai, however, is distinctively interested in the Global Now. That is, in the ways in which over the last twenty years there has been a drastic rupture in the pattern of social relations globally. For him, therefore, the Global Now calls for a new political and theoretical imagination to make sense of the almost ubiquitous effects globalization now exercises on people’s lives. Whereas earlier cultural analyses of globalization, such as Friedman's, attempted to locate cultural and identity formation within a world systems approach, Appadurai attempts to conceptualize the global from the per- spective of the local. He explores the impact of globalization on everyday worlds, and above all, on the question of how popular imagination is trans- formed within the context of a globally embedded everyday life. In this respect, he problematizes three major dimensions of community life as it is affected by the Global Now: nationalism, violence, and social justice. He displaces the political and theoretical narratives of modernity, but makes no attempt to offer an integrating framework to analyze or offer a solution forConTRIBUTORS Ibrahim Aoude, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu. Mohammed A. Bamyeh, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University. Allen Chun, Academica Sinica, Taiwan. Chuang Ya-chung, Department of Cultural Heritage Conservation, Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Chu Yiu Wai, Department of Chinese Language & Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University. Andrew Davidson, School of Sociology, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Sergio Fiedler, Writing, Journalism, & Social Inquiry, University of Technology, Sydney. Jonathan Friedman, Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris and Department of Anthropology, University of Lund. Michael Humphrey, School of Sociology, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Epifanio San Juan, Jr., Philippines Cultural Studies Center. Social Analysis, Volume 46, Issue 2, Suramer 2002,