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‘Prima mangiare, poi filosofare’ *
Author(s) -
Carmen Raff
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/1099-1328(200010)12:7<1019::aid-jid697>3.0.co;2-e
Subject(s) - poverty , agency (philosophy) , sociology , formalism (music) , intervention (counseling) , moral imperative , action (physics) , law and economics , public relations , economics , political science , economic growth , law , social science , psychology , psychiatry , art , musical , physics , quantum mechanics , visual arts
‘ Prima mangiare ’ (first, you need to be alive) takes a ‘from the inside out’ look at the abstracted formalism of ‘capabilities’ theorizing as well as at the prevailing development and welfare‐planning, provision, delivery and ‘part’‐icipation approaches to poverty alleviation. While outside intervention is indeed a moral imperative on the ‘do‐your‐share’ principle, there are vast geographical and demographic swathes where State or NGO‐led public action do not reach. Even though autonomous human agency is subsumed in the ‘public action’ concept, ‘capabilities’ theorizing, while enunciating timely and valid principles about the ‘ what ’ (e.g. in UNDP's work), has little of immediately practical import to offer when it comes to the ‘ how ?’: the excluded cannot ‘eat’ theory . Unlike ‘capabilities and functionings’, the latino (Moraisean) concept and practice of ‘capacitation’ offers the poor, starting with the excluded, both a theory and a practice by which they autonomously learn to become entrepreneurially and organizationally ‘literate’ in an increasingly competitive and globalizing world. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.