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Sen and Sustainability

Poverty, Consumer Pressure, and the Future of the Planet

Amartya Sen’s theory of poverty as the deprivation of capabilities is explored: an is found to take us beyond the sterile debate over the relative and absolute definitions. Sen identifies that it is the individual’s level of functioning that matters, rather than quantity of money s/he owns. However he fails to extend this analysis to conclude that the relative definition is itself based in the growth dynamic which is threatening the environment; and that less consumption could actually lead to a better quality of life. From the standpoint of sustainability both these points are important. So long as the leading consumers expand the range of their purchases, the list of items considered necessary to avoid being defined as in poverty according to a deprivation-based relative definition is bound also to expand. The only true limit placed on this expansion is the absolute limit of planetary capacity, although this is ignored by poverty researchers, Sen included.

While Sen adopts an enlightened view of women’s poverty, especially in terms of the intra-household distribution of wealth, he fails to identify how definitions of acceptable standards of living, particularly those generated by the advertising industry, impact negatively on women, especially those with children. Hence the inadequacy of the relative definition, and its in-built bias towards ever-increasing consumption, itself has a gender component. In addition the growing consumption does not respect planetary limits and therefore also represents a threat to the environment. Here there is an additional gender perspective: given the existing imbalance in the undertaking of unpaid domestic work, it is still true that the adoption of a green lifestyle requires more effort by women than by men. Since women still undertake the majority of cooking and home-making chores, greening of the home, whether through recycling or making more food at home, requires them to work harder.

In conclusion, the relative definition of poverty that still persists within Sen’s capability view represents another oppression for women and a threat to the planet.

Sen makes several contributions to the discussion of poverty which provide focus as well as humanity. The most important is what he calls the ‘capability approach’ to poverty, which in itself involves a commitment to both extending the debate towards quality of life concerns, rather than cash-income levels, and respect for the individual person which the more bureaucratic approaches to poverty have lacked. In this paper I consider the positive constribution of this approach to poverty and how it interacts with concerns about growth and sustainability. I also relate this consideration to two further aspects of Sen’s recent writing about poverty and development: his consideration of the possible role of women in poverty alleviation; and his conception of ‘development as freedom’.

Sen’s approach to poverty has been refined over several decades; the discussion in this paper is based mainly on his most recent collection on the subject, Development as Freedom. Here he provides a powerful case for his capability approach to poverty, suggesting that the inability to function in society is the best marker of poverty, and that this can be related to different levels of actual income or commodities in different societies at different times. Many of the ‘functionings’ he is concerned about are basic: such as the freedom to an adequate diet or shelter. This identifies the origin of Sen’s theory as his experience of absolute poverty and famines, particularly in South Asia (see Poverty and Famines). However, the theory can be convincingly extended to poverty in developed economies, and thus provides a valuable unified theory of poverty, allowing us to discuss what it is that concerns us morally about such extreme deprivation in a general sense.

One example will illustrate the value of this. Sen is particularly concerned with the basic deprivation of life faced by many, and particularly women, in underdeveloped countries. This can be easily measured in terms of life expectancies and sex ratios, which show that those in many countries live 20 or 30 years less long than we in the West, and that girls are less likely to survive childhood than are boys and that this health disadvantage persists throughout life, generating sex ratios as low as 0.95 in Egypt, 0.93 in India, and 0.90 in Pakistan, compared with that of 1.05 in the UK, France and the USA (Sen, 2001: 104-5).

We might consider such disparities a concern only of historians in our own societies, and yet studies repeatedly indicate that income disparities (although now between classes rather than genders) generate ill health in advanced societies such as the USA and UK:

Related research (Wallace and Wallace, 1997) indicates that the persistence of ghetto communities threatens the health and well-being of the affluent as well as the underprivileged via the ‘diffusion of disease and disorder’.

Hence, Sen’s unified theory of poverty in terms of both functioning and capability allows us to consider this issue as a global moral problem. In terms of basic human rights, such as the right to life, the situation facing the poor is no different in our societies from in the societies where we generally think of poverty as existing.

Sen’s capability approach to poverty is a valuable intellectual tool, and appears to be a dialectical move forward from the thesis of absolute poverty and its corresponding antithesis that only a relative definition truly expresses what concerns us about poverty. At clear risk of offending such an elegant and lengthy exposition, I would suggest that the heart of the view of poverty presented in Sen’s recent writings is the idea that it isn’t what you’ve got that is important but what you can do with it. As Sen explains it: ‘In this perspective, poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes, which is the standard criterion of identification with poverty’ (2001: 87).

How does this capability approach relate to the old, and admittedly rather sterile, debate about the relative versus the absolute definition of poverty? As I suggested above, the intention appears to be to leave this discussion behind. Sen certainly considers that he has achieved:

Some sorting out of the absolute-relative disputation in the conceptualisation of poverty. At the risk of oversimplification, I would like to say that poverty is an absolute notion in the space of capabilities but very often it will take a relative form in the space of commodities or characteristics (Sen, 1983: 161).

This is a helpful clarification, but there are still two inherent problems with this understanding: one practical and one theoretical.

The first problem is a practical one concerning measurement. We may be able to agree theoretically that a capability definition of poverty is the ideal, that those who have greater difficulties in achieving adequate functioning in society, for example the disabled or the elderly, need a higher level of money income to reach an equivalent level of quality of life as those who are able-bodied. The problem is, how much more cash will they need? Is it possible to put a financial premium on any level of social dysfunction? How much more money would a person with dementia require as compared, say, with a person suffering from dyslexia? While these measurements remain so complex we are likely to be left with a crude absolute definition (say 40 per cent above the income support level) or a single-number index compiled from a list of ‘essential items’, however philosophically superior a capability definition might be.

The second problem is that the capability definition seems to include within it an assumption of the relative definition of poverty without making this explicit, and, more importantly, without addressing the possible disadvantages of such a definition.

Sen states explicitly his commitment to maintaining a relativist component of poverty together with what he terms the ‘absolutist core’. While the capability basis of poverty remains fixed through time or ‘absolute’, the commodities we need to fulfil this level of function vary by cultural context:

As we consider richer and richer communities, the commodity requirements of the same capability . . . increase . . . In the commodity space, therefore, escape from poverty in the form of avoiding shame requires a varying collection of commodities—and it is this collection and the resources needed for it that happen to be relative vis-à-vis the situations of others. But on the space of the capabilities themselves—the direct constituent of the standard of living—escape from poverty has an absolute requirement, to wit, avoidance of this type of shame. Not so much having equal shame as others, but just not being ashamed, absolutely. (Sen, 1983: 161).

Or in his most recent writings:

Being relatively poor in a rich country can be a great capability handicap, even when one’s absolute income is high in terms of world standards. In a generally opulent country, more income is needed to buy enough commodities to achieve the same social functioning (2001: 89).

However, I have a more pressing practical concern with the relative definition which I wish to elaborate in this paper, namely: its relationship with economic growth and the pressure on the planet that such growth creates. Sen himself identifies the assumption of economic growth inherent in the relative definition. He notes that: ‘The tendency of many these measures to look plausible in situations of growth, ignoring the possibility of contraction, betrays the timing of the birth of these measures in the balmy sixties, when the only possible direction seemed forward’ (1983: 157). Aside from the macroeconomic ups and downs that the world economy has experienced since those balmy days, a separate concern with growth has developed, also with its roots in the 1960s, but this time in the environmental movement.

The need to end economic growth and move towards a steady-state economy was identified early in the intellectual history of environmentalism. Herman Daly wrote of the need for a ‘steady-state economy’, in which we achieve a balance between ourselves and the planet (1977). More recently Richard Douthwaite has provided a powerful critique of the growth dynamic, his sanctum sanctorum of economic orthodoxy, arguing not only that it will inevitably lead to the destruction of the planet, but also that it does not enhance human well-being (1992).

The basis of the Green opposition to growth is the recognition of planet Earth as a closed system: growth must face these limits, whether they become apparent via resource depletion or the overloading of the natural environment with waste products. Sustainability is the term coined to define a new approach to human activity that acknowledges planetary limits. And in spite of the discourse manipulators’ subtle injection of the phrase ‘sustainable development’ into the debate, genuine sustainability requires an end to growth.

A development from this recognition of the planet as a closed system is the insight that there can be no such thing as ‘wealth creation’ only ‘wealth transfer’. We might view the resources of the planet Earth as being like a bowl of peaches. If there are five peaches and I eat four, that only leaves one for you. Or if we eat five between us and then our friend Bettina comes along, she will have to do without. Traditional economics, on the other hand, sees the economic system as being like the peach in the Roald Dahl story James and the Giant Peach: it will simply expand for every, while we sit on its ever-fattening skin, enjoying the sunshine, and munching to our hearts’ content.

From the perspective of Green economics, since there are limits to what the planet can provide, the question we face is about how we share the wealth. Thus one person’s poverty is the inevitable consequence of another person’s wealth. Whether we consider those in other countries or future generations, there is an absolute sense in which you cannot enjoy wealth except at the expense of another person. This has become generally accepted in Green thinking about negative externalities of industrial processes¾ whether it be the pollution of a transnational plant in Manila producing goods for Western markets or the dumping of radioactive waste in the Irish Sea. The consumption of one group of people imposes negative consumption, in the form of pollution, on another group. But this point can be extended into the area of direct monetary benefit or disadvantage. The high salaries some of us are paid are directly linked to the poverty wages earned by others whether in Mexico or Manila.

From a Green perspective, the danger of a relative definition of poverty is that it follows the growth dynamic, which Greens see as the major threat to the environment. If, as the relative definition suggests, we base our understanding of poverty on indicators chosen as being necessary by a sample of ‘ordinary people’, then it will be driven by the consumerist, advertising-led society we live in. Most people consider a fridge a necessity, but what about a freezer, a tumble-dryer, or a CD-player?

This assumption that the standard of living typical of one’s living environment is a given, which one can rightfully claim for oneself is unquestioned in Sen’s theory:

In a rich society, as the rich accumulate more gadgets, the poor will be forced to follow along, always a little behind, always rather ‘deprived’, but always in the direction of an inexorable increase in consumption.

But what about when we think of international comparison? It is naïve to ignore the fact that General Motors are targeting the Chinese market with advertising that will soon suggest that another one billion are deprived unless they have a car. But can the planet possibly survive such a massive increase in CO₂ production? We are caught between the need to avert global warming and a commitment to permitting equal development of all nations. A definition of poverty that accepts the cultural norms about what citizens have a right to is an advertiser’s dream but the planet’s nightmare. In this context it is no accident that a major attack on the Green movement recently has suggested that it is elitist, opposing the right of citizens of developing nations to the ‘standard of living’ that we in the West enjoy.

In terms of our personal consumption we find that an unexpected consequence of the relative definition of poverty and the growth dynamic that underlies it is our deprivation of another freedom: the freedom to be poor. In response to the realisation that the level of consumption of most citizens in the developed world is a threat to the survival of our species, some environmentalists have adopted a frugal lifestyle. One can think of cars, televisions, refrigerators, freezers, irons, central heating, in fact most of the items on a standard deprivation list, as being typical of the consumer durables which many in the Green movement choose to live without. Yet, rather by analogy with Sen’s Western person who chooses to fast to make a political point, could such a person be considered poor?

The situation is elucidated by an anecdote related by the German barefoot economist Wolfgang Sachs in an article called ‘Poor not Different’. He tells the story of his visit to Mexico City shortly after the 1985 Earthquake. He was impressed by the progress that had been made to restore the City:

The insult was created by Sachs’s assumption that he could impose an objective judgement of poverty, that he could decide from the outside the acceptable standard of living, that he could deprive the Tepitans of their right to be poor. As Sachs concludes, ‘The stereotyped talk of "poverty" fails to distinguish, for example, between frugality, destitution and scarcity . . . Frugality is the mark of cultures free from the frenzy of accumulation.’ His conclusion about the Mexican village where he was working is that ‘"Poverty" here is a way of life maintained by a culture which recognizes and cultivates a state of sufficiency; sufficiency only turns into demeaning poverty when pressurized by an accumulating society.’ (Sachs, 1992: 161)

A similar assumption pervades thinking about poverty in the contemporary UK, leading to such errors as defining not having roast meal as an indicator of poverty, ignoring the existence of one million vegetarians. Such gaffes can be smoothed over, but others are bound to arise, because the whole notion of relativity requires one to make judgements from within one’s own culture. Townsend describes the work of Professor Jarman, who in 1983 constructed ‘underprivileged area scores’ by using variables considered to be indicative of underprivilege. These included such factors as being a member of an ethnic minority, being unemployed, living in a one-parent family, and living in overcrowded accommodation. While I would not challenge the fact that many people experiencing these conditions of life are poor, and while Townsend himself offers a caveat about the dangers of treating these indicators as causes of deprivation, it does not seem right to use them as indicators of poverty. No such study can distinguish powerful, liberated women who choose to have children alone rather than entangle themselves in relationships with men from the victims of the welfare state that many single mothers are. And what is the point of classing as overcrowded an Asian family where tradition dictates that all the younger children should sleep in the same room as the mother? Anthropologists tell us of African tribes where physical contact is so important that, while sleeping, at any one time each member of the tribe is in contact with several other members. One can imagine Jarman or his colleagues classifying this as an appalling example of overcrowding. Of course in this cross-cultural context the absurdity is obvious, but it is the error of the poverty researchers, using their relative definition, to assume that there is a typical culture in our own society, and that by asking enough people what are the necessaries of life they will establish what it is.

Sen addresses this point directly when he states that one of the sources of variation between our real incomes and the advantages we derive from them (the theoretical basis for a capability) is ‘personal heterogeneity’ (2001: 70-71). However, he deals with this in a rather limited way, explaining it in terms of personal physical disadvantages, such that an ill or disabled person will require a higher income. Personal cultural preferences are not discussed. In the same section he identifies ‘differences in relational perspectives’ as another source of such variation, but this he uses as a means of justifying different standards of capability as requiring different levels of ‘functionings’ in different cultural contexts. Without the ‘higher standards of clothing and other visible consumption’ a person might not be able to function effectively in a community.

This assumes that a distinction can be drawn between an acceptable standard and what is just a consumption wish-list. Much of the suffering for those in poverty in the UK today is caused by unsatisfied wants rather than basic needs. Of course it is not for academic observers to judge which wants are valid and which not, but it would be naïve to ignore the impact on such preferences of the advertising industry. There have been cases of mothers going to gaol because they have stolen expensive trainers to keep their children happy (and I discuss the particular impact of this consumptive pressure on women in Section 3); can these women really use poverty as an excuse? Sen himself presents a quotation from Adam Smith pointing to an early awareness of the relative aspect of poverty, which he offers in terms of ‘necessaries’:

In other words, people are poor if they do not have enough money to buy shoes, not because they need the shoes to keep their feet warm, but because they would be embarrassed to be seen with bare feet. But can we extend this to the example of the child who is embarrassed to wear supermarket brand trainers to school; and if so, where do we draw the line? Certainly, we cannot assume that wants and needs are the same, or that either is innate. Wants do not arise from human nature, or even from a social agreement, for the most part they are created by an advertising industry that has no other purpose. Following a simplistic relative definition of poverty without taking this into account will inevitably lead to ever-increasing consumption, and the economic growth that facilitates this.

The importance of consumption in establishing who is in poverty has advanced in recent years thanks to the redefinition of the poor as ‘socially excluded’: as if there were a club we were all members of that they were not allowed to join. Of course, within the club we all agree about what is an ‘acceptable’ way to live, what items we should all have, how often we should wash, how our children should be dressed and should behave. And the most serious cause of being excluded from the group is being unemployed. Those who are accidentally out of work may be considered with patronising sympathy; in the UK they may claw their way back into the club by claiming various means-tested benefits. But what about those who reject the work ethic, or the kinds of employment that are possible within a complex, developed, capitalist consumer society? What about those who choose to exclude themselves? The refusal to grant normal social rights to those who are poor, and especially those who are unemployed, is not an accident: as Beder has recently demonstrated (2001; and as I wrote myself some time ago: Scott, 1996), the social inferiority of those outside the work system is an important support system for the work ethic.

Sen is not immune from such culturally specific assumptions. He devotes a section in Development as Freedom to the issue of income inequality vs. unemployment as a measure of true poverty, only to conclude that the unemployed suffer capability deprivation when without work. In Sen’s writings, unemployment is seen as a form of deprivation: ‘A person who is denied the opportunity of employment but given a handout from the state as an "unemployment benefit" may look a lot less deprived in the space of incomes than in terms of the valuable—and valued—opportunity of having a fulfilling occupation’ (2001: 94).

There is much evidence to support the contention that the psychological results of unemployment are almost as crippling as the financial ones (as Sen discusses on pp. 94-6; see also Smith, 1997), but this is a consequence of the nature of our economic system rather than an intrinsic aspect of human nature. There is no reason why work should provide the only basis of our human identity, such that we claim a ‘right to work’ (see my further discussion in Cato, 1998). When stripped of its capitalist assumptions, this clarion call seems likely to fall on deaf ears. Can you imagine a Trobriand islander or a New Age Traveller marching for the right to work? If work is necessary for our identity within a capitalist economy then that is a problem with capitalism, not with those who choose to find their identity elsewhere. At another point Sen claims that ‘for many evaluative purposes, the appropriate "space" is neither that of utilities (as claimed by welfarists), nor that of primary goods (as demanded by Rawls), but that of the substantive freedoms—the capabilities—to choose a life one has reason to value’ (2001: 74). But is one being granted that capability when one has no access to resources other than via an unpalatable and exploitative form of employment, and when one’s attempts to claim a basic subsistence allowance in the form of social security are met by active labour-market policies?

Instead of a system that assumes work as the norm, many of the ‘self-excluded’ have suggested an alternative view of the provision for basic needs. Rather than a work-entitlement system they propose a citizen’s income: the individual’s share of the national wealth rather than her/his return for work. Professor van Parijs of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium has argued that:

Some at the other end of the political spectrum also support such a policy, precisely because of its commitment to individual freedom. Parker (1989: 121-37) has justified the policy on the basis of the right to individual freedom. Sam Brittain, former Assistant Editor of the Financial Times has argued the moral position as follows:

The ‘feminisation of poverty’ thesis has gained immense empirical support over recent years, such that we might suggest that, in developed societies at least, poverty might be considered a women’s issue (see Glendinning and Millar, 1992). A recent review of the UK situation (Lindsay, 2000) finds that of those adults now living in poverty in the UK, some two-thirds are women; in addition 32 per cent of UK children live in poverty, many of them in single-mother households. Research by Pahl (1989) makes it clear that average income levels also conceal women’s poverty within households: women are unlikely to receive a fair share in the intrahousehold distribution, and many are forced to eke out meagre ‘housekeeping’ budgets while husbands retain sizeable personal spending allowances.

Sen has acted as an advocate for women in identifying their unequal standard of living. In the context of underdevelopment he has written:

The systematically inferior position of women inside the household in many societies points to the necessity of treating gender as a force of its own in development analysis. The economic hardship of woman-headed households is a problem both of female deprivation and of family poverty. Furthermore, females and males in the same family may well have quite divergent predicaments and that can make the position of women in the poorer families particularly precarious (Sen, 1990: 124).

His analysis is sophisticated and eschews the shallow averaging of well-being across households. Sen acknowledges not only that women are likely to expect less out of life as a result of cultural conditioning, but also describes how in many cultures they may find it impossible to make sense of a question about their standard of living in isolation from that of their children or family unit.

He provides an analysis of the conflict over the distribution of resources within households that trivialises the broad-brush assumptions of economists such as Becker.¹ In Sen’s worldview there is a tension in marriages between the need to cooperate and the need to negotiate over the sharing of goods. Sen identifies three reasons why women may be at a disadvantage in the conflict, relating to three aspects of a bargaining situation which ensure the strength of one side vis-à-vis the other:

We can easily recognise in these three factors a convincing explanation of why women are likely to be unsuccessful in the intra-household distribution. However, the responses are more controversial. In terms of the first factor, it seems uncontroversial that improving women’s legal and social situation will reduce the necessity for their staying in a relationship, however unfair or unrewarding. The second point is more ambiguous: while it would be valuable for women to form a stronger sense of their own identity (particularly, perhaps, in less developed societies), we would not wish to suggest that they should become as individualist as the ‘economic man’ assumed by neoclassical economics.

My major concern, however, is with Sen’s suggestion that women should increase their bargaining position via greater involvement in the world of work. His suggestions is that this will increase their perceived contribution and thus their share in the intra-household allocation. He continues this theme in his most recent collection, where he again states that women must have a market role to achieve power:

For example, working outside the home and earning an independent income tend to have a clear impact on enhancing the social standing of a woman in the household and the society (2001: 191)

Women’s ability to earn an independent income and advance their position within market structures is frequently taken to be the major success of second-wave feminism, and separate research indicates that Sen’s suggestion that this will increase their power within the household is correct (Pahl, 1989). Yet research shows that women are unhappy in work, at least when they have children who remain their primary responsibility: 43 per cent of women questioned in a recent UK survey said they would like to be ‘a full-time mum’, while only 4 per cent of those with small children or babies would choose to work full time (Kellow, 2001). An overwhelming majority of the women questioned in this recent survey (93 per cent) stated that they were stressed, and two-thirds considered that this stress transferred to their family. The research also showed that, while women now have employment opportunities, and a third of those questioned earned more than their partners, their partners are not taking on their share of domestic responsibilities. Hence women’s ‘liberation’ into the marketplace has resulted in their working harder than ever.

As an alternative other British feminists suggest the re-evaluation of and support for the homemaker role. Kate Figes (1994) argues for fundamental changes in social structures, rather than women attempting to compete within employment and social arrangements that are hostile to their priorities. Suzanne Franks has argued that the quest for ‘equality’ with men in labour-market terms was a mistake, and that the few women who have achieved it are merely exhausted by the double burden of work and domesticity (1999). Barbara Pearson suggests that the future must include an upgrading of the homemaker/parent role, and its support by adequate social policies (2000).

The key concept of ‘shame’ features prominently in discussions by those who favour a relative definition of poverty:

The capability to live without shame emphasized by Adam Smith, that of being able to participate in the activities of the community discussed by Peter Townsend, that of having self-respect discussed by John Rawls, are examples of capabilities with extremely variable resource requirements. (1983: 163).

Here we have four men, including Sen himself, who provide a gender-neutral view of social shame. And yet most of the consumption decisions that will determine whether these men suffer shame, and the work necessary to ensure their self-respect, whether it be a clean shirt or a smart house, are likely to have been undertaken by women, whether as wives or servants. Similarly, the concern with participating in the life of the community is a concern largely carried by women, who are much more likely to be involved in community activities than men are, whether we consider the church, the school PTA, or voluntary groups. (Pharoah and Smerdon, 1998) The struggles of women to maintain their social position are the stuff of dramas ranging from mam scrubbing the front step free of coal dust in How Green Was my Valley to Hyacinth Bouquet in the UK sitcom ‘Keeping up Appearances’ who is always peering through her net curtains to make sure she has successfully kept up with the Joneses next door.

Yet where do these ideas about social acceptability come from? Sadly it seems that they are another oppression created for women by a male-dominated structure, in this case the advertising industry. Sen is concerned to elucidate the consideration of happiness as the satisfaction of desire. As he states, ‘the metric of desire’ is unfair because the downtrodden reduce their expectations:

It is also clear that the fulfilment of a person’s desire may or may not be indicative or a high level of well-being or of living standard. The battered slave, the broken unemployed, the hopeless destitute, the tamed housewife, may have the courage to desire little, but the fulfilment of those disciplined desires is not a sign of great success and cannot be treated in the same way as the fulfilment of the confident and demanding desires of the better placed. (Sen, 1987a: 11).

We can laud without demur this commitment to an emancipation of desire on behalf of the downtrodden. It reminds me of a Russian joke:

But the discussion fails at the other end of the spectrum: we may be prepared to accept the ‘confident and demanding desires of the better placed’, but what about the greedy and self-indulgent desires of the overpaid? Especially in a context where their desires, if satisfied, may threaten the survival of the planet we all rely on? And what about the origin of these desires? How many of us entertained a confident desire for a mobile phone a decade ago? And how many Chinese children today have a desire for a Big Mac or a Barbie doll? While the number may currently be very few it is likely to increase according to the experts in the advertising industry:

Aside from the social pressure to subscribe to a certain culturally acceptable level of consumption, women are also made victims of the consumptive dynamic via their children. Advertisers have turned their attention to children as responsive targets of advertising, but since they are legally barred from earning for themselves, once they have been inculcated with a desire for a certain product in order to obtain it they must put pressure on their parents, so-called ‘pester power’. Perhaps you recall the episode of The Simpsons when Bart and Lisa watch the advert for the themepark Mouth Splashmore and repeatedly ask Homer ‘Can we go to Mouth Splashmore’ all through the evening. Eventually he gives in, asking ‘If I say yes, will you let me get some sleep?’

While this illustration from cartoon life may be amusing the reality of advertising to children is far more sinister, as one random issue of the specialists’ journal International Journal of Advertising and Marketing to Children makes clear. It includes articles on marketing to children via the classroom and the internet and provides helpful profiles of what might appeal. An example is reproduced as Figure 1.

Figure 1. Profile of 10-12-year-old boys for use by potential advertisers

Turned on by money and the prospect of making money.

Prime target for financial institutions—Saving/Earnings schemes rule!

Explosive energy—often boisterous and impulse driven.

Bicycles, Blades and Music Accessories are status objects prized by peers.

Sports and Computer interests intensified.

Computer Magazines avidly read.

Violent TV and Videos rule! Combat Sports are essential viewing. Schwarzenegger remains a hero. Soaps keenly watched.

Collections are in the decline.

Entertained by TV advertising but sceptical of hard sell.

Club memership reflect specialist interests (Computers, Sports, Music).

Big Brand (global) Preferences, particularly sports brands, which translate into fashion statements.

Mother still important as clothes suppliers, footwear excepted!

Board games still played with other family members.

Girls kept at some distance—tolerated.

Risk takers with tobacco, alcohol, drugs (including solvent absue) and gambling.

The statements such as ‘turned on by money and the prospect of making money’ ‘Violent TV and Videos rule!’, and ‘risk takers with tobacco, alcohol, drugs (including solvent abuse) and gambling’ are reproduced without comment: they are useful selling tips requiring no moral judgement. (Note also the reference to ‘Mothers still important [but only] as clothes suppliers’—a theme we will return to soon.) This lack of special moral concern for children is unsurprising given that we read in another article that ‘I look at children as just another group of consumers’. This director of a promotional marketing agency continues:

I would like to introduce you to Charlotte, she is my target and my customer. What do I know about her and her friends? . . . She has taken pester power to new levels. Remember her disposable income depends on it. (Bowen, 2000: 18-19).

The domination of global capitalism by brands has aroused concern in recent years (Klein, 2000), and it is clear that this strategy is most successful with children. ‘Brands’, we are told ‘are an active part of their lives, they are fundamental to their existence. The wrong trainers or T-shirt and there goes all that hard earned credibility.’ (Bowen, 2000: 19). Advertisers also attempt to persuade us that they play a useful role in ‘socialising’ our children, although the people that are likely to result will be shoppers rather than human beings as we are informed that: ‘Socialization is the process by which "young people acquire skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace"’ (Mangelburg and Bristol, 1999: 28). And it is made clear why advertisers target children: ‘In the short term, the hedonic value of a commercial, its emotional allure, and its ability to tap into powerful motives may be sufficient to eclipse momentarily any cognitive knowledge/defense’ (Goldberg, 1999: 287). In less technical terms, advertising on children works because they are intellectually vulnerable.

The following quotation emphasises the part out children play as advertisers’ ‘targets’ while they are at school:

Although these messages are relayed at school, it is at home that the resulting consumption decisions are made, and largely by women. Research into individual spending patterns within households indicates that women are far more likely to be responsible for spending in areas where advertising is most likely to exert effective pressure via children’s pestering. Table 1 shows five basic categories of expenditure, which are essential and offer little choice, thus making them less susceptible to advertising influence, and five categories where advertising to children might be expected to have a large impact: children’s clothes and shoes, school expenses, children’s pocket money, presents, and Christmas expenses. It is clear from the proportions responsible for spending in these different areas that women are likely to bear the brunt of pester power.

Table 1. Person responsible for various categories of expenditure within households (number of valid responses)

Source: Pahl, 1989.

For women with high income levels the pressure to consume on behalf of their children may be tedious but it causes no real confusion. They have the money available and can accede to the children’s requests. But what about women in poverty? Here the pressure of pester power is especially destructive, because the advertising messages received, and the desires created, exist in all children. The Mount Splashmore syndrome will affect mothers in poverty as well as those in comfort. Parker shows how, no matter how skilful their money management, poor women will still bear the brunt of responsibility for the stigma of poverty:

Inability to cope on a low income or on an inadequate housekeeping allowance thus becomes a matter not of public policy but of private failure. By this process it becomes the housekeeper’s (i.e. the woman’s) fault that the househol cannot pay the rent or meet the fuel bills or clothe the children. If women then turn to credit to stretch inadquate resources [or as a result of pester power] they risk the disapproval of those, both within and without the household, who observe their behaviour without understanding its root cause. (Parker, 1992: 237).

So far, I have argued that the growth dynamic, that is in some part sustained by our theoretical views about poverty and socially acceptable levels of consumption, is not only destructive to the planet but also an oppression that bears particularly heavily on women, and especially poor women. But the impact of our consumption on the planet operates as a double whammy for women, since we are also supposed to be especially responsive to the need for Green lifestyles, as though our innate capacity to give and nurture life makes us qualified for this role.

Here, I am afraid, Sen falls into the same trap. He fails to challenge the assumption that women have any particular ability or duty to be responsible. During his discussion of the importance of women’s agency in creating economic development he writes:

Women’s agency and voice, influenced by education and employment, can in turn influence the nature of the public discussion on a variety of social subjects including acceptable fertility rates (not just in the family of the particular women themselves) and environmental priorities. (Sen, 2001: 193)

I would take issue with this comment on several levels. First it is unfortunate that Sen identifies specifically ‘social subjects’ as those where women should influence the public discussion, rather than, say, economic or political subjects. Secondly, the assigning of responsibility for fertility rates particularly to women appears to undercut a now age-old feminist debate about shared responsibility for contraception. But most importantly from the perspective of this paper, I would draw attention to the emphasis on women’s role in establishing ‘environmental priorities’.

In the context of underdeveloped countries, which this comment primarily refers to, we can imagine women being blamed for deforestation because it is their role to gather firewood. So the fact that partriarchal social structures have ensured that women are responsible for most labour-intensive manual work means that they must now also bear the brunt of adjustments to that work to ensure greater sustainability. In our developed societies we find the same message, and the same additional work for women. In the UK the Women’s Environmental Network is an NGO dedicated to changing lifestyles as a move towards sustainability. The group is engaged in much useful consciousness raising, but many of it campaigns—ranging from recycling and growing your own food to choosing reusable nappies or sanitary towels— can only result in more work for women, given the existing imbalance in domestic responsibilities in most households.²

Sen justifies his decision to focus on ‘freedom’ as an indicator of development in the following terms:

This appears a laudable advance, especially for those who have long argued against simplistic measures such as GDP per capita as indicators of progress (see e.g. Anderson, 1991; Mayo, 1999). However, the association of the word freedom with political philosophers of the right provides an element of unease.

Sen tackles this issue directly, addressing in turn the recent proponents of libertarian theory, specifically John Rawls and Robert Nozick. The basis of the moral theory of writers in this tradition is the absolute supremacy of individual rights, such as in the theory of Nozick who ‘puts extensive classes of rights—varying from personal liberties to property rights—as having nearly complete political precedence over the pursuit of social goals.’ (2001: 63). Freedom is identified as a positive force, which can only be negatively affected by government intervention, hence such theories suggest a minimal governmental role. Sen, by contrast, argues for a positive governmental role to ensure the freedom of the less advantage of achieve the acceptable level of social functioning.

This is the continuation of a debate that has been underway at least since the time of Hobbes and Rousseau, and amounts in essence to a debate about competing freedoms. I may have perfect freedom of action up to the point where my actions impinge on you. At this point the argument diverges, with libertarians arguing that the disagreement should be resolved in law, with the prior or more essential right taking supremacy, while more interventionist political theorists allow a role for government in determining fair allocations. But the expansion of human activity has added an extra dimension that has yet to find its way into political philosophy. Following the recognition of the closing of the planetary frontier and the pressure on its ecology resulting from such a vast human population, the United Nations established the Brundtland Commission to provide a judgement about how humankind should safeguard its future. The Commission provided the notion of ‘sustainability’ which it famously defined as:

Such a definition extends the range of those whose freedoms we have to consider when we take actions. As individuals we may claim that freedom to drive whenever we choose, and as societies we may choose the freedom to produce whatever level of carbon dioxide we choose, but how can we justify this when our actions remove the freedom of those in Bangladesh to exist, as rising sea levels overwhelm their low-lying land, or when we deprive future generations of existence on a planet whose air is no longer clean enough to breathe? The trivial freedoms to buy and sell, or to decide whether or not to engage in labour-market activity, are extended by Sen to include the freedom to longevity and to have political and social rights. Yet even these freedoms can be considered second-order when compared with the freedom of the species as a whole to survive. This is the limitation to the concept of ‘development as freedom’ and it is absolute.

In this paper I have argued that the relative definition and the growth dynamic, which are implicit in Sen’s conception of poverty, combine to impose consumptive pressure on women and the planet and in themselves increase perceived inequality and hence unhappiness. I have demonstrated how the capability approach, while a significant advance in our understanding of what poverty means, none the less fails to incorporate the message of sustainability and the limits to economic growth it entails. I have shown how such definitions actually reduce human freedom, by setting a standard of consumption that we feel pressured to achieve (a pressure that impacts particularly heavily on women) and I have demonstrated the role of the advertising industry in driving the onward advance of that standard. The limits of planetary capacity must be recognised as a brake on this accelerating movement towards greater consumption.

In any discussion of human well-being freedom is important, and the title of Sen’s recent collection—Development as Freedom—is an inspiring one, politically as well as intellectually. It broadens our ideas about poverty, in developing and developed societies, and moves us in the direction of deeper and richer human concerns. However, I would suggest that we need to combine it with a commitment to challenging other assumptions about human happiness and well-being. If development is about freedom, then we must not forget the Brundtland definition and must respect the freedom of future generations to meet their own needs. We must also free ourselves from the advertising industry’s views of what constitutes an acceptable level of consumption. This would represent a move towards development as emancipation, from oppressive economic structures and the ideologies that perpetuate them.

1. Sen quotes from Becker’s A Treatise on the Family (1981) as follows: ‘In my approach [to intra-household division] the "optimal reallocation" results from altruism and voluntary contributions, and the "group preference function" is identical to that of the altruistic head, even when he does not have sovereign power’. Becker’s assumption of altruism and voluntarism in this context are extraordinary given their elimination from all other areas of economic life.

2. A recent article in The Ecologist addressed the issue of resusable nappies. It was written by a man, although he gave the following disclaimer: ‘Rob Edwards is a freelance journalist and the father of two girls. Between 1990 and 1996 he changed about 2,000 nappies, both disposable and reusable’.

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