ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the merits and flaws of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom, highlights positive as well as negative aspects. It explains the problems identified in the capability approach to the discourse of development which constitutes the hegemonic framework for discussing questions of global inequality since the mid-20th century. The chapter points out which questions of global justice are neglected by adopting this hegemonic framework. In the first half of the twentieth century, when the idea of development was increasingly applied to the European colonies, this intent became even more pressing against the background of the Russian Revolution and anti-colonial movements. The perspective to analyses development as a discourse builds on the works of Post-Development scholars as well as on Michel Foucault. According to Foucault, a discourse is a group of statements united by common rules, in particular by rules of formation concerning the objects, concepts, enunciate modalities and thematic choices.
