Development ethics: a research agenda

Development ethics is a new and rapidly expanding discipline within development studies and social science. The cultivation of development ethics has the potential to produce a coherent account of human well‐being for guiding development policy and thinking. Although discussions of well‐being can be traced back to Greek antiquity, most development economists have managed to avoid reflecting sufficiently on the concept and meaning of “development”. While philosophers have reflected more fully on the nature and character of a good human life, they have not tested their theories of well‐being in the public domain or confronted their accounts of the “good” with the values of ordinary people. This is partly because philosophers (in contrast to social scientists) lack the necessary tools and expertise for such tasks. Yet it is only through the synthesis of scientific inquiry and philosophical reflection that we will uncover the central human values behind a more realistic and reliable development ethic. While a first attempt has now been made to develop an account of human development that rests firmly on the values and attitudes of ordinary people, more empirical work is required to confirm the strength of the results.