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"Human development issues 'beyond economic analysis'"

Published Date: November 12, 2009
By Nisreen Zahreddine, Staff writer
Kuwait Times

View article at Kuwait Times website.

KUWAIT: The Kuwait Economic Society (KES) yesterday hosted a lecture by Dr. Ismail Sirageldin, Professor of Economics, Population Dynamics and International Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. Among the prominent figures attending the lecture, entitled, 'The Future of Human Development,' was MP Rola Dashti.

Dr. Sirageldin began by stating that most of the issues involved in human development, both positive and negative, are beyond a purely economic analysis, requiring an understanding of the increased interconnectivity of the emerging global production and finance system.

The major forces underlying the emerging change in the global system are religion, science and applications, he said, adding that the roles of each of these factors had undergone dramatic changes over the last two centuries.
The role of science in human affairs is increasingly becoming a subordinate element of technique, a market-calculated process rather than one associated with free thought and discovery, Dr. Sirageldin asserted.

This has led to the development of a human society that increasingly values utilitarianism rather than seeking the meaning of its own existence, while casting doubt on the analytical ability of religion to provide rational or meaningful views of nature, he continued.

Dr. Sirageldin also linked the decline of humanitarian values to another factor, the rise of increasing levels of state control based on a more concentrated form of rule. This had led, he said, to increasingly evident hegemonic global regimes, leading societies around the world towards a culture of materialism and an associated decline in moral values and objectives, meaning that they are less concerned with the pursuit of equity or equality.