Rejecting fashionable subjectivist and cultural relativist approaches, this important book argues that human beings have universal and objective needs for health and autonomy and a right to their optimal satisfaction. The authors develop a system of social indicators to show what such optimization would mean in practice and assess the records of a wide range of developed and underdeveloped economies in meeting their citizens' needs.
This book provides a historical inquiry into the quantification of needs in humanitarian assistance. Needs are increasingly seen as the lowest common denominator of humanity. Standard definitions of basic needs, however, set a minimalist version of humanity – both in the sense that they are narrow in what they compare, and that they set a low bar for satisfaction. The book argues that we cannot understand humanitarian governance if we do not understand how humanitarian agencies made human suffering commensurable across borders in the first place. The book identifies four basic elements of needs: As a concept, as a system of classification and triage, as a material apparatus, and as a set of standards. Drawing on a range of archival sources, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and the Sphere Project, the book traces the concept of needs from its emergence in the 1960s right through to the present day, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for “evidence-based humanitarianism.” Finally, the book assesses how the international governmentality of needs has played out in a recent humanitarian crisis, drawing on field research on Central African refugees in the Cameroonian borderland in 2014–2016. This important historical inquiry into the universal nature of human suffering will be an important read for humanitarian researchers and practitioners, as well as readers with an interest in international history and development.
There have always been homeless people in the United States, but their plight has only recently stirred widespread public reaction and concern. Part of this new recognition stems from the problem's prevalence: the number of homeless individuals, while hard to pin down exactly, is rising. In light of this, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine to find out whether existing health care programs were ignoring the homeless or delivering care to them inefficiently. This book is the report prepared by a committee of experts who examined these problems through visits to city slums and impoverished rural areas, and through an analysis of papers written by leading scholars in the field.
This book builds an essential bridge between climate change and social policy. Combining ethics and human need theory with political economy and climate science, it offers a long-term, interdisciplinary analysis of the prospects for sustainable development and social justice. Beyond ‘green growth’ (which assumes an unprecedented rise in the emissions efficiency of production) it envisages two further policy stages vital for rich countries: a progressive ‘recomposition’ of consumption, and a post-growth ceiling on demand. An essential resource for scholars and policymakers.
This book provides an accessible overview of human needs, exploring how they may be translated into rights. It also looks at how social policy can be informed by a politics of human need.
In a series of essays that explore the notion of what brings significance to our existences, clarifying why we have this longing beyond the present moment and an insatiable dissatisfaction with where we are, scholar Frank Martela tackles the subject of finding meaning in life. With beautiful decorative elements and an engaging design, the book approaches its subject in a readily digestible form. It grapples with some of life’s most pressing questions, like "Is happiness a worthy goal?" and "What is the foundation for meaning in a secular society?" and "Is life an existential void?" yet Martela answers these questions and more in a relaxed, conversational tone and with a wry sense of humor, placing some of life’s greatest philosophical concerns and quandaries into a modern-day context. Martela quickly and concisely gets to the heart of the matter: your place in the world and how to find meaning in life as countless thinkers and philosophers have done before, yet the emphasis here is on what we do with the life we have and how we can make it more meaningful. Part prescriptive and part armchair philosophy book, A Wonderful Life is accessible to everyone, from the well-read scholar to the apprentice as well as anyone curious about how to extract the greatest meaning and sense of purpose from their existence.
Everything that you do in life you do to fulfill your needs, including your social demands, eating, development, addictions, sleeping, reproduction, social competition, and learning. While you can do so at all cognitive, existential, and social levels, depending on means, demands, and abilities. Furthermore, you always follow laws in the world as you fulfill your needs, but can you follow these simultaneously? You may smile slightly here, since experience is personalized and therefore unique throughout the world, but what exactly is going on? Why should you ever encounter problems, as a living human being, in a human world? What are your needs and feelings exactly, and what do they make you do? Who sends you your own, personal, natural human needs? And is everything that you know about the human needs pertinent enough to assure a meaningful, successful, fulfilling life? Because everybody ends up in dreadful circumstances at times, struggling with countless of problems, it happens to you and to those around, so why should you have to fail in life, at least partially, as a human being, while following rules and the human needs, simultaneously? And since this happens to everybody, can humans actually be at fault? Because if humans themselves are considered wrong, incapable, or compromised, in an actual human world, through their own natural needs and feelings, then what exactly do laws and authorities seek here, if they do not serve humans, society, needs, and fulfillment the most? Because now, it seems that authorities hold you responsible for everything that life sends your way, ending up contradicting and judging life through you, and punishing you dreadfully. While many times, it is done so on purpose, to reach you, or to take you out of the way. Since everybody becomes involved when you fail, and you have to be highly capable today to manage both life and society simultaneously. And to make matters more complex, you cannot find to learn anything on this topic, but only laws, codes, stereotypes, and irrelevant or trivial beliefs. And now when you study everything closely, you see how the human experience in this world is marked by the human needs and feelings on one side, and by people’s ignorance about the human needs and feelings on the other. Throughout this book, we study the comprehensive human existence very closely, as it starts with the human needs. We identify and analyze all needs, feelings, fulfillment, behavior, reasoning, and meaning, while understanding life and the wider world altogether. If you seek to learn more about yourself and your own needs and feelings, this book is for you.
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