Toward Hyper-Critical Development Alternatives

A Study in Semiotics

Abstract

The idea of human freedom is essentially rooted in the concept ofhuman development, according to Noble Laureate Amartya Sen's "Development as Freedom" thesis [that outlines an entitlement to capacity-building process]. And the idea of human progress is a construct that is designed around the axis of freedom. What is freedom? Is it only lack of societal constraint, withdrawal of discipline and punish, willing suspension of the panoptic Super Ego that they address as the "mainstream"? Or is freedom a concept much more fundamental, to be read into the texts of Rabindranath Tagore, Roman Rolland or Walden? Sociologists claim that civilization is what we are and culture is merely an arrangement of artifacts that we happen to use during the course of our politics everyday life. Civilization, however, is also a system of values that is handed down generations as a movement of socialization that laymen identify as "progress".