Tourism: A Vehicle for Development? - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 21

unemployment ? What has been happening to inequality ? If all three of
these have declined from high levels, then beyond doubt this has been
a period of development for the country concerned. If one or two of
these central problems has been growing worse, especially if all three
have, it would be strange to call the result 'development', even if per
capita income had doubled.

To these three conditions he later added a fourth: self reliance. The oil crisis
of the early 1970s had revealed the cost of dependence of many countries
and, for Seers, development now implied ' inter alia , reducing cultural depen-
dence on one or more of the great powers' (Seers, 1977: 5). Thus, not only
had the concept of development expanded beyond simple economic growth
to include broader social objectives collectively described by Mabogunje
(1980: 39) as 'distributive justice', but also the notion of self-determination
also became an essential ingredient of development. In other words, no
longer was development considered to be a process lying in the control, or
'trusteeship' (Cowen & Shenton, 1996: x) of the advanced, Western nations;
'development can be properly assessed only in terms of the total human
needs, values and standards of the good life and the good society perceived by
the very societies undergoing change ' (Goulet, 1968: 387 - emphasis added).
According to Goulet, three basic values represent this 'good life':

• the sustenance of life: all people have basic requirements, such as food, shel-

ter and health, without which 'a state of underdevelopment exists'.

• esteem: all individuals seek self-esteem, a sense of identity, self-respect or

dignity. The nature of esteem varies from one society to the next and
may be manifested in increased wealth and material well-being or, con-
versely, in the strengthening of spiritual or cultural values.

• freedom: in the context of development, freedom represents increased

choice for the individual members of society and freedom from servi-
tude to ignorance, nature, other societies, beliefs and institutions.
Indeed, for Sen (1999), freedom in its broadest sense lies at the heart of
development.

More specifically, Sen equates 'freedom' with capability; as McGillivray
(2008: 34) explains, 'capability is treated as the freedom to promote or achieve
combinations of valuable functionings'. Thus, development may essentially
be seen as the development of human capabilities, a perspective reflected in
the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report
1995 (UNDP, 1995). This defines development as 'the ability to lead a long,
healthy life, the ability to be knowledgeable and the ability to have access to
the resources needed for a decent standard of living' (UNDP, 1995: 18).
Thus, the concept of development has evolved, over half a century or so,
from a process narrowly defined (by the Western, industrialised nations) as