Evolution, Empowerment and Emancipation: How Societies Ascend the Utility Ladder of Freedoms

Research output: Working paperWorking papers

Authors

This article presents a new theory of development that unifies disparate insights into a single framework, focusing on human empowerment—a process that emancipates people from domination. Human empowerment sets in when mass-scale technological progress widens ordinary people’s ‘action resources.’ As this happens, life turns from a source of threats into a source of opportunities, and societies climb the utility ladder of freedoms: universal freedoms become instrumental to take advantage of what a more promising life offers. Accordingly, people adopt ‘emancipative values’ that emphasize universal freedoms. With the utility and value of freedoms rising, ‘civic entitlements’ that guarantee these become undeniable at some point. Thus, human empowerment proceeds as the sequential growth in the utility, value, and guarantee of freedoms (sequence thesis). Because universal freedoms are a reciprocal good that flourishes through mutual recognition, the utility ladder of freedoms is a social ladder: people climb it in alliance with like-minded others who share similar utilities (solidarity thesis). Historically speaking, human empowerment on a mass scale started only recently because civilization matured late where natural conditions bestow an initial utility on freedoms that has been absent elsewhere (initiation thesis). However, globalization is about to break human empowerment free from its confinement to the initially favorable conditions (contagion thesis). Together, these theses form an evolutionary theory of emancipation. After unfolding this theory, the article presents evidence in support of its major propositions.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherWorld Values Survey Association
Pages1-42
Number of pages43
Publication statusPublished - 2013

Documents

Links

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. The well- and unwell-being of a child
  2. Modeling the low-carbon transformation in Europe
  3. Open Innovation Networks
  4. Die Mutter
  5. Comparing Germany and Israel regarding debates on policy-making at the beginning of life: PGD, NIPT and their paths of routinization
  6. Preparation and properties of high purity Mg-Y biomaterials
  7. Konstanz im Wandel?
  8. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly by Judith Butler . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
  9. Reallabor versus Realexperiment
  10. Students’ genre expectations and the effects of text cohesion on reading comprehension
  11. Solidarität
  12. Stille, Geräusch, Rauschen
  13. Misperceiving bullshit as profound is associated with favorable views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and conservatism
  14. Public Value
  15. Design und Methode der Studie
  16. Hundert Jahre „transzendentale Obdachlosigkeit“
  17. Patterns of entrepreneurial career development
  18. Microstructural investigations of the Mg-Sn and Mg-Sn-Al alloy systems
  19. Germany
  20. Green in grey
  21. Investigation of food waste valorization through sequential lactic acid fermentative production and anaerobic digestion of fermentation residues
  22. Foreign and Domestic Takeovers in Germany: Cherry-picking and Lemon-grabbing
  23. NAVIGATING PROFESSIONAL CAREERS AND INTERNAL ACTIVISM
  24. Preference for violent electronic games and aggressive behavior among children
  25. "Beach Handball"
  26. The Diversity of environmental justice
  27. Normalisierungen
  28. Empathy-motivated helping
  29. Complexity of traffic scenes and mental workload in car driving
  30. From Short Story to Stage
  31. Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain