Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Identity is a continuous construction of how one construes oneself in the present, past, and future. Gender, familial, and socioeconomic roles interact to form one�s identity. Collectivist cultures, which stress strong in-group identification, encourage allocentrism. When allocentric individuals immigrate to a more individualistic culture, they are more vulnerable to feelings of alienation and stress. Lahiri�s Mrs. Sen, who moved to New England for her husband�s career, misses her family in India. Without this group identification to define her, she struggles to translate customs, particularly gendered domestic practices, into American culture in an effort to find security in a stable role.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Hannah Arendt opined that there could be nothing worse than a society of permanently redundant laborers. In the context of the three decades old global expansion of capital and markets the production of wealth has coincided with an equally dramatic expulsion of entire regions full of laborers from the global market. These latter constituting the ?losers? of late 20th century globalization exist in an informal sector that is unable to meet basic human needs. It is in this context that the moral philosopher and economist, Amartya Sen, has successfully interjected to translate his normative theoretical re-appropriation of development into the most widely accepted guide posts in formulating, implementation, and measuring international development. This article aims to investigate why Sen?s approach has been adopted by policy makers for, primarily, dealing with the economic marginalization of the Third World. In addition, the efficacy of Sen?s normative developmental discourse and the extent to which it offers a critical distance from the previously failed development models is investigated.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: This paper determines the probability of a conflict between acyclicity, weak Pareto, and minimal liberalism in a
relatively unrestricted domain. We hypothesize that the probability of a conflict between these three properties decreases as the number of individuals or the number of alternatives increases. If this were the case, Sen's Liberal Paradox would be of greater concern in small populations, such as committees, than in large populations, such as nation states.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper studies the Medicare debate through the eyes of U.S. Sen. Lister Hill (D.-AL). His reaction to national health insurance bills was common among Southern liberals. Yet as Mr. Health, Hill found himself in a uniquely powerful role. Many Southerners were willing to dispense with relatively inexpensive health care offered them because they feared “socialized medicine.” During the Great Depression, Hill developed his advocacy for federal government aid to include unemployment relief, old age pensions, and especially medical assistance. Still, his efforts on behalf of his constituents were widely criticized as Alabamians were averse to a big government financed with big taxes. By the late 1950s, Hill had to become more conservative regarding race, or his liberalism would haunt him. Yet he continued to have a wide progressive imprint, notably in hospital construction and medical research. Why did he vote for a bold scheme like Medicare despite knowing many considered it “socialism?” Certainly, Lister Hill’s relationships with so many doctors colored his appraisal of legislation like Medicare. He struggled to find a middle ground on national health insurance even as he sought to provide government medical care for his poor constituents. Hill welcomed new ideas but did not want to endanger the private medical community’s status as key provider of health care. Over time his views evolved so he felt comfortable enough with the governing mechanisms and compromises in the Medicare bill to support it. The senator came to believe Medicare was not “socialized medicine” in any nefarious form.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper disscuses Sen’s impossibility of a paretian libertarian theorem (1970). First, I make some preliminary considerations and I give the standard social choice definitions. Second, I briefly present Sen’s result. Third, I review nine of the solutions given for Sen’s problem: three restrictions of the weak Pareto condition, three restrictions of the libertarian condition and three restrictions of the universal domain. Fourth, I introduce the ideological fidelity as an acceptability criterion for any solution of Sen’s inconsistency result. I use this criterion for rejecting all restrictions of the libertarian and universal domain conditions. Fifth, I present two new solutions which satisfy the ideological fidelity criterion. These two solutions consist in restraining the paretian condition’s domain only to those individual preferences which are: a) minimal-rational libertarian or b) single-peaked libertarian preferences. Both my solutions are based on the fact that Sen’s alternatives are in fact conjunct alternatives and they could be separated in separate individual agendas. If we impose restrictions on these separate agendas, possibility results will follow.