------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- 
Published by EH.NET (August 2004) 
 
Suman Ghosh, producer and director, _Amartya Sen: A Life Reexamined_.  
Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, 2002. 56 minutes. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by Ross B. Emmett, James Madison College,  
Michigan State University. 
 
 
In 1998, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science decided to present the  
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel  
to Amartya Sen. Sen was awarded the prize for his work in welfare  
economics, understood broadly enough to include his seminal  
contributions to social choice theory and the definition of poverty,  
his empirical work on famine, and his participation in the  
construction of the Human Development Index. Between 2000 and 2002,  
Suman Ghosh, a young economist completing his doctorate at Cornell  
University, produced this film in appreciation for his countryman's  
contributions to economics, social philosophy, and India. Ghosh, who  
is now at Florida Atlantic University, has produced a balanced  
introduction to Sen's work and an insightful look at his life. 
 
Ghosh's film sets out to examine Sen's work through a documentary of  
his life. For the most part, the film works well: one sees important  
people and places in Sen's life: his mother Amita Sen; his teacher  
Dhiresh Bhattacharya; Shantiniketan; some of the schools he attended;  
and the Master's Lodge at Trinity College, Cambridge (which he now  
inhabits). We also meet several prominent Indian economists and  
government ministers, including Manmohan Singh, who became India's  
Prime Minister after the movie was released. Other economists and  
philosophers also have roles in the film -- Kaushik Basu is the  
interviewer, Ken Arrow provides commentary on (and a few criticisms  
of) Sen's contributions to economic theory, and Timothy Scanlon,  
Sugata Bose, Emma Rothschild and Paul Samuelson make cameo  
appearances. 
 
First and foremost, Ghosh's movie is a celebration of Bengali  
contributions to the progress of human knowledge and reason. Sen is  
placed in the tradition of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and the  
chemist Prafulla Chandra Ray. As Bose says in the film, Tagore, Ray  
and Sen highlight the role of India, not as an alternative in a great  
"clash of civilizations" but rather as the source of another thread  
(perhaps competing with others, perhaps not) in the fabric of  
universal reason. 
 
To illustrate the back-and-forth movement from the universal to the  
particular, the film alternates Sen's contributions to universal  
reason with stories from his life and his contributions to India.  
Beginning with Sen lecturing at Cambridge on the axioms of social  
choice theory, the film then highlighting his contributions to  
economics and philosophy, interspersed with the story of his  
intellectual progress as he moved from India to Cambridge to Harvard  
and now back to Cambridge. Scenes and interviews from a West Bengal  
village literacy program provide the background for discussion of the  
UN Human Development Index and Sen's approach to development, which  
draws the movie to a close. 
 
The movie succeeds best at conveying the Indian fabric from which  
Sen's life has been made. Sen's early life and education in India are  
told to us by Sen himself (during an interview with Basu), and by his  
teacher Bhattacharya and his mother (also in interviews). The story  
is illustrated by family pictures and scenery from the places he  
lived. As the film moves to Sen's life outside India and to the story  
of his intellectual progress, the treatment is less consistent, but  
includes the film's most poignant moments: his early battle with  
cancer, his phone call to let his mother know he had won the Nobel  
Prize, and breaking in to his room at Trinity College in order to get  
the letter patent from the Queen that he needed to present at the  
gate when named Master of the College. Throughout, his humanity, in  
its brilliance and its fragility and fallibility, shines through. 
 
Ghosh does not attempt in the film to provide a thorough  
investigation of Sen's intellectual contributions to economics and  
philosophy. That is to his credit, one might say, because he conveys  
the warp and woof of Sen's life quite effectively without it.  
However, if used in courses on economic development, economics and  
philosophy, and the history of economic thought, the film would  
require additional material in order to allow students to explore  
Sen's work in greater detail. The film opens enough doors that invite  
further exploration to make this a pleasant task. 
 
Ghosh's re-examination of Sen provides the occasion to revisit his  
work, and to celebrate the Bengali contribution to the progress of  
human knowledge. It also reminds us that much remains to be done  
before "the clear stream of reason" (from the Tagore poem which  
closes the movie) guides human affairs. 
 
 
Ross B. Emmett is Associate Professor at James Madison College,  
Michigan State University. Editor of _Great Bubbles_, _The Chicago  
Tradition in Economics, 1892-1945_, and _Selected Essays by Frank H.  
Knight_, Emmett is also an editor of the research annual _Research in  
the History of Economic Thought and Methodology_. 
 
Copyright (c) 2004 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be  
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to  
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the  
EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone: 513-529-2229).  
Published by EH.Net (August 2004). All EH.Net reviews are archived at  
http://www.eh.net/BookReview. 
 
-------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW  -------------- 
EH.Net-Review mailing list 
[log in to unmask] 
http://eh.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/eh.net-review