Understanding Progress: A Heterodox Approach

Sustainability 2013, 5, 417-431; doi:10.3390/su5020417
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sustainability
ISSN 2071-1050
www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
Article

Understanding Progress: A Heterodox Approach
David Barkin * and Blanca Lemus
Department of Economics, Metropolitan Autonomous University–Xochimilco, Calzada del Hueso
1100, Villa Quietud, Coyoacan, Mexico City, DF 04960, Mexico
* Author to whomcorrespondence should be addressed; E-Mail: barkin@correo.xoc.uam.mx;
Tel.: +52-555-483-7100.
Received: 5 December 2012; in revised form: 15 January 2013 / Accepted: 21 January 2013 /
Published: 30 January 2013

Abstract: This paper examines the possibility of understanding and measuring well-being
as a result of “progress” on the basis of today’s dominant epistemological framework.
Marketcriteria distort social values by allowing purchasing power to define priorities,
likening luxury goods to basic needs; in the process they reinforce patterns of
discrimination against disadvantaged social groups and women, introducing fatal
distortions into the analysis. Similarly, because there are no appropriate mechanisms to
price natural resources adequately, the market overlooks theconsequences of the abuse of
natural resources, degrading the quality of life, individually and collectively, or—in the
framework of Latin American indigenous groups—foreclosing the possibility of “living
well”. We critique the common vision of the official development discourse that places its
faith on technological innovations to resolve these problems. The analysis points to the
need for newmodels of social and environmental governance to promote progress,
approaches like those suggested in the paper that are inconsistent with public policies
currently in place. At present, the social groups forging institutions to assure their own
well-being and ecological balance are involved in local processes, often in opposition to
the proposals of the political leaders in their countries.Keywords: progress; sustainability; epistemology; alternatives; autonomy

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1. Introduction
The dominant epistemological framework in the social sciences, shaped by the neoclassical
paradigm of economics, responds to the question “What is progress?” with statistical indicators based
on market valuations of advances in material well-being, modified by otherquantitative measures of
the quality of life [1–5]. The definitions of the concept are conditioned by the political contexts in
which we operate, or, in some cases, by the proposals of new strategies that we would like to use in
order to (re)build the world. In this short essay we focus on the latter: those proposals that can guide us
in moving forward to overcome the growing socio-political,economical, and environmental obstacles
that prevent current societies from advancing towards good living or “buen vivir”. We focus on the
underlying factors that define the way in which we can advance towards an improvement in the quality
of life.
To begin, it is useful to present an alternative proposal for measuring well-being, in contrast to the
measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or itscomponents. We refer to the 1972 proposal by King
Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan, to implement an alternative system of assessing a country’s wellbeing, according to an index of “Gross Domestic Happiness” (GDH). This concept proposes to
measure the richness of nations by evaluating the real well-being of their citizens, their happiness,
measuring smiles instead of money or materialpossessions, as does the GDP [6,7]. The initial idea was
to assure that “prosperity is shared by the whole of society and well-balanced concerning cultural
traditions conservation, environmental protection with a government that responds to the needs of
those being governed”; rather than proposing an ideal system, a “utopia”, the proposal aims
pragmatically for success: “an economic system that...