Amartya Sen: Home and Humanity

Amartya Sen is Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. His many books include The Idea of Justice, a critique of existing theories of social justice, with which he last visited the Book Festival in 2010. Now, Professor Sen has written a memoir, Home in the World, which among many other things explores the meaning of ‘home’. Brought up in Dhaka (now in Bangladesh), Sen began his education at a school in Santiniketan (Bengal) founded by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Sen then studied economics in Kolkata before continuing to Trinity College, Cambridge. In his book he charts a path not just through the significant people in his life but also through the places and ideas that shaped him – among them the changing relationship between Britain and India. Sen’s passionate commitment to choice, freedom and justice shines through in his evocative prose – principles which were surely central to winning him the Nobel Prize in 1998 for his work in welfare economics. In this event, filmed live at the 2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival, he talks about his life and work with Scottish journalist Ruth Wishart.