An actor (usually actress for female; see terminology) is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity. The ancient Greek word for an "actor," ''(hypokrites)'', means literally "one who interprets"; in this sense, an actor is one who interprets a dramatic character.

Terminology

After 1660, when women first appeared on stage, ''actor'' and ''actress'' were initially used interchangeably for female performers, but later, influenced by the French ''actrice'', ''actress'' became the usual term. The etymology is a simple derivation from ''actor'' with ''ess'' added. The word ''actor'' refers to a person who acts regardless of gender, and "is increasingly preferred", while ''actress'' refers specifically to a female person who acts. ''Actress'' "remains in general use", although in a survey of a "wide cross-section of current British English", compiled in 2010, ''actor'' was almost twice as commonly found as ''actress''. Within the profession, however, the re-adoption of the neutral term dates to the 1950s–60s, the post-war period when women's contribution to cultural life in general was being re-evaluated. ''Actress'' remains the common term used in major acting awards given to female recipients.

The gender-neutral term "player" was common in film in the early days of the Motion Picture Production Code with regards to the cinema of the United States, but is now generally deemed archaic. However, it remains in use in the theatre, often incorporated into the name of a theatre group or company (such as the East West Players).

History

The first recorded case of an actor performing took place in 534 BC (though the changes in calendar over the years make it hard to determine exactly) when the Greek performer Thespis stepped on to the stage at the ''Theatre Dionysus'' and became the first known person to speak words as a character in a play or story. Prior to Thespis' act, stories were only known to be told in song and dance and in third person narrative. In honour of Thespis, actors are commonly called ''Thespians''. Theatrical legend to this day maintains that Thespis exists as a mischievous spirit, and disasters in the theatre are sometimes blamed on his ghostly intervention.

Actors were traditionally not people of high status, and in the Early Middle Ages travelling acting troupes were often viewed with distrust. In many parts of Europe, actors could not even receive a Christian burial, and traditional beliefs of the region and time period held that this left any actor forever condemned. However, this negative perception was largely reversed in the 19th and 20th centuries as acting has become an honoured and popular profession and art.

Techniques

Method acting

Method acting is a technique developed from the acting 'system' created in the early 20th century by Konstantin Stanislavski in his work at the Moscow Art Theatre and its studios. The Group Theatre first popularised the Method in the 1930s; it was subsequently advanced and developed in new directions by Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg (at the Actors Studio in the 1940s and 50s), and others. In Stanislavski's system', the actor analyzes the character in order to play him or her with psychological realism and emotional authenticity. Using the Method, an actor may recall emotions or reactions from his or her own life and use them to identify with the character being portrayed.

Method actors are often characterized as immersing themselves so totally in their characters that they continue to portray them even off-stage or off-camera for the duration of the project. However, this is a popular misconception. While some actors do employ this approach, it is generally not taught as part of the Method. Stella Adler, who was a member of the Group Theatre, along with Strasberg, emphasised a different approach of using creative imagination.

Method acting offers a systematic form of actor training in which the actor's sensory, psychological, and emotional abilities are developed; it revolutionized theatre in the United States.

Presentational and representational acting

Presentational acting refers to a relationship between actor and audience, whether by direct address or indirectly by specific use of language, looks, gestures or other signs indicating that the character or actor is aware of the audience's presence. (Shakespeare's use of punning and wordplay, for example, often has this function of indirect contact.)

In representational acting, "actors want to make us 'believe' they are the character; they pretend." The illusion of the fourth wall with the audience as voyeurs is striven for.

As opposite gender

In the past, only men could become actors in some societies. In the ancient Greece and Rome and the medieval world, it was considered disgraceful for a woman to go on the stage, and this belief persisted until the 17th century, when in Venice it was broken. In the time of William Shakespeare, women's roles were generally played by men or boys.

When an eighteen year Puritan prohibition of drama was lifted after the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. Margaret Hughes is credited by some as the first professional actress on the English stage. This prohibition ended during the reign of Charles II in part due to the fact that he enjoyed watching actresses on stage. The first occurrence of the term ''actress'' was in 1700 according to the OED and is ascribed to Dryden.

In Japan, men (onnagata) took over the female roles in kabuki theatre when women were banned from performing on stage during the Edo period. This convention has continued to the present. However, some forms of Chinese drama have women playing all the roles.

In modern times, women sometimes play the roles of prepubescent boys. The stage role of Peter Pan, for example, is traditionally played by a woman, as are most principal boys in British pantomime. Opera has several "breeches roles" traditionally sung by women, usually mezzo-sopranos. Examples are Hansel in ''Hänsel und Gretel'', Cherubino in ''The Marriage of Figaro'' and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.

Women in male roles are uncommon in film with the notable exceptions of the films ''The Year of Living Dangerously'' and ''I'm Not There''. In the former film Linda Hunt played the pivotal role of Billy Kwan, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the latter film Cate Blanchett portrayed Jude Quinn, a representation of Bob Dylan in the sixties, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Having an actor dress as the opposite sex for comic effect is also a long-standing tradition in comic theatre and film. Most of Shakespeare's comedies include instances of overt cross-dressing, such as Francis Flute in ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. The movie ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' stars Jack Gilford dressing as a young bride. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon famously posed as women to escape gangsters in the Billy Wilder film ''Some Like It Hot''. Cross-dressing for comic effect was a frequently used device in most of the thirty Carry On films. Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams have each appeared in a hit comedy film (''Tootsie'' and ''Mrs. Doubtfire'', respectively) in which they played most scenes dressed as a woman.

Occasionally, the issue is further complicated, for example, by a woman playing a woman acting as a man pretending to be a woman, like Julie Andrews in ''Victor/Victoria'', or Gwyneth Paltrow in ''Shakespeare in Love''. In ''It's Pat: The Movie'', filmwatchers never learn the gender of the androgynous main characters Pat and Chris (played by Julia Sweeney and Dave Foley).

A few roles in modern films, plays and musicals are played by a member of the opposite sex (rather than a character cross-dressing), such as the character Edna Turnblad in ''Hairspray''—played by Divine in the original film, Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway musical, and John Travolta in the 2007 movie musical. Linda Hunt won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Billy Kwan in ''The Year of Living Dangerously''. Felicity Huffman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Bree Osbourne (a man in the process of becoming a woman) in ''Transamerica''.

Acting awards

Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, for American film

AFI Awards for Australian film

Berlinale German film festival in Berlin (Golden and Silver Bear)

British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for film and television; also known as BAFTA

Cannes Film Festival Awards

César Awards for French film

Emmy Awards for American television

FAMAS Awards for Filipino cinema

Filmfare Awards honors excellence in the Indian Film Industry (Bollywood) – limited to Hindi language films only

Filmfare Awards South honors excellence in the Indian Film Industry (South Indian) – limited to Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada language films only

Genie Awards for Canadian film

Gemini Awards for Canadian television

Golden Globe Awards for American film and television

Golden Raspberry Awards Worst in American film

Goya Awards for Spanish film

IIFA Awards International Indian Film Academy Awards, for Bollywood

IFTA's for the Irish Film and Television

Star Screen Awards honors excellence in the Indian Film Industry.

Indian National Film Awards for the Indian cinema

Kerala State Film Awards in India for the Malayalam cinema

Laurence Olivier Awards for the theatre

Lux Style Awards for Pakistan film

Nandi Awards in India for Telugu cinema

Nigar Awards also for Pakistani film

San Sebastián International Film Festival Spanish film festival Celebrated in San Sebastián

Sarah Siddons Award for female actress in Chicago Theatre

Screen Actors Guild Awards for American actors in film and television

Tony Awards for the theatre (specifically, Broadway theatre)

Volpi Cups at the Venice Film Festival

See also

Acting

Bit part

Body double

Cameo appearance

Casting (performing arts)

Cast member

Celebrity

Character actor

Charisma

Child actor

Drama school

Dramatis personæ

Ensemble cast

Extra (actor)

GOTE

Improvisational theatre

Leading actor

Lists of actors

Master of Fine Arts

Matinee idol

Method acting

Meisner technique

Mime

Movie star

Movie studio

Pornographic actor

Practical Aesthetics

Pre-production

Presentational acting and Representational acting

Q Score

Stunt work

Supporting actor

Thespis

Understudy

Vaudeville

Viewpoints

Voice Actor

References

Sources

Csapo, Eric, and William J. Slater. 1994. ''The Context of Ancient Drama.'' Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P. ISBN 0-472-08275-2.

Elam, Keir. 1980. ''The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama''. New Accents Ser. London and New York: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-72060-9.

Weimann, Robert. 1978. ''Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function.'' Ed. Robert Schwartz. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-3506-2.

Further reading

''An Actor's Work'' by Constantin Stanislavski

''A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method'' by Lee Strasberg (Plume Books, ISBN 0-452-26198-8, 1990)

''Sanford Meisner on Acting'' by Sanford Meisner (Vintage, ISBN 0-394-75059-4, 1987)

''Letters to a Young Actor'' by Robert Brustein (Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-00806-2, 2005).

''The Empty Space'' by Peter Brook

''The Technique of Acting'' by Stella Adler

External links

Actors' Equity Association (AEA): a union representing U. S. theatre actors and stage managers.

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA): a union representing U. S. television and radio actors and broadcasters (on-air journalists, etc.).

British Actors' Equity: a trade union representing UK artists, including actors, singers, dancers, choreographers, stage managers, theatre directors and designers, variety and circus artists, television and radio presenters, walk-on and supporting artists, stunt performers and directors and theatre fight directors.

Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance: an Australian/New Zealand trade union representing everyone in the media, entertainment, sports, and arts industries.

Screen Actors Guild (SAG): a union representing U. S. film and TV actors.

Category:Entertainment occupations Category:Acting Category:Theatrical professions Category:Television terminology

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name	Amartya Sen
school tradition	Welfare economics , Development economics , Public Health , Gender Studies , Political Philosophy , Utilitarianism
color	lightblue
birth date	November 03, 1933
birth place	Santiniketan, Bengal, British India (present-day West Bengal, India)
nationality	IndianBangladesh (Honorary)
citizenship	India
alma mater	Presidency College
field	Welfare economics, ethics
institution	Jadavpur UniversityUniversity of CambridgeHarvard UniversityMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCornell UniversityUniversity of OxfordDelhi School of EconomicsLondon School of EconomicsUniversity of California, BerkeleyStanford University
influences	John RawlsPeter BauerJohn Stuart MillKenneth ArrowPiero Sraffa
opposed	James Mill
influenced	Mahbub ul HaqKaushik BasuJean Dreze
contributions	Human development theory
awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1998) Bharat Ratna (1999)
signature	}}

Amartya Sen, CH (, translit. ''Ômorto Shen''; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food.

He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, distinguished fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from 1998 to 2004. He is the first Indian and the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college.

Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages over a period of forty years. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, ''Time magazine'' listed him under "60 years of Asian Heroes" and in 2010 included him in their "100 most influential persons in the world". New Statesman listed him in their 2010 edition of 'World's 50 Most Influential People Who Matter'.

Early life and education

Sen was born to a Bengali Hindu family of Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. His ancestral home was in Wari, Dhaka, then part of India; now Bangladesh which became a new country in 1971 following its separation from Pakistan which, in turn, was earlier formed as a result of the partition of British India in 1947. Rabindranath Tagore is said to have given Amartya Sen his name ("Amartya" meaning "immortal"). Sen hails from a distinguished family: his maternal grandfather Acharya Kshiti Mohan Sen, a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore, was a renowned scholar of medieval Indian literature, an authority on the philosophy of Hinduism, and also the second Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University. His maternal grandfather was an uncle of Sukumar Sen, ICS the First-Chief Election Commissioner of India and his equally distinguished brothers, Amiya Sen, a very well known doctor, and Barrister Ashoke Kumar Sen, M.P. and a former Union Cabinet Minister for Law and Justice of India. Sen's father Professor Ashutosh Sen and mother Amita Sen were both born in Manikganj, Dhaka. His father was a Professor of Chemistry at Dhaka University and later served for several years in Delhi, becoming the Chairman of the West Bengal Public Service Commission.

Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School in Dhaka in 1941, in modern-day Bangladesh. His family came to India following the partition of the country in 1947. In India Sen studied at the Visva-Bharati University school and then at Presidency College, Kolkata, where he earned a First Class First in his B.A. (Honours) in Economics and emerged as the most eminent student of the well known batch of 1953. Subsequently, in the same year, he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he earned a First Class (Starred First) BA (Honours) in 1956. He was elected as the President of the Cambridge Majlis in the same year. While still an undergraduate student of Trinity, he met Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Mahalanobis, who was much impressed with Sen, returned to Calcutta and immediately recommended the brilliant Cambridge undergraduate to Triguna Sen, the then Education Minister of West Bengal, who had been instrumental in turning the National Council into the new Jadavpur University.

After Sen had completed his Tripos examination and had enrolled for a Ph.D. in Economics to be completed at Trinity College, Cambridge, he returned to India on a two year leave. Triguna Sen immediately appointed him as Professor and the Founder-Head of Department of Economics at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, which was his very first appointment, at the age of 23. This still remains the youngest age at which anybody has been appointed to a professorship or a head of departmentship in India. During his tenure at Jadavpur University, Sen had the good fortune of having economic methodologist, A. K. Dasgupta, who was then teaching at the renowned Benares Hindu University, as his supervisor. After two full years of full time teaching in Jadavpur, Sen returned to Cambridge to complete his Ph.D. in 1959, which was immediately acclaimed as a pathbreaking work.

Subsequently, Sen won a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, which gave him four years of freedom to do anything he liked, during which period he took the radical decision of studying philosophy. That proved to be of immense help to his later research. Sen related the importance of studying philosophy thus: "The broadening of my studies into philosophy was important for me not just because some of my main areas of interest in economics relate quite closely to philosophical disciplines (for example, social choice theory makes intense use of mathematical logic and also draws on moral philosophy, and so does the study of inequality and deprivation), but also because I found philosophical studies very rewarding on their own." However, his deep interest in philosophy can be dated back to his college days in Presidency, when he both read books on philosophy and debated philosophical themes.

To Sen, then Cambridge was like a battlefield. There were major debates between supporters of Keynesian economics and the diverse contributions of Keynes' followers, on the one hand, and the "neo-classical" economists skeptical of Keynes, on the other. Sen was lucky to have close relations with economists on both sides of the divide. Meanwhile, thanks to its good "practice" of democratic and tolerant social choice, Sen's own college, Trinity College, was an oasis very much removed from the discord. However, because of a lack of enthusiasm for social choice theory whether in Trinity or Cambridge, Sen had to choose a quite different subject for his Ph.D. thesis, after completing his B.A. He submitted his thesis on "the choice of techniques" in 1959 under the supervision of the brilliant but vigorously intolerant Joan Robinson. During his time at Cambridge, and according to Quentin Skinner, Sen was a member of the secret society "Cambridge Apostles".

Between 1960–1961, Amartya was a visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later consequently, he was also a visiting Professor at UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and Cornell.

He has taught economics also at the University of Calcutta and at the Delhi School of Economics (where he completed his ''magnum opus'' Collective Choice and Social Welfare in 1970), where he was a Professor from 1961 to 1972, a period which is considered to be a Golden Period in the history of DSE. In 1972 he joined the London School of Economics as a Professor of Economics where he taught until 1977. From 1977 to 1986 he taught at the University of Oxford, where he was first a Professor of Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford and then the Drummond Professor of Political Economy and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In 1986 he joined Harvard as the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor of Economics. In 1998 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In January 2004 Sen returned to Harvard. He is also a contributor to the Eva Colorni Trust at the former London Guildhall University.

Membership and Associations

He has served as Presidents of the Econometric Society (1984), the International Economic Association (1986–1989), the Indian Economic Association (1989) and the American Economic Association (1994). He has also served as President of the Development Studies Association (1980–1982) and is a Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Economic Society, which he has been since 1988.

He presently serves as Honorary Director of Center for Human and Economic Development Studies at Peking University in China and is also a board council member of the Prime Minister of India's Global Advisory Council of Overseas Indians.

Research

Sen's papers in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped develop the theory of social choice, which first came to prominence in the work by the American economist Kenneth Arrow, who, while working at the RAND Corporation, had most famously showed that all voting rules, be they majority rule or two thirds-majority or status quo, must inevitably conflict with some basic democratic norm. Sen's contribution to the literature was to show under what conditions Arrow's impossibility theorem would indeed come to pass as well as to extend and enrich the theory of social choice, informed by his interests in history of economic thought and philosophy.

In 1981, Sen published ''Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation'' (1981), a book in which he demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen also demonstrated that the Bengal famine was caused by an urban economic boom that raised food prices, thereby causing millions of rural workers to starve to death when their wages did not keep up. Sen's interest in famine stemmed from personal experience. As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which three million people perished. This staggering loss of life was unnecessary, Sen later concluded. He presents data that there was an adequate food supply in Bengal at the time, but particular groups of people including rural landless labourers and urban service providers like haircutters did not have the monetary means to acquire food as its price rose rapidly due to factors that include British military acquisition, panic buying, hoarding, and price gouging, all connected to the war in the region. In ''Poverty and Famines'', Sen revealed that in many cases of famine, food supplies were not significantly reduced. In Bengal, for example, food production, while down on the previous year, was higher than in previous non-famine years. Thus, Sen points to a number of social and economic factors, such as declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems. These issues led to starvation among certain groups in society. His capabilities approach focuses on positive freedom, a person's actual ability to be or do something, rather than on negative freedom approaches, which are common in economics and simply focuses on non-interference. In the Bengal famine, rural laborers' negative freedom to buy food was not affected. However, they still starved because they were not positively free to do anything, they did not have the functioning of nourishment, nor the capability to escape morbidity.

In addition to his important work on the causes of famines, Sen's work in the field of development economics has had considerable influence in the formulation of the ''Human Development Report'', published by the United Nations Development Programme. This annual publication that ranks countries on a variety of economic and social indicators owes much to the contributions by Sen among other social choice theorists in the area of economic measurement of poverty and inequality.

Sen's revolutionary contribution to development economics and social indicators is the concept of 'capability' developed in his article "Equality of What." He argues that governments should be measured against the concrete capabilities of their citizens. This is because top-down development will always trump human rights as long as the definition of terms remains in doubt (is a 'right' something that must be provided or something that simply cannot be taken away?). For instance, in the United States citizens have a hypothetical "right" to vote. To Sen, this concept is fairly empty. In order for citizens to have a capacity to vote, they first must have "functionings." These "functionings" can range from the very broad, such as the availability of education, to the very specific, such as transportation to the polls. Only when such barriers are removed can the citizen truly be said to act out of personal choice. It is up to the individual society to make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed by that society. For an example of the "capabilities approach" in practice, see Martha Nussbaum's ''Women and Human Development''.

He wrote a controversial article in ''The New York Review of Books'' entitled "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing" (see Missing women of Asia), analyzing the mortality impact of unequal rights between the genders in the developing world, particularly Asia. Other studies, such as one by Emily Oster, have argued that this is an overestimation, though Oster has recanted some of her conclusions.

Sen was seen as a ground-breaker among late twentieth-century economists for his insistence on discussing issues seen as marginal by most economists. He mounted one of the few major challenges to the economic model that posited self-interest as the prime motivating factor of human activity. While his line of thinking remains peripheral, there is no question that his work helped to re-prioritize a significant sector of economists and development workers, even the policies of the United Nations.

Welfare economics seeks to evaluate economic policies in terms of their effects on the well-being of the community. Sen, who devoted his career to such issues, was called the "conscience of his profession." His influential monograph ''Collective Choice and Social Welfare'' (1970), which addressed problems related to individual rights (including formulation of the liberal paradox), justice and equity, majority rule, and the availability of information about individual conditions, inspired researchers to turn their attention to issues of basic welfare. Sen devised methods of measuring poverty that yielded useful information for improving economic conditions for the poor. For instance, his theoretical work on inequality provided an explanation for why there are fewer women than men in India and China despite the fact that in the West and in poor but medically unbiased countries, women have lower mortality rates at all ages, live longer, and make a slight majority of the population. Sen claimed that this skewed ratio results from the better health treatment and childhood opportunities afforded boys in those countries, as well as sex-specific abortion.

Governments and international organizations handling food crises were influenced by Sen's work. His views encouraged policy makers to pay attention not only to alleviating immediate suffering but also to finding ways to replace the lost income of the poor, as, for example, through public-works projects, and to maintain stable prices for food. A vigorous defender of political freedom, Sen believed that famines do not occur in functioning democracies because their leaders must be more responsive to the demands of the citizens. In order for economic growth to be achieved, he argued, social reforms, such as improvements in education and public health, must precede economic reform.

Perceptions: In comparisons

Amartya has been called "the Conscience and the Mother Teresa of Economics" for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. However, he denies the comparison to Mother Teresa by saying that he has never tried to follow a lifestyle of dedicated self-sacrifice.

The Spinelli Group

On 15 September 2010, Sen supported the new initiative Spinelli Group in the European Parliament, which was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). Other prominent supporters are: Jacques Delors, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt, Andrew Duff, Elmar Brok.

India: University mentor for growth and revival

Nalanda International University Project

In May 2007, he was appointed by the Government of India as chairman of Nalanda Mentor Group to examine the framework of international cooperation, and proposed structure of partnership, which would govern the establishment of Nalanda International University Project as an international centre of education seeking to revive the ancient center of higher learning which was present in India from the 5th century CE to 1197 CE.

Presidency College, Kolkata

In June 2011, he was appointed as the Chief Mentor of Presidency College by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Personal life and beliefs

Sen's first wife was Nabaneeta Dev Sen, an Indian writer and scholar, with whom he had two children: Antara, a journalist and publisher, and Nandana, a Bollywood actress. Their marriage broke up shortly after they moved to London in 1971. In 1973, he married his second wife, Eva Colorni, who was Jewish, who died from stomach cancer in 1985. They had two children, Indrani, a journalist in New York, and Kabir, who teaches music at Shady Hill School.

His present wife, Emma Georgina Rothschild, is an economic historian, an expert on Adam Smith and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Sen usually spends his winter holidays at his home in Santiniketan in West Bengal, India, where he likes to go on long bike rides, and maintains a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he and Emma spend the spring and long vacations. Asked how he relaxes, he replies: "I read a lot and like arguing with people."

Sen is a self-proclaimed agnostic and holds that this can be associated with Hinduism as a political entity. In an interview for the magazine ''California'', which is published by the University of California, Berkeley, he noted:

Academic achievements, awards and honors

Sen has received many honorary degrees (over 90) from universities around the world, including from the following: {| | valign="top" | |}

1981; He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1982: He was awarded honorary fellowship by the Institute of Social Studies.

1998: He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in welfare economics.

1999: He received the Bharat Ratna 'the highest civilian award in India' by the President of India.

1999: He was offered the honorary citizenship of Bangladesh by Sheikh Hasina in recognition of his achievements in winning the Nobel Prize, and given that his ancestral origins were in what has become the modern state of Bangladesh

2000: He was awarded the order of Companion of Honour, UK.

2000: He received Leontief Prize for his outstanding contribution to economic theory from the Global Development and Environment Institute.

2000: He was awarded the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service USA;

2000: He was the 351st Commencement Speaker of Harvard University.

2002: He received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

2003: He was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

He is awarded the Life Time Achievement award by Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)

2010: He was chosen to deliver the Demos Annual Lecture 2010

Publications

Choice of Techniques, 1960.

Sen, Amartya, ''An Aspect of Indian Agriculture'', Economic Weekly, Vol. 14, 1962.

''Collective Choice and Social Welfare'', 1970, Holden-Day, 1984, Elsevier. Description.

Sen, Amartya, ''On Economic Inequality'', New York, Norton, 1973. (Expanded edition with a substantial annexe by James E. Foster and A. Sen, 1997).

On Economic Inequality, 1973.

Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, 1981a.

Sen, Amartya, ''Poverty and Famines : An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982a.

Sen, Amartya K., ''Choice, Welfare and Measurement'', Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982b. Description and scroll to chapter-preview links.

Sen, Amartya, ''Food Economics and Entitlements'', Helsinki, Wider Working Paper 1, 1986.

Sen, Amartya, ''On Ethics and Economics'', Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987. Scroll to chapter-preview links.

Drèze, Jean and Sen, Amartya, ''Hunger and Public Action''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989.

''Hunger and Public Action'', jointly edited with Jean Drèze, 1989

Sen, Amartya, "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing". ''New York Review of Books'', 1990. ()

Sen, Amartya, ''Inequality Reexamined'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Nussbaum, Martha, and Sen, Amartya. ''The Quality of Life''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Preview.

''India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity'', with Jean Drèze, 1995.

Sen, Amartya, ''Reason Before Identity'' (The Romanes Lecture for 1998), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-951389-9

Commodities and Capabilities, 1999.

Sen, Amartya, ''Development as Freedom'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999. (Review by the Asia Times)

Development as Freedom, 1999.

Reason Before Identity, 1999.

Freedom, Rationality, and Social Choice: The Arrow Lectures and Other essays, 2000.

Sen, Amartya, ''Rationality and Freedom'', Harvard, Harvard Belknap Press, 2002.

Rationality and Freedom, 2004.

Inequality Reexamined, 2004.

The Argumentative Indian, 2005.

Sen, Amartya, ''The Argumentative Indian'', London: Allen Lane, 2005. (Review by the Guardian, Review by the Washington Post)

Sen, Amartya, ''The Three R's of Reform'', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40(19): pp. 1971–1974, 2005.

Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of Our Time), New York, W. W. Norton, 2006.

Imperial Illusions: India, Britain, and the wrong lessons. By Amartya Sen. Response by Niall Ferguson.

Equality of Capacity by Amartya Sen

''The Idea of Justice'' Harvard University Press & London: Allen Lane,2009. Description and scroll to chapter-preview links.

Other Publications on Google Scholar

See also

The Equality of autonomy, a concept of equality posed by Sen.

The Kerala model, an expression or concept invented and introduced by Sen.

References

External links

Comprehensive list of articles by Sen

Nobel Prize Biography

Amartya Sen: The Possibility of Social Choice (Nobel lecture)

Profile in The Guardian

Profile at The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

;Audio

Sen interviewed about his book The Idea of Justice He discusses how prevailing theories of justice have led us astray. April 2010.

Amartya Sen discusses his book "Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny", on Thoughtcast

Interview on IT Conversations

Immigration and Development, with Amartya Sen, on Open Source (radio show)

Amartya Sen in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum

;Video

Lecture at Duke University "The Uses and Abuses of Adam Smith" March 2010

Category:Academics of the London School of Economics Category:Alumni of Presidency University, Kolkata Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Bengali Nobel laureates Category:Bengali people Category:Consequentialists Category:Recipients of the Bharat Ratna Category:Development economists Category:Development specialists Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Category:Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society Category:Feminist economists Category:Harvard University faculty Category:University of Delhi faculty Category:University of Calcutta faculty Category:Honorary Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge Category:Indian academics Category:Indian atheists Category:Indian economists Category:Indian Hindus Category:Indian Nobel laureates Category:Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit recipients Category:International development Category:Masters of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:People associated with Santiniketan Category:People from West Bengal Category:Political theorists Category:The Hunger Project Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:Wesleyan University people Category:Visva-Bharati University alumni Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:Presidents of the Econometric Society Category:Trustees of the British Museum Category:Jadavpur University faculty Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Indian people of Bangladeshi descent

ar:أمارتيا سن bn:অমর্ত্য সেন bg:Амартя Сен ca:Amartya Sen cs:Amartya Sen da:Amartya Sen de:Amartya Sen es:Amartya Sen fa:آمارتیا سن fr:Amartya Sen gd:Amartya Sen gl:Amartya Sen gu:અમર્ત્ય સેન ko:아마르티아 센 hi:अमर्त्य सेन id:Amartya Sen is:Amartya Sen it:Amartya Sen he:אמרטיה סן kn:ಅಮರ್ತ್ಯ ಸೇನ್ ka:ამარტია სენი la:Amartya Sen lv:Amartja Sens hu:Amartya Sen ml:അമർത്യ സെൻ mr:अमर्त्य सेन nl:Amartya Sen new:अमर्त्य सेन ja:アマルティア・セン no:Amartya Sen pnb:امرتیا سین pl:Amartya Sen pt:Amartya Sen ro:Amartya Sen ru:Сен, Амартия sc:Amartya Sen sk:Amartya Sen sl:Amartya Sen fi:Amartya Sen sv:Amartya Sen ta:அமர்த்தியா சென் te:అమర్త్యా సేన్ th:อมรรตยะ เสน tr:Amartya Sen uk:Амартія Кумар Сен vi:Amartya Sen yo:Amartya Sen zh:阿马蒂亚·库马尔·森

name	Thomas Sowell
school tradition	New Social Economics
color	maroon
birth date	June 30, 1930
birth place	Gastonia, North Carolina
nationality	United States
institution	Hoover Institution (1980–present)UCLA (1970–1972, 1974–1980)Urban Institute (1972–1974)Brandeis University (1969–1970)Cornell University (1965–1969)
field	Economics, Education, Politics, History, Race relations, Child development
education	Harvard University (B.A.) 1958Columbia University (M.A.) 1959University of Chicago (Ph.D.) 1969
influences	Edmund Burke, Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, David Hume, Adam Smith, George Stigler
opposed	Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith
influenced	Clarence Thomas, Walter E. Williams, Milton Friedman, Steven Pinker, George Gilder, Paul Johnson, Arthur C. Brooks, Fred Barnes, Jonah Goldberg, David Mamet, Rush Limbaugh
awards	Military Service: United States Marine Corps, Corporal, Francis Boyer Award, National Humanities Medal, Bradley Prize, getAbstract International Book Award
signature
repec prefix	| repec_id }}

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, humanitarian and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective. He is currently a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Sowell was born in North Carolina and raised in Harlem, New York. He dropped out of high school and served in the United States Marines during the Korean War. In 1968, he earned his doctorate degree in economics from the University of Chicago; in that subject, he earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959.

Throughout his career in economics, Sowell has served on the faculties of such universities as Cornell and University of California, Los Angeles and think tanks as the Urban Institute and since 1980 the Hoover Institution. He has written over 20 books since 1972.

Biography

Sowell, an African-American, was born in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father died before he was born, and Sowell's mother, a maid, already had four children. His great-aunt and her two grown daughters adopted Sowell. In his autobiography, ''A Personal Odyssey,'' he recalled that his encounters with whites were so limited he did not believe that yellow was a hair color. When Sowell was nine, his family moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Sowell attended the selective Stuyvesant High School even though no one in his family had an education beyond sixth grade. He dropped out at age 17 because of financial difficulties and a deteriorating home environment. To support himself he worked at various jobs, including in a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union, and tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. Sowell was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and was assigned to the US Marine Corps. Due to prior experience in photography, he worked in a photography unit but also trained Marines in handgun use.

After discharge, Sowell took a Civil Service job in Washington, D.C. and attended night classes at Howard University despite lacking a high school diploma. High grades on College Board exams and recommendations by two of his professors helped him be accepted to Harvard University, where in 1958 he graduated ''magna cum laude'' with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics despite early poor grades. He received a Master of Arts in economics from Columbia University in 1959 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. Sowell initially chose Columbia University because he wanted to study under George Stigler (who years later went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics). After arriving at Columbia and learning that Stigler had moved to Chicago, he followed him there.

Sowell has taught economics at Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman, his mentor.

Sowell has stated that he was a Marxist “during the decade of my 20s"; one of his earliest professional publications was a sympathetic examination of Marxist thought vs. Marxist-Leninist practice. His experience working as a federal government intern during the summer of 1960 caused him to reject Marxian economics in favor of free market economic theory. During his work, Sowell discovered a correlation between the rise of mandated minimum wages for workers in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and the rise of unemployment in that industry. Studying the patterns led Sowell to theorize that the government employees who administered the minimum wage law cared more about their own jobs than the plight of the poor.

Writings

Sowell is both a syndicated columnist and an academic economist.

Besides scholarly writing, Sowell has written books, articles, and syndicated columns for a general audience in such publications as ''Forbes Magazine'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', and major newspapers. He is a regular contributor to GOPUSA, a conservative web and email newsletter run by Endeavor Media Group, LLC. He primarily writes on economic subjects, generally advocating a free market approach to capitalism. Sowell, whose autobiography describes his serious study of Karl Marx, opposes Marxism, providing a critique in his book ''Marxism: Philosophy and Economics''. He also argues that, contrary to popular perception, Marx never held to a labor theory of value.

Sowell also writes on racial topics and is a critic of affirmative action and race based quotas. While often described as a black conservative, he prefers not to be labeled, and considers himself more libertarian than conservative.

In another departure from economics, Sowell wrote ''The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late'', a follow-up to his ''Late-Talking Children''. This book investigates the phenomenon of late-talking children, frequently misdiagnosed with autism or pervasive developmental disorder. He includes the research of—among others—Professor Stephen Camarata, Ph.D., of Vanderbilt University and Professor Steven Pinker, Ph.D., of Harvard University in this overview of a poorly understood developmental trait. It is a trait which he says affected many historical figures. He includes famous late-talkers such as physicists Albert Einstein, Edward Teller and Richard Feynman; mathematician Julia Robinson; and musicians Arthur Rubenstein and Clara Schumann. The book and its contributing researchers make a case for the theory that some children develop unevenly (asynchronous development) for a period in childhood due to rapid and extraordinary development in the analytical functions of the brain. This may temporarily “rob resources” from neighboring functions such as language development. The book contradicts Simon Baron-Cohen’s speculation that Einstein may have had Asperger syndrome (see also people speculated to have been autistic).

Themes of Sowell’s writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education and decision-making, to classical and Marxist economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities.

In ''Intelligence and Ethnicity'', Sowell argues that IQ gaps are hardly startling or unusual between, or within, ethnic groups. He notes that the roughly 15-point gap in contemporary black–white IQ scores is similar to that between the national average and the scores of particular ethnic white groups in years past.

Sowell has also written a trilogy of books on ideologies and political positions, including ''A Conflict of Visions'' where he speaks about the origins of political strife, The Vision of the Anointed, where he compares the conservative/libertarian and liberal/progressive worldviews,''The Quest for Cosmic Justice'', where, like in many of his other writings, he outlines the his thesis of the need for intellectuals, politicians and leaders to fix and perfect the world in utopian, and ultimately he posits, disastrous fashions. Separate from the trilogy, but also in discussion of the subject,he wrote ''Intellectuals and Society'', where he discusses what he argues to be the blind hubris and follies of intellectuals in a variety of areas, building on his earlier work.

Sowell takes strong issue with the notion of government as a helper or savior of minorities, arguing that the historical record shows quite the opposite.

Sowell also challenges the notion that black progress is due to progressive government programs or policies, in ''The Economics and Politics of Race,'' (1983), ''Ethnic America'' (1981), ''Affirmative Action'' (2004), and other books. He claims that many problems identified with blacks in modern society are hardly unique in terms of American ethnic groups, nor in terms of a rural proletariat swept by disruption as it became urbanized, discussed in his book, ''Black Rednecks and White Liberals''.

In ''Affirmative Action Around the World'' Sowell holds that affirmative action covers most of the American population, particularly women, and has long since ceased to be directed towards blacks.

Columns

Sowell has a nationally syndicated column distributed by Creators Syndicate that appears in various newspapers, as well as online on websites such as Townhall, WorldNetDaily, OneNewsNow and the ''Jewish World Review''.

Sowell comments on issues he considers to be problematic in modern-day society, which include liberal media bias; judicial activism (while staunchly defending originalism); partial birth abortion; the minimum wage; socializing health care; affirmative action; government bureaucracy; militancy in U.S. foreign policy; the U.S. war on drugs, and multiculturalism.

Sowell supports free market and pro-growth economics. In one column he criticized as socialism for the rich certain policies which he describes as benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Sowell in a Townhall editorial, "The Bush Legacy", assessed President George W. Bush, deeming him "a mixed bag", but "an honorable man".

Sowell also favors decriminalization of all drugs.

Awards

In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002, Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. In 2003, he was awarded the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement. In 2008, getAbstract awarded his book ''Economic Facts and Fallacies'' with its International Book Award.

Critical reception

Political views

Sowell has been criticized for various remarks such as a comparison he made between President Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler in an editorial for ''Investor's Business Daily'' after the creation of a relief fund for the BP oil spill. This has been criticized by liberal groups such as Media Matters and the Democratic National Committee. However, Republicans such as Sarah Palin and Representative Louie Gohmert have endorsed Sowell's comparison. Sowell was also criticized for an editorial in which he stated that the Democratic Party played the Race card, instigating ethnic divisions and separatism, and argued that a similar situation occurred between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda.

Economics

''The Economist'' magazine praised Sowell's books ''Affirmative Action Around the World'' as "terse, well argued and utterly convincing" and "crammed with striking anecdotes and statistics" and ''Economic Facts and Fallacies'': "Mr Sowell marshals his arguments with admirable clarity and authority. There is not a chapter in which he does not produce a statistic that both surprises and overturns received wisdom."

The Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen reached conclusions inconsistent with Sowell's research of price gouging.

Reviewing Sowell's 1984 book ''Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?'', University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson said that Sowell did not explore "reasonable alternative explanations and hypotheses" in his critiques of affirmative action. For instance, regarding Sowell's theory that women are underrepresented in fields like law and engineering because of the heavy responsibilities of marriage such as childrearing and other household work: "A plausible alternative to Mr. Sowell's hypothesis on women's pay differentials and occupational segregation is that women are virtually excluded from many desirable positions and therefore crowd into obtainable occupations." Sowell since then has written on affirmative action in an international context to address such criticisms in two books (Preferential Policies, Affirmative Action Around the World) and has written about pay differentials and occupational segregation in ''Economic Facts and Fallacies''.

Career highlights

Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, September 1980–present

Professor of Economics, UCLA, July 1974–June 1980

Visiting Professor of Economics, Amherst College, September–December 1977

Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, April–August 1977

Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, July 1976–March 1977

Project Director, The Urban Institute, August 1972–July 1974

Associate Professor of Economics, UCLA, September 1970–June 1972

Associate Professor of Economics, Brandeis University, September 1969–June 1970

Assistant Professor of Economics, Cornell University, September 1965–June 1969

Economic Analyst, American Telephone & Telegraph Co., June 1964–August 1965

Lecturer in Economics, Howard University, September 1963–June 1964

Instructor in Economics, Douglass College, Rutgers University, September 1962–June 1963

Labor Economist, U.S. Department of Labor, June 1961–August 1962

Books by Sowell

2011. 2010. 2010. 2009. 2008. 2007. 2007. 2007. 2006. 2006. 2005. 2004.

2004. ''Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy'', revised and expanded ed. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08145-2 (1st ed. 2000)

2003. ''Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One'', ISBN 0-465-08143-6

2002. ''The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late'', ISBN 0-465-08141-X

2002. ''Controversial Essays'', ISBN 0-8179-2992-4

2002. ''A Personal Odyssey'', ISBN 0-684-86465-7

2002. ''The Quest For Cosmic Justice'', ISBN 0-684-86463-0

1998. ''Conquests and Cultures: An International History'', ISBN 0-465-01400-3

1996. ''Migrations and Cultures: A World View'', ISBN 0-465-04589-8 OCLC 41748039

1996. ''The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy''. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08995-X

1995. ''Race and Culture: A World View''. Description & chapter previews. ISBN 0-465-06796-4

1993. ''Inside American Education'', ISBN 0-7432-5408-2

1987. ''A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles''. William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-06912-6

1987. ''Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays''. William Morrow, ISBN 0688-07114-7

1986. ''Marxism: Philosophy and Economics''. Quill, ISBN 0-688-06426-4

1984. ''Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?'' William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-03113-7

1983. ''The Economics and Politics of Race''. William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-01891-2

1981. ''Ethnic America: A History''. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02074-7

1981. ''Markets and Minorities''. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-04399-2

1980. ''Knowledge and Decisions''. Basic Books.

1975. ''Race and Economics''. David McKay Company Inc, ISBN 0-679-30262-X

1972. ''Say's Law, An Historical Analysis''. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04166-0

See also

List of newspaper columnists

References

External links

Thomas Sowell’s home page

*Complete list of writings

Thomas Sowell Features at Creators Syndicate

Column archive at Townhall.com

Free Podcasts of Sowell’s recent articles

Archive of Articles by Thomas Sowell at JewishWorldReview.com

Book review of ''The Einstein Syndrome'' by Isabelle Rapin, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Snopes.com on Various articles attributed to Thomas Sowell

Articles and interviews

'Uncommon Knowledge' Interviews (2008-2011)

CSPAN -'Booknotes' interview (May 24, 1990)

Fox News - 'In the Right Direction' interview (2005)

CSPAN - 'Q&A' interview (April 17, 2005)

"A Dangerous Obsession" — Part I II, III, IV, and V

"Too “Complex”?" — Part I, II, & III

"Alice in Health Care" — Part I, II, III, IV

"The 'Costs' of Medical Care" — Part I, II, III, IV

Socialism for the rich by Thomas Sowell (October 6, 2006)

“10 Questions With Thomas Sowell”, John Hawkins, ''Right Wing News''. Sowell on flat-tax vs. progressive tax, rent-control, balanced budget amendments, protectionist tariffs, poverty and welfare, profit-restriction, illegal immigration, a weak dollar vs. a strong dollar, affirmative action, and reparations.

'Uncommon Knowledge' discussion of affirmative action

Economic Fallacies -- Interview with Thomas Sowell by Bill Steigerwald

Thomas Sowell- Columns on Jewish World Review website

“Race and IQ” Detailed discussion of Race and IQ including techniques that have masked the improvement of black IQ scores.

“Choosing a College” — discusses benefits and costs including college quality, size, specialty, intellectual rigor, social, political and sexual environment of today’s campuses. Recommends hard-nosed parental analysis (including campus visits) that ignores PR fluff and focuses on the bottom line

“Affirmative Action around the World” - critical analysis of Affirmative Action and its failures worldwide.

Salon interview with Sowell

Audio interview with National Review Online

Sowell on Economic Facts and Fallacies: Audio interview

Sowell en español

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