Book Club Fall 2021: Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen

About the author:

Who are you really? What defines you and makes you who you are? And why do questions like these matter? Though the topic of individual identity has frequently been explored through the lenses of metaphysics or art, considering our identity in terms of the groups we belong to offers another route to understanding ourselves—as the work of the author of our latest book club pick shows.

Amartya Sen (b. 1937) is an Indian economist and philosopher. He was born in Bengal (now Bangladesh).  Sen did one undergraduate degree in Calcutta, and another at Cambridge University in England, during the tenure of economist Joan Robinson, a prolific economist who wrote about a variety of topics including imperfect competition and Keynes macroeconomic theories. Sen completed his PhD at Cambridge, followed by teaching at Delhi School of Economics, London School of Economics, Oxford and Harvard, as well as guest lectures all over the place.