Summary
Fundamental human needs is the theory that people everywhere share the same few needs, and that what differs between cultures and eras is how they are met. It was set out in ‘Human Scale Development’ (English edition 1989) by Manfred Max-Neef, Antonio Elizalde and Martin Hopenhayn, drawing on work across Latin America, as a challenge to development measured in output: “Development is about people and not about objects”.
They name nine needs – subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity and freedom – with no ranking beyond staying alive. Food and schooling are ‘satisfiers’, not needs. An unmet need is a poverty, so there are many poverties, not one.
Rationale
Not our subject exactly: needs stay constant, dispositions are grown. They meet where the authors say a culture is defined partly by its “choice of satisfiers” – which choices feel obvious is disposition at work.