The Capability Approach as a Development Paradigm? Sabina Alkire
[email protected] Material for the training session preceding the 3rd international conference on the capability approach, Pavia, Sunday 7 September 2003, 9:00-12:30. Table of Contents 1 THE CAPABILITY APPROACH....................................................................................................................... 2 1.1 The Proposition................................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Constituent Elements ........................................................................................................................................ 4 1.2.1 Functionings .................................................................................................................................................. 4 1.2.2 Freedoms ....................................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2.3 Nussbaum’s Capabilities: basic, internal, and combined.............................................................................. 6 1.3 Other Elements ................................................................................................................................................. 7 2 BEYOND AN ‘APPROACH’............................................................................................................................. 9 2.1 On Paradigms ................................................................................................................................................... 9 2.2 The Capability Approach’s key insights......................................................................................................... 12 2.2.1 Multidimensionality ..................................................................................................................................... 13 2.2.2 Focus on human ends .................................................................................................................................. 14 2.2.3 Centrality of freedom, agency; participation; empowerment ...................................................................... 14 2.2.4 Multidisciplinary ......................................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.5 Complementarity ......................................................................................................................................... 15 2.2.6 Incompleteness............................................................................................................................................. 15 2.2.7 Diversity among People............................................................................................................................... 15 2.2.8 Value Judgements ........................................................................................................................................ 16 2.2.9 Complex homo economicus ......................................................................................................................... 16 2.2.10 Justice and Poverty Reduction................................................................................................................... 16 2.3 Other ways forward ........................................................................................................................................ 17
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This text is for the Training Course preceding the 3rd International Conference on the Capability Approach, Pavia, 7 September 2003. Please do not distribute (or quote) without permission. Please email any comments to
[email protected]. Many thanks! © Sabina Alkire 2003
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1 THE CAPABILITY APPROACH Many ask, ‘how do we operationalize the capability approach’? In some cases, this question has a very particular focus related to their research area. Others ask the question in a somewhat broader way. Their hope seems to be that the capability approach will become a working programme of activities at many levels – academic, policy and field – and in many spheres of work – economic, political, social, legal, philosophical, etc. That is, a number of people have found that the capability approach better articulates the goal towards which they wish to work that do goals prevalent in some settings (economic growth, extension of the market). So they want to know how to work together to further it. This session explores how this joint work might evolve. What would we – we who are invested in carrying the capability approach forward (or who might be) – need to do in order to develop the paradigm? How could we work together, and most strategically, to make that happen? Who do we need to work with? What do we need to work on? In that sense, this course is much more pragmatic than those that preceded it. Here I will presume that you are familiar with the basic concepts of the capability approach – although I will review them quickly for the record. Acknowledge limitations Please be aware that there are many ways that this particular course could be taught, as I am very well aware! I have chosen to focus on Sen’s writings. So while I give examples from Nussbaum and others, I do not dwell on the textured conceptual differences. I have also chosen to illustrate this course with examples from economics instead of examples from the legal or political or health or education or environmental spheres of work, for example. All these and other spheres are important. But in a presentation it is easier to herd a few examples along, and work through other examples together in discussion. 1.1 The Proposition The capability approach is a normative proposition. The proposition is that social arrangements should be primarily evaluated according to the extent of freedom people have to promote or achieve functionings they value. Put simply, progress, or development, or poverty reduction, occurs when people have greater freedoms (= capabilities).
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Of course capability information is not the only information of interest, and also it is no simple matter to ‘measure’ and ‘compare’ capability sets. But let us leave these issues aside temporarily, and firmly grasp the proposition. In Inequality Re-examined, Sen opens with this description: A person’s capability to achieve functionings that he or she has reason to value provides a general approach to the evaluation of social arrangements, and this yields a particular way of viewing the assessment of equality and inequality.2 Sen’s book Development as Freedom opens with this sentence: “Development can be seen, it is argued here, as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.”3 This proposition is fundamental to Sen’s capability approach as it is developed in both Inequality Re-examined and Development as Freedom. It describes the objective of public action. Nussbaum’s work can, at this level of generalization, be regarded similarly as advocating an expansion in capabilities although her definitions, and her emphases, differ. She sets out a partly specified set of capabilities that are to function as ‘a set of goals’ to be realised (by expanding existing capabilities until a threshold or bare minimum is crossed). the community of nations should reach a transnational overlapping consensus on the capabilities list, as a set of goals for cooperative international action and a set of commitments that each nation holds itself to for its own people.4 If there is any kernel or ‘nugget’ that is very most important to remember, it is this one. Is the proposition Expanding capability or Equality in Capability Space? As some of you will recognise, there is a second proposition in the capability approach, which concerns the ‘space’ in which we consider justice. Sen recognises that most theories of justice advocate equality in some space. If equality in social arrangements is to be demanded in some space, it is to be demanded in the space of capabilities. So should our proposition be, instead, to enable all people to enjoy equal capability sets?
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1992: 5 1999 opening sentence. 4 Nussbaum 2000:104 3
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Or should it be, instead, with Nussbaum, to provide a “threshold level of each capability”?5
Perhaps. Both objectives are also important to keep in view. But for the present purposes, we will restrict our discussion to the least ambitious proposition, namely that of expanding capabilities. So the next time you are in an elevator and someone asks you what the capability approach is, find some fetching way of explaining to them the objective of:
1.2 Constituent Elements How do you explain the capability approach in a fetching way? First, we must review the constituent concepts of the capability approach. In the most straightforward sense, capability – for both Sen and Nussbaum – refers to “what people are actually able to do and to be.”6 For Sen, capability is the various combinations of functionings (beings and doings) that the person can achieve. [It] is, thus, a set of vectors of functionings, reflecting the person’s freedom to lead one type of life or another...to choose from possible livings. 7 All formulations of capability have two parts: freedom and valuable beings and doings (functionings). Sen’s significant contribution has been to unite the two concepts, and any account of capabilities that does not include both misrepresents this approach. The two component parts are described below. 1.2.1 Functionings Sen argues that functionings – that is ‘the various things a person may value doing or being’8 – taken together create a better conceptual space in which to assess social welfare
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Nussbaum Women and Human Development page 6 Nussbaum Women and Human Development page 5 and elsewhere 7 Sen 1992: 40 6
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than psychic utility (Bentham) or wealth or a primary goods (Rawls). Functionings are ‘beings and doings,’ such as being nourished, being confident, or taking part in group decisions. Like Aristotle Sen claims that “functionings are constitutive of a person’s being.”9 For some of you, the capability approach may feel confusing because of the terms – and especially that difficult phrase “beings and doings”. But functionings are actually very familiar and intuitive parts of life to real people. For example, when people in the village of Kudkitunda, Orissa, considered how an NGO’s work had impacted their lives, they mentioned functionings (and capabilities) like being able to educate their children, feeling “blessed”, enjoying normal personal and community life after being widowed, having the strength to work, and so on.10 ‘Functionings’ is an umbrella term for the resources and activities and attitudes people spontaneously recognize to be important – such as poise, knowledge, a warm friendship, an educated mind, a good job. What is centrally important varies in different places, which is why there is no rigid and inflexible set of specific capabilities – the priorities will have to be set and re-set again and again in different ways. 1.2.2 Freedoms A person’s achieved functionings at any given time are the particular beings or doings he or she enjoys. But you could enjoy a nice basket of functionings in situations where you might still feel that something significant was missing. For example you might have a medium high standard of life but be subject to the decisions made by a totalitarian leader, or by your husband, or by a local landlord, or by a patronising missionary or a defunct economist. In order to attend to the foundational importance of freedom Sen introduces the concept of capability. “The ‘good life’ is partly a life of genuine choice, and not one in which the person is forced into a particular life – however rich it might be in other respects.”11 The intrinsic value of freedom is popularly recognised with emphases such as empowering people to help themselves, or focusing on people as the ‘actors’ and the creative ‘agents’ of their own development. Of course freedom is a complex subject in and of itself, and Sen writes extensively on it – some freedoms you might rather avoid, some functionings you would like others to provide automatically, and some choices would be more liberating if made by others. The proposition we
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1999a:75 1992:39, 1999a:73. See Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. Nussbaum’s work investigates this heritage. Mathai 2003 11 Sen 1996a:59 9
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are considering has room for all of those adjustments to be made, even though we are not probing them in this swift review. 1.2.3 Nussbaum’s Capabilities: basic, internal, and combined Nussbaum distinguishes three kinds of capabilities: basic, internal, and combined. Basic capabilities are “the innate equipment of individuals that is the necessary basis for developing the more advanced capabilities and a ground of moral concern” – for example, seeing and hearing, and the capability for speech, language, love, gratitude, practical reason, work.12 Internal capabilities are “developed states of the person herself that are, so far as the person herself is concerned, sufficient conditions for the exercise of requisite functions…mature conditions of readiness” – i.e. bodily maturity, capability for sexual functioning, religious freedom, freedom of speech.13 Combined capabilities are “internal capabilities combined with suitable external conditions for the exercise of the function”.14 If one is able to express one’s point of view and is also able, within the political and cultural systems, to do so, then one enjoys a combined capability (if one is capable of expressing a view but not able to for fear of repercussions, one has the internal capability for freedom of speech but lacks the combined capability). Nussbaum’s ‘list’ of central human capabilities is a list of combined capabilities, and it is these that development activities (and other activities) should aim to expand. Her list appears below and demonstrates the wide range of beings and doings that people may value. It gives you some concrete examples of capabilities to mention in the elevator.
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2000a:84 see 1988 2000a:84 14 2000a:84-85 13
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Nussbaum: Central Human Functional Capabilities15 Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living. Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter. Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; having one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign, i.e. being able to be secure against assault, including sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction. Senses, Imagination, Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason – and to do these things in a “truly human” way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing self-expressive works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to search for the ultimate meaning of life in one’s own way. Being able to have pleasurable experiences, and to avoid non-necessary pain. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by overwhelming fear and anxiety, or by traumatic events of abuse or neglect. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.) Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s own life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience.) Affiliation. A. Being able to live for and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; to have the capability for both justice and friendship. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedoms of assembly and political speech.) B. Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails, at a minimum, protections against discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, caste, ethnicity, or national origin. Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities. Control over one’s Environment. A. Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association. B. Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), not just formally but in terms of real opportunity; and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into mutual relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.
1.3 Other Elements The capability approach is, as you probably already know, much richer than this presentation of it. In particular, Sen discusses information that is somewhat differently framed than ‘capabilities’ per se – human rights, for example, or evaluator relativity or agency freedom – and argues that this information should be taken into account when we evaluate social arrangements. He also discusses processes and principles – like ‘agency’ ‘participation’ and
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Nussbaum 2000a:78-80 7
distributional equity – that should come into play.16 In fact a great deal of information is pertinent in the evaluation of social arrangements, and a considerable challenge for the capability approach is how to enrich the informational base of normative decisions without overwhelming decision processes with too much information. Of course in concrete situations with constraints of time and resources, it may be easier to identify which information is important and realistically attainable. The chart below identifies some of the informational categories that may pertain.17 Some Informational Categories Informational category:
For Whom?
Relative Weights
Resources
Data
Time Period
Decision Mechanism
Capabilities Achieved Functionings Agency Freedom Processes and Actions Responsibility (situated evaluation) Unintended but foreseeable Consequences Motivation Imperfect Obligations Perfect Obligations Menu of Choice Human Rights and Goal rights Utility / Happiness Combining Principles equity, efficiency, aggregation, ranking etc.
The proposition we are exploring, primarily identifies the “space” in which we will be able to spy advances. It does not say that all changes in that space necessarily constitute advances. Rather value judgements are required on an ongoing basis. As Sen writes in Inequality Re-Examined, The primary claim is that in evaluating well-being, the value-objects are the functionings and capabilities. That claim neither entails that all types of capabilities are equally valuable, nor indicates that any capability whatsoever— even if totally remote from the person’s life—must have some value in assessing that person’s well-being. ... The relative valuation of different functionings and capabilities has to be an integral part of the exercise.18 But, for the moment, we have enough information to ask the next question, which is how might the capability approach become a development ‘paradigm’?
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Alkire “Operationalizing Sen’s Capability Approach” 2001. Forthcoming, and also available in mimeo. Taken from Alkire “Operationalizing Sen’s Capability Approach” 2001. Forthcoming, and also available in mimeo on www.fas.harvard.edu/~freedom. 18 page 46 17
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2 BEYOND AN ‘APPROACH’ 2.1 On Paradigms The term “paradigm” came to prominence in the English-speaking world through the slim entry Thomas Kuhn wrote whilst in graduate school, entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that the scientific revolutions occur when a theory emerges that seems “better than its competitors” and has the “promise of success” – that is, which seems more likely to assemble facts in a meaningful way than the predecessor. Paradigms guide scientific communities in identifying the most important problems and avenues of enquiry, in formulating research questions and identifying relevant information, in selecting the methods by which to study these questions, and in interpreting results. After a new paradigm emerges, ‘normal science’ consists of unpacking its promise, and harvesting the insights that it brings – as well as founding journals, professional associations, curricula and a substantive literature. Kuhn’s work triggered an extensive conversation in the philosophy of science, and was the first rather than the last utterance of his own on that subject.19 But even this brief glimpse suggests why the capability approach might be a candidate ‘paradigm’. Fundamentally, the suggestion that we evaluate social arrangements according to the capabilities that people enjoy has appeared to many to contain a “promise” of success. It seems to have clear advantages in comparison with alternatives (focusing on utility or primary goods for example). For example, both utilitarianism and a focus on primary goods might neglect freedom and that is arguably a crucial area of concern. Furthermore, as Sen has clearly articulated, if one uses capability expansion as the basis of ethical evaluation, then the information that one would need to gather in order to evaluate progress changes significantly, and the principles by which information would be assembled aggregated and analysed would also expand.20 Were the capability approach to be taken up in all of the places now inhabited by utilitarian welfare economics or development focused solely upon economic growth, its implications could be rather akin to that of a ‘scientific revolution’. For a paradigm is not just a proposition, however captivating or compelling. It is a captivating vision or insight, linked to a set of technical tools that are propelled expertly by a
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1979 “Informational Analysis of Moral Principles”, and especially the first Dewey lecture published in 1985 as “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom.” 9
set of people with communication, coordination, and feedback mechanisms. The difference between a captivating insight (or in our case a proposition) and a paradigm is that a paradigm is a proposition that has paid a visit to all of the workshops of a discipline or problem (development, poverty, or whatever). At every workshop, the experts have gathered around, grasped the key insight, fiddled for awhile with their own materials and expertise, and endeavoured to actualise the ‘promise’ in their workshop – by figuring out how the insight leads to better work; what changes and what stays the same. A paradigm will be operationalized or implemented again and again, in different settings, disciplines, and problem areas. So how could the capability approach function as a development paradigm? I must, at this point, pause and confess a distinct unease having to do with language. The term ‘paradigm’ has rather grandiose connotations. I feel a rather irrational and rather awkward suspicion of the term, and imagine that if one use terms like ‘paradigm’, then similarly, instead of saying ‘please pass the butter’ one might feel tempted to say, ‘dear lady, would you be so kind as to communicate that lovely pile of sunshine spread to this sphere of the dining arrangements’. One might relish making simple transactions seem lofty and terribly consequential – which can be delightful in the sphere of personal courtesy, but appears rather less helpful in responding to important social issues. I would much prefer to characterise the task of working out the ‘promise’ of the capability approach in the mundane language of ‘follow-through’, or even the mechanical term of operationalize. So I will stay with the image of driving the capability approach around (perhaps on an environmentally friendly bicycle) to the different disciplinary, regional, institutional and technical ‘workshops’ of development. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that all actors in some great development institution decided unanimously that the objective of development economics was not to maximize the sum utility of individual economic actors, but rather to expand valuable capabilities. We could imagine that in the morning after this momentous selection, they came into their respective workshops and gathered in a common area, and considered how they were going to proceed. What might they discuss? Suppose you had been working for fifteen years as an agricultural economist studying the diffusion of innovation and productivity in crop seed varieties. You might have the impression that the capability approach is altogether different from what you have been doing 10
thus far, and so feel dismayed, as if all of your professional skills to date might prove to be of no use. Or, you might judge that many of your hardwon skills revealed important relationships. And so you wanted to learn how the capability approach could empower what you already did, creating fuller analyses or better policy recommendations. Your questions might be: What are valuable ‘beings and doings’ in my work? What capabilities are people trying to expand when they shift crop seed varieties? How do we find out? What relevance does agency have in the settings where we work? How do we find out? What kinds of freedom are relevant? How do they enter our analysis? Where do time, responsibility, participatory processes, and other people fit into this? And, most centrally of all, What of my ‘old’ economics skills can I use – from data to regressions to models? What needs to change? It is these kinds of questions that each of us face, in our respective disciplines and research questions, when we try to apply the capability approach. Let’s start with the last question: “What of my ‘old’ skills can I use?21 Every workshop will fasten onto that question, whether their work relates to gender analysis or statistical software or participatory research or econometrics or survey design or policy recommendations. For the special skills of each workshop are relatively well worked out. We know, for example, how to execute a large survey, how to input the data into the best software, how to clean it, how to make the data publicly available on the web, how to link it to past and future surveys. We know how to train facilitators to develop rapport and trust with local communities, what to wear and how to sustain participatory monitoring and evaluation. We know how to measure child malnutrition and stunting and literacy and longevity. We know how to do controlled experiments, and analyze quasi-experiments that isolate the effects of a particular policy or activity on a population. We know how to formulate and disseminate policy recommendations such that they have a chance of being used. A lot of these skills are sturdy, well-developed. And they might not need to change very much – or they might need to change significantly. One problem is that the workshops are not connected to the capability approach. – the information flow between the emphases of the capability approach and the various
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What follows is from Alkire ‘Operationalizing Sen’s Capability Approach’ 2001, mimeo 11
literatures does not exist; the implications are not driven through; some information that is if central importance to the capability approach may not have been gathered or analysed. Yet to remedy this will require changes rather than overhauls in nearly every workshop. Sen has been very acute in observing the ‘blind spots’ of traditional economic practices, such as revealed preference, or maximization, and so on. At the same time he has argued that these have something to contribute – they have some technical insights that are part of the picture even if they are not all of it. The question to consider is how each set of tools or axioms can contribute to the capability proposition. One way of proceeding – to continue the imaginative exercise of this section – would be for each of the experts from each workshop to reflect upon the key insights of the capability approach, and its ‘promise’, and having reflected upon it, think through how their workshop could best respond. 2.2 The Capability Approach’s key insights If you talk with many economists who work in other areas of economics, they will often comment that the capability approach seems tremendously complicated. Or they may never have heard of it. Yet on reflection, in whatever discipline one is in, the signal insights of the capability approach may already be familiar to many activists and researchers – perhaps in slightly different words and meaning. Many may be active areas of learning and new research. But how can we ‘simplify’ the key insights of the capability approach, so that they become more accessible to others? In an article on Revolutions, John Hicks discusses the need to focus attention very carefully: “In order that we should be able to say useful things about what is happening, before it is too late, we must select, even select quite violently. We must concentrate our attention, and hope that we have concentrated it in the right place. We must work, if we are to work effectively, in some sort of blinkers.”22 Hicks concluded that economic revolutions come when the appropriate area of concentration shifts. The capability approach clearly advocates a shift of concentration. But what would be the focal areas, or the insights, or the ‘blinkers’ that it would adopt? Any explanation of the capability approach is an exercise of simplification. But consider for example the following ten characteristics of the capability approach. Each of them is fundamental to it in some way – and is used by Sen, Nussbaum, and others developing their work. Each of them is also quite readily understandable – although the 22
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‘names’ of these characteristics may change quite a bit depending on the discipline. While this list will certainly be improved by discussion, this or some similar set of the key ideas may be a useful communicative and teaching device. (In fact, as an aside on the ‘process’ of developing the capability approach, it might be quite helpful for us to try to generate some common ‘simplification’ of its main insights. When economic paradigms have shifted – when classical economics arose, or when Keynesianism entered, or when the neoclassical economics returned powerfully in the 1980s – the incoming school has had some core set of teachings. Often of course these have always been partly disputed. But as one post-keynesian observed, there was a value in having a consistent core. In his opinion, post-keynesians had ‘let every flower bloom’ to their detriment. Instead of agreeing upon a set of core principles, every ‘workshop’ developed its own version of post-keynesianism – there were Sraffians, Kaleckians, Minskyians, English neoKeynesians, and American postKeynesians, each with their own priorities and literatures. As a result, many dismissed post-keynesians as being too diffuse and lacking a consistent model to solve the different problems they saw in capitalism (Paul Davison, personal correspondence). Now others would have alternative causal interpretations of the rise and fall of development theories in general (and post-keynesianism in particular); I mention this correspondence only to raise questions as to the process of how colleagues in different continents and institutions can work together effectively – and what kinds of common ground may be usefully developed). In describing the capability approach, these central components will often be relevant: NOTE: These are sketched very briefly below but will be discussed in greater length in class. 1. Multidimensionality 2. Focus on human ends 3. Central role for Freedom 4. Multidisciplinary 5. Complementarity
6. Incompleteness 7. Human Diversity 8. Value Judgements 9. Complex homo economicus 10. Justice and Poverty Reduction
2.2.1 Multidimensionality A person’s capability set is a vector of capabilities that cannot be aggregated. In rejecting utilities as being the sole metric of well being, and in identifying capabilities (some of which are objectively incommensurable) as a focal space, the capability approach is inherently multidimensional. This has implications in a variety of different ways. For example, it means that political, legal, economic, social, environmental, and other disciplinary
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approaches may be relevant.23 More technically, the complexity of modelling and working with multidimensionality means that the capability approach might benefit from recent computational advances, as well as from interaction with literature on multidimensional indicators. 2.2.2 Focus on human ends Rather than focusing attention on ‘mental’ metrics like utility, that may not adequately reflect a person’s achievements, or on commodities whose primary value is instrumental, the capability approach draws attention to ‘beings and doings’ that may be valued as ends. “‘The life of money-making,’ as Aristotle noted, ‘is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.’”24 This is not to say that many capabilities are not also instrumentally valuable (as girls’ education is instrumentally valuable to health, or good health to productivity). In fact the five kinds of capabilities discussed in Development as Freedom are instrumentally as well as intrinsically valued. Still, some care is taken to make sure that the instrumental and intrinsic values of different activities and policies are clearly identified, and that the objective of activities are intrinsically valued ends. As the 1990 Human Development Report put it, “The end of development must be the human being.”25 2.2.3 Centrality of freedom, agency; participation; empowerment Clearly freedom is foundational to the definition of capability, as mentioned above. Furthermore, in identifying and priotising capabilities, a great many ‘value judgements’ are required, and many of these are constructively made, or modified, by public debate.
2.2.4 Multidisciplinary As is evident as much from the breadth of the capability approach as from the writings of its authors, advances will not be confined to any one discipline, whether this is economic, legal, political, philosophical, or another.
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Sen “Freedom of Choice” page 1, quoting Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Bk1, Ch 7 & Bk II, Ch 1-5
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2.2.5 Complementarity Capabilities interact with one another. Some are intrinsically valued and also instrumental to further capabilities. Some capabilities (or capabilities that are enjoyed by some groups) may crowd out or undermine other capabilities (or capabilities of other groups). The interactions between variables are often scrutinized – including between variables that are not often brought into relation to one another. 2.2.6 Incompleteness The capability approach is deliberately incomplete, both foundationally and in practice. In Inequality Reexamined Sen identifies two grounds for this incompleteness: fundamental and pragmatic. The ‘fundamental reason for incompleteness’ (which Sen also refers to as ‘assertive incompleteness’) is that “the ideas of well-being and inequality may have enough ambiguity and fuzziness to make it a mistake to look for a complete ordering of either… The ‘pragmatic reason for incompleteness’ is to use whatever parts of the ranking we manage to sort out unambiguously, rather than maintaining complete silence until everything has been sorted out and the world shines in dazzling clarity.”26 In practice, it may be feasible to rule out many ‘patently unjust,’ inefficient, or otherwise undesirable possibilities even if a complete ranking of possibilities is impossible. 2.2.7 Diversity among People The capability approach addresses positively the fact of human diversity.27 People inhabit different natural and social environments. Their personal characteristics and their physical characteristics are different, as are their skills and priorities. Given this diversity, it is necessary to develop a framework that can be suited to very different needs and priorities. Sen identified capability as a “space” in which basal equality is to be advanced (on the second proposition – that justice requires equality in capability space) or in which advance (the first proposition) is to be noted, precisely because capability space leaves room for diversity. If we focus on the familiar capability to be free from hunger, for example, the kind and quantity of food a person needs to enjoy the freedom varies quite a bit
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Sen Inequality Re-Examined 49, also see Sen Development as Freedom 253-254. Elsewhere he calls this ‘assertive’ incompleteness, which means that even the provision of additional information would not identify one unique optimum. 27 Inequality Re-Examined 1.3 15
depending whether she is a babe in arms or a labourer or a pregnant woman or a frail grandmother. These kinds of individual adaptations are inherent to the capability approach. 2.2.8 Value Judgements If we are interested in increasing people’s freedom to enjoy ‘valuable beings and doings’28 then a key question is what beings and doings are “valuable”? The definition of capability does not prioritize certain capabilities. Rather the selection of capabilities on which to focus is a value judgement (that also depends partly on the purpose of the evaluation), as is the weighting of capabilities relative to each other.29 In fact, the tremendous flexibility of the capability approach means that a great number of value judgements would be required, on an ongoing basis, to operationalize it. 2.2.9 Complex homo economicus The skeletal figure of ‘rational economic man’ who acts so as to maximize self-interest, devoide of relationships or emotions or independence or commitments to various causes, is clearly an insufficient model of human action for the capability approach, which recognizes the objective of human endeavours, as well as the processes of aspiration and practical reason, to be considerably more complex. 2.2.10 Justice and Poverty Reduction The capability approach is not a theory of justice.30 But it is centrally concerned with justice and stands on the shoulders John Rawls’ work. The proposition of the capability approach thus does indeed return ‘ethical’ elements into economics.
This brief sketch has identified some of the key concepts of the capability which, taken together with other more specific emphases (on gender, on human rights, on culture), might communicate it most directly to others. The suggestion was that some set of core insights from the capability approach might be useful in communicating it to those whose expertise will be required in order to operationalize the capability approach in different spheres.
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Development as Freedom p75, Inequality Re-examined p39. Inequality Re-examined 42-46; Development as Freedom 76-85 30 Sen Inequality Re-examined p 87 29
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2.3 Other ways forward What other steps might be taken to operationalize the capability approach? For the purposes of discussion we might consider some of the following: 1. Do a literature survey on the core insights of the capability approach, to identify synergies with other literature, and to nuance and consolidate our understanding of a topic. For each of the ten areas mentioned above, considered independently, is the subject of study by other authors who are not advancing the capability approach. And indeed another central part of creating a development ‘paradigm’ will be to connect the capability approach to each of the other literatures that treat these problems. 2. Engage poor communities in its development, and communicate their reactions and insights. 3. Develop curriculum, textbooks, syllabi, and other teaching materials, and advance the teaching of this work in universities. 4. Consider whether to develop assumptions regarding human action that are more subtle than homo economicus and simplify human action in ways that have better predictive power. 5. Identify the realistic alternative combining principles (decision principles) for analysing complex informational fields that all relate to a common problem. 6. Test the comparative advantage of the capability approach through ‘test cases’ (re-run data that has been analysed previously, and compare results when it is analysed from the capability perspective to explore the ‘value-added of this approach.) 7. Work on processes such as public debate or democratic deliberation, whereby alternatives are discussed and value judgements made or revised. 8. Identify information that is needed to measure capability expansion – what it is, and how to gather, aggregate, and analyse it. 9. Actively communicate in public as well as specialist spaces (to citizens, activists, researchers, policy-makers) 10. Advance the capability approach in professional associations, disciplinary conferences, journals, and good publishers, such that those who advance this work can find the resources and posts necessary to continue. 11. Coordinate between those advancing the capability approach, building horizontal networks of communication and support.
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12. Insofar as possible, deliberately deepen cross-disciplinary academic collaborations. In particular, collaborate with those in information and communications technology so that the capability approach can make use of computational advances that are being developed to handle complex informational fields.
Perhaps, if the work sketched above were advanced, the capability approach would indeed become a development paradigm. But there is something to be said for describing the work that would be required to do so in much more concrete terms – like teams working together in workshops. If one arrives with a broken item to a workshop, someone will come out and examine it. Then they will go and try to find a part that fits. If they can’t they take you to a neighbouring workshop that ‘does’ that problem; as a last resort they emerge with some scraps from the yard and tool a new part for you by hand. These are the problemsolvers of the world, who are mostly concerned with making things work better, and who have the creative instincts necessary to do their work well. The capability approach might have rosy prospects in their hands.
Bibliography
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Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sen, Amartya K. 1979. “Informational Analysis of Moral Principles.” In Ross Harrison, Ed. Rational Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 115-132. —. 1985. "Well-being, agency and freedom." The Journal of Philosophy LXXXII:169-221. —. 1988. “Freedom of Choice.” European Economic Review. 32. 269-294. —. 1992. Inequality Re-examined. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf.
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Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Sen, Amartya. 1985. "Well-being, agency and freedom." The Journal of Philosophy LXXXII:169-221, —. 1992. Inequality Re-examined. Oxford: Clarendon Press, —. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf.
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