Who Secures Women’s Capabilities in Martha Nussbaum’s Quest for Social Justice?

Abstract

Among the many issues that feminists have debated, three stand out for their urgency and significance: the relationship of theory to practice, universalism to particularism, and the transnational to the local and national. Feminism as theory continues to have a complicated and vexed relationship to women's activism. Even women who engage in struggles that observers might term feminist do not necessarily share feminist identities or participate in women's movements. Similarly, feminists continue to be troubled by universalism. Although certain forms of universalism are integral to most feminisms, Western feminist universalism has been presumptuous in condemning non-Western practices with scant understanding of the cultural and historical contexts which give them meaning. Feminist movements in the global South have sometimes been undermined by Western funded projects which have narrowed the agendas and constituencies of women's movements and by hegemonic Western feminists' appropriation of local discourses. As I elaborate below, I believe that debates about global feminisms have influenced Nussbaum's work and its reception. I begin by describing the key tenets of the human capabilities approach and show how it represents an advance over human rights. I then place capabilities in the context of women's movements transnationally. I assess the different ways in which national states and transnational organizations impede and support the recognition of capabilities. I argue that social movements have a critical role to play in determining and realizing capabilities. Capabilities represent a clear and deliberate advance over human rights in addressing relations between universalism and particularism, theory and practice, and transnationalism and nationalism. (1) Human rights advocates primarily focus on civil and political rights and have traditionally neglected rights within the private domain of the family. By contrast, Nussbaum rejects the view that civil, political, economic, and social rights should be attained sequentially and argues that capabilities are interdependent: the recognition of one of them requires the recognition of others. In Frontiers of Justice she states, [C]apabilities cover the terrain occupied by both the so-called first-generation rights (political and civil liberties) and the socalled second generation rights (economic and social rights). And they play a similar role, providing an account of extremely important fundamental entitlements that can be used as a basis both for constitutional thought within a nation and for thinking about universal justice. (2) Nussbaum identifies ten basic capabilities which, if realized, would enable people to achieve human dignity. They include literacy, liberty of conscience, political participation, freedom from physical violence, engaging in economic transactions, and developing the senses and practical reason. (3) She argues that justice demands that ali citizens should achieve the thresholds that the capabilities approach specifies. Human rights advocates have tended to ignore the role of the state in addressing socio-economic inequalities. By contrast, Nussbaum identifies a key role for the nation-state in realizing capabilities and recognizes the futility of rights and of equality of opportunity when people lack the resources to make meaningful choices. She develops an outcome-oriented approach which supports substantial freedoms. She argues that the radical potential of liberalism lies in forging links between individual freedom and state responsibility. In contrast to traditional human rights perspectives, feminism influences Nussbaum's conception of key capabilities. Senses, Imagination, and Thought, encompass Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think and to reason... [and]to use the imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing expressive works and events of one's own choice, (religious, literary, musical, etc). …