Amartya Sen's Capability Approach Research Articles

Assessing integrated employment policies against the capability approach

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the current trend towards integrating employment policies against Amartya Sen's capability approach. By contrast with the conventional efficiency measures, it focuses on two main issues: to what extent does the integration of policies result in more performing programs when it comes to empowering the beneficiaries? What is the impact of integrated programs in terms of freedom to choose and capability for voice? These issues are investigated against a Swiss case study, i.e. the CII‐MAMAC project.Design/methodology/approachAn investigation relying on qualitative interviews conducted with 25 local agents and managers belonging to the various institutions engaged in the CII‐MAMAC project and an in‐depth documentary survey of the official texts (laws, directives, etc.).FindingsIntegrating employment policies is very ambivalent in terms of both empowerment and freedom to choose. On the one hand, it can certainly lead to an increased effort in terms of empowerment, while on the other hand, it may reinforce paternalistic views of the welfare state envisaging the beneficiary as an obedient subject, rather than an active citizen. All in all, integration cannot be seen as the panacea to problems of inefficiency and unfairness in social policies.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper focuses on one case study. Other in‐depth investigations are needed for issuing more general conclusions.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates that using the capability approach to assess public policies opens new paths for evaluation research in this field.

Gender Auditing e Approccio delle Capacitŕ: Teoria e Metodologia

- In this paper we propose a model of Gender Auditing (GA) inspired by Amartya Sen's capability approach. The methodological and normative assumptions and features of the model are outlined in order to list the relevant dimensions of human development. Then, the paper proposes indicators and a simple variation of the Gender Empowerment Measure to evaluate the impact of public policies on gender issues of equal opportunities between men and women.JEL D63, I31, J16Keywords: Economia di Genere, Politiche Pubbliche, Capacitŕ, Well-being

A Framework for the Analysis of Post-conflict Situations: Liberia and Mozambique Reconsidered

For a long time analysts of war-torn societies have understood post-conflict situations primarily as processes of transition towards consolidated statehood. This perspective is increasingly considered unsatisfactory in that it raises false expectations of state-building processes and conceals important dynamics unfolding in situ. This article formulates an integrated analytical framework that allows for characterizing and assessing the dynamics in post-conflict polities. It is argued that any post-conflict polity can be characterized by focusing on the interactions between three post-conflict actors – the formal government, external actors and informal powers. In a second step Amartya Sen's capability approach is used as an analytical benchmark for measuring state-building achievements. Subsequently, the analytical framework is applied for comparing two diverse post-conflict environments, Mozambique and Liberia, in order to illustrate the potential and limitations of the analytical framework.

The Measurement of Child Poverty in the United States

How poverty is defined and measured has significant implications for the identification of children in need. This article evaluates the current measure of child poverty in the United States in order to gauge its appropriateness for assessing child well-being. The article begins with a brief discussion of the meaning of poverty and evaluates the history, structure, and strengths of the official measure of child poverty. In addition, critical shortcomings that potentially mask the known deprivation of poverty are revealed and Amartya Sen's capability approach is introduced as a tool for capturing this deprivation. The overall premise of this article, therefore, is that the discourse on poverty might benefit by reconceptualizing approaches to measuring and defining poverty.

South African universities and human development: Towards a theorisation and operationalisation of professional capabilities for poverty reduction

This paper reports on a research project investigating the role of universities in South Africa in contributing to poverty reduction through the quality of their professional education programmes. The focus here is on theorising and the early operationalisation of multi-layered, multi-dimensional transformation based on ideas from Amartya Sen's capability approach. Key features of a professionalism oriented to public service, which in South Africa must mean the needs and lives of the poor, are outlined. These features include: the demand from justice; the expansion of the comprehensive capabilities both of the poor and professional capability formation to be able to act in ‘pro-poor’ ways; and, praxis pedagogies which shape this connected process. This theorisation is then tentatively operationalised in a process of selecting transformation dimensions.

Lack of a Will or of a Way? Taking a Capability Approach for Analysing Disability Policy Shortcomings and Ensuring Programme Impact in Afghanistan

The present paper attempts to analyse some of the shortcomings that have impeded efforts in the field of disability policy in Afghanistan. After an overview of recent disability initiatives, this paper attempts to explain why they have had a limited impact. The context of a Conflict-Affected Fragile State makes the development of state capacity to deliver basic services for the population particularly difficult. To help overcome these shortcomings, it is argued that Amartya Sen's Capability Approach constitutes a relevant framework for designing disability policy and implementation. Although the definition of human development has evolved considerably over the past decade, the transition from theory to action has been disappointing. Through the example of the National Disability Survey in Afghanistan we argue that one reason for this is the paucity of knowledge and the insufficient focus placed on enhancing the agency of vulnerable groups.

Different spaces for e-development: What can we learn from the capability approach?

“e-Development” is often pursued with a lot of thinking on the ‘e’ and little on the ‘development,’ rendering the link between them ambiguous and fragile. It is important to explicate what kind of “development” is being pursued, and how information and communication technology (ICT) can contribute to this goal. This article draws on Amartya Sen's capability approach to provide some theoretical reflections on e-development. It is argued that the capability approach, being a normative and evaluative approach, provides us with a different “space” to assess e-development and allows us to sensitize and take into account a variety of important issues surrounding ICT adoption for development. This article first provides an introduction to key concepts of the capability approach, which are then drawn on to generate implications for e-development research. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Book Review: Justice and Equality in Education: A Capability Perspective on Disability and Special Educational Needs, Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education, the Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications, Capabilities and Happiness, the Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, Minority Status, Oppositional Culture and Schooling, Minority Status, Oppositional Culture and Schooling

Book Review: Justice and Equality in Education: A Capability Perspective on Disability and Special Educational Needs, Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education, the Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications, Capabilities and Happiness, the Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, Minority Status, Oppositional Culture and Schooling, Minority Status, Oppositional Culture and Schooling

“Justice as Freedom”

A firm's enterprise strategy denotes what a firm stands for. Despite its importance, there has been little research on this topic. Fur thermore, the theoretical bases underlying the existing approaches to en terprise strategy suffer from several limitations. In view of these short comings, this paper invokes Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach (SCA) and its notion of justice as freedom as a normative foundation of enter prise strategy. Toward this end, it integrates different streams in the stake holder theory/business ethics and economics literature. It focuses on the stakeholder capability of having a voice, and the managerial capability of using the knowledge to provide stakeholders a voice and freedom.

Widening participation; widening capability

This paper proposes that widening participation in higher education might distinctively be conceptualised beyond economically driven human capital outcomes, as a matter of widening capability. Specifically, the paper proposes forming the capability of students to become and to be 'strong evaluators', able to make reflexive and informed choices about what makes a good life for each of them. Evaluating equality and justice in higher education, and specifically the case of 'widening participation', is then greatly advanced by considering the conceptual tools provided by Amartya Sen's capability approach. The paper therefore elaborates on Sen's ideas and demonstrates their applicability in relation to widening participation student voices gathered in research interviews. Important though Sen's ideas are, there are barriers that stand in the way of taking up these ideas educationally. While three such barriers are acknowledged in the paper, four resources of possibility for recovering widening participation as capability formation from neoliberal and other forms of instrumentalism are also sketched.

HEALTH DISPARITIES AND AUTONOMY

Disparities in socioeconomic status correlate closely with health, so that the lower a person's social position, the worse his health, an effect that the epidemiologist Michael Marmot has labeled the status syndrome. Marmot has argued that differences in autonomy, understood in terms of control, underlie the status syndrome. He has, therefore, recommended that the American medical profession champion policies that improve patient autonomy. In this paper, I clarify the kind of control Marmot sees as connecting differences in socioeconomic status to health disparities. I then discuss his use of Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to justice, arguing that he is unsuccessful in relating autonomy as a descriptive property with a normative framework that can adequately explain why and to what extent we should reduce health disparities.

Education for sustainable human development: Towards a definition

Three years into the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, there has been considerable discussion regarding education for sustainable development (ESD) at a policy level, yet very few countries and communities have moved to integrate ESD into their educational curriculum. In this article we argue that the conceptualization and implementation of ESD can be advanced by grounding it in the human capability approach.We define education for sustainable human development as educational practice that results in the enhancement of human well-being, conceived in terms of the expansion of individuals' agency, capabilities and participation in democratic dialogue, both for now and for future generations.We conclude that incorporating Amartya Sen's human capability approach as the basis of ESD will provide the clarity of direction and purpose needed for the transformation of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

Freedom in the Space of Equality: A Response to Certain Liberal Egalitarian Objections to Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach

Egalitarians agree that some effort should be made to equalize advantages, but disagree about the terms upon which one should compare people's level of advantage. Amartya Sen's capabilities approach is a relatively recent contribution to that important debate. The capabilities approach evaluates and compares advantage in terms of persons' capabilities to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being, called functionings. The concept of functioning overlaps with 'well-being' or 'welfare,' in that it connotes the satisfactory achievement of valued outcomes. Yet the concept of capability goes beyond well-being in connoting not only states of well-being, but the extent to which a person's agency is deepened and broadened by being capable of choosing from an ever greater field of functionings, viz, the various things he or she manages to do or be in leading a life. The capabilities approach can broadly be described as a species of liberal egalitarianism. As such, it cannot avoid engaging with critical debates on both liberty and equality, and has indeed attracted criticism on both fronts. This dissertation assesses the defensibility of the capabilities approach against two recent and quite different criticisms, which have yet to be substantially and directly responded to as such in the literature surrounding the capabilities approach. The first objection, which I term the 'anti-perfectionist objection' and which I discuss in chapter 2, holds that the capabilities approach is untenable from the point of view of liberal neutrality because, in being pressed to identify particular capabilities as relevant (and others as irrelevant) to inequality, it is inescapably preferential towards a particular conception or set of conceptions of the good life. The second objection, which is addressed in chapter 3, asserts that the capabilities approach, by advocating a pansocietal ranking of persons in terms of their overall capability, endorses a vertical conception of human diversity, viz., one which regards some people as inherently (though arbitrarily) better endowed overall than others. The objection concludes that such vertical conceptions are offensive to the modern ethos of democratic equality. This dissertation aims to refine, evaluate and propose responses to these two objections, both by critically evaluating their assumptions, and identifying how the capabilities approach can best address them.

Women Making Choices

Amartya Sen's capability approach is very useful to analyse how choices affect the potential of women, once the position that women lack self-awareness when they make their choices is dropped. Women's agency is underestimated. Women's ‘otherregarding choices’ are not irrational because altruism has not only intrinsic, but also instrumental value as a source of social capital; it may even increase some types of freedom. The mask of conformity women wear in preferring less to more can be misinterpreted as a lack of awareness. The rapidity with which even poor women make use of opportunities that suit their other-regarding choices and the special modes of functioning they have developed as a result prove that the mask of women's conformity is a shallow one.

No Democracy without Justice: Political Freedom in Amartya Sen's Capability Approach

Amartya Sen has critiqued theories of justice in the liberal tradition for not focusing on actual human living and failing to be truly egalitarian. However, in the absence of a theoretical approach of his own that comprehensively links capabilities and social justice, others have criticised him for not telling us exactly which capabilities should be guaranteed for all citizens in a ‘just’ society. Sen's ‘silence’ on the substantive content of an account of justice is due in large measure to his stringent emphasis on plurality, agency and choice; he turns to democratic processes that allow for public reasoning and social choice to attend to judgements about justice. Yet this critical role for democracy is undermined in Sen's elaboration in the absence of requirements of justice that would protect democracy's fair and effective functioning in a manner consistent with capability egalitarianism. There is need for a fuller account of justice concerning actual opportunities for political participation than is available so far in Sen's work, one that protects equality of substantive political freedom seen properly in the perspective of capabilities, not merely civil liberties and political rights.

Realism, universalism and capabilities

Amartya Sen's capability approach is a perspective that (unlike approaches that focus only on resources or goods) takes into account the heterogeneities between human individuals in the assessment of well-being and advantage. Nevertheless, the recognition of diversity between individuals also poses difficulties to the application of the capability approach in welfare analysis. Tony Lawson's structured ontology will be suggested here in order to render (empirical) diversity compatible with the need to make more general (possibly universal) welfare analysis (and policy prescriptions). This is so because Lawson's structured ontology distinguishes between an empirical level, where diversity exists, and an ontologically distinct level of the causal factors underlying the former: universalizing and generalizing can be made at this latter level.

Resources versus Capabilities: Social Endowments in Egalitarian Theory

Two of the most important theories in contemporary liberal egalitarianism are Ronald Dworkin's equality of resources and Amartya Sen's capability approach. Recently Dworkin has claimed that Sen's capability approach does not provide a genuine alternative to equality of resources. In this article, we provide both an internal and an external critique of Dworkin's claim. In the first part of the article we develop an internal critique by providing a detailed analysis of Dworkin's claim. Andrew Williams has contested Dworkin's claim, but he has failed to convince Dworkin of his objections. We analyze this debate, and offer an argument that, we hope, settles this dispute. In the second part of the article we argue that an analysis beyond the current parameters of the liberal-egalitarian debate points to three significant differences between Dworkin's and Sen's egalitarian theories: the degree to which they rely on an ideal-theoretical approach; their ability to judge social structures that are intertwined with people's social endowments; and their endorsement of a well-defined criterion to demarcate morally relevant from morally irrelevant inequalities. This broader analysis not only reinforces our conclusion that Dworkin's equality of resources and Sen's capability approach are genuinely distinct, but it also suggests some more general insights that may be relevant for a better understanding of contemporary egalitarian thinking.

Education, employment and human development: illustrations from Mexico

By applying Amartya Sen's capability approach, this article questions the functionalist idea that suggests that education can precipitate economic growth and development. It will be argued that the freedom‐centred perspective advances the concept of human capital and that it allows a deeper understanding of the relationship between higher education and human development in Mexico. This empirical‐based article shows how an educational institution contributes to expanding its graduates' basic functionings (e.g. being able to acquire knowledge, being able to get a job in a short time, being able to change jobs and thus to improve earnings, being able to search for better opportunities). However, a further enlargement of human capabilities is restrained due to the lack of social and economic opportunities which are commonly neglected in the mainstream analyses on education, employment and development. The removal of such ‘unfreedoms’ demands a renovated perspective in which education can be seen as a factor—momentous as it is—that interacts continuously with contradictory forces within complex social settings.

What is the capability approach?: Its core, rationale, partners and dangers

The paper specifies the core elements of Amartya Sen's capability approach to socio-economic valuation. It analyzes recent formulations by some of Sen's close associates, in addition to his own work, and identifies important variants, obscurities and tensions, as well as the key rationale and value-added of the approach. The approach is placed within a system of partner discourses, notably the broader ‘human development’ approach. The paper then shows issues faced in operationalization, and dangers that overly vague specification of the approach's rationale and commitments could lead to questionable choices in practical use.

Ethics, Ontology and Capabilities

Amartya Sen's capability approach is concerned with the evaluation of inequality, and in particular with the description of the space in which equality should be assessed (the space of capabilities, or potential functionings). I will argue that Sen's approach is a philosophical exercise aimed at providing the ground for substantive theorising to proceed, that it does not itself engage in substantive theorising, and that it is mainly concerned with ontological description. Sen uses the categories of capabilities and respectively functionings to describe advantage and well-being. This ontological description can then be used for ethical theorising. But, as will be argued, the main emphasis of Sen's approach has been on the former, not on the latter. I will also argue that ontological realism is essential to Sen's approach, and that much of the persuasiveness of Sen's arguments spring from this (not explicitly acknowledged) ontological dimension. Furthermore, I will argue that an explicit recognition of this dimension is crucial for the development of Sen's perspective.