Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

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3. Clarifications 115 this may explain why most capability scholars endorse rich accounts of such diversity. A strong acknowledgement of human diversity has therefore become a hallmark of the capability approach as that literature has developed. Its criticism of other normative approaches is often fuelled by, and based on, the claim that human diversity is insufficiently acknowledged in many normative frameworks and theories. This also explains why the capability approach is often favourably regarded by feminist scholars, and by academics concerned with global justice, race or class relations, or care and disability issues. One of the main complaints of these scholars about mainstream philosophy and economics has been precisely this issue: the relative invisibility of the fate of those people whose lives do not correspond to that of an able-bodied, non-dependent, caregivingfree individual who belongs to the dominant ethnic, racial and religious groups. Several scholars have proposed the introduction of a category of ‘collective capabilities’ or ‘community capabilities’ (Evans 2002; Ibrahim 2006, 2009, 2017; Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010; Murphy 2014). The idea of ‘collective capabilities’ is used in different ways in the literature, and not always spelled out very carefully. I will try to reconstruct what ‘collective capabilities’ could mean, and then discuss to what extent these are different from human capabilities tout court. It is instructive, first, to see in which contexts different authors introduce the idea of ‘collective capability’. Here are a few typical examples from the literature. Solava Ibrahim (2006, 2009, 2017) argues for the importance of collective capabilities from the perspective of the work done by self-help groups of poor people fighting to overcome their poverty, which is an issue also discussed by Stewart (2005). 9 David Schlosberg and David Carruthers (2010) argue for the importance of the idea of collective capabilities to understand the struggles of indigenous peoples for ecological justice. And Michael Murphy (2014) argues 9 Self-help groups are “any informal income-generating or social activity initiated by a poor community to achieve permanent improvements in their individual and communal wellbeings” (Ibrahim 2006, 398–399).
116 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice that political self-determination (of an indigenous group) should be considered to be a collective capability which should be a central aim for development. What is shared in those cases, and what makes the idea of ‘collective capability’ plausible, is that a group or collective is needed to engage in collective action in order to reach the capability that the members of that group find valuable. Sen (2002b) points out that we should be careful not to confuse this with a capability that he calls “socially dependent individual capability” — a person’s capability, which that person enjoys, but for which the person is dependent on others to have that capability realised. Perhaps we should not use the term ‘individual capability’ but rather ‘personal capability’, since for many defenders of ‘collective capabilities’ the word ‘individual’ evokes pejorative images of persons living by themselves on an island. There are no such human creatures; we all live interdependently, and none of us could grow up without prolonged care from others, or, as adults, have a decent chance of surviving and living a minimally adequate life. Human beings are, just as other mammals, animals who live in groups. Although philosophers are used to working with terms outside their everyday use, and most philosophers (especially those with an analytical background) will not have these pejorative connotations when they hear the term ‘individual capabilities’, I will proceed with the term ‘personal capabilities’ in order to facilitate the discussion in this section. Now, if we are very strict in our terminological distinctions, then collective capabilities are also personal capabilities, since it is individual persons who enjoy the capabilities that are thus secured. Still, there are two justifications to proceed with the term ‘collective capability’ — one fundamental one, and one additional one which is especially weighty from a practical point of view. The fundamental reason to keep and use the term ‘collective capability’ is that we may want to make a distinction between capabilities that are only realisable with the help of others, versus capabilities that require a group or collective to act in order to secure a capability for the members of that group. An example of the former would be learning a foreign language. It is impossible to do that without the help of others; one needs a teacher, or at the very least books and audio-tapes or internet lessons that help one with self-study. Still, that doesn’t suffice
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3. Clarifications 89 3.1 Introducti
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4.7 What about power and political
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Acknowledgements In 1998, when I st
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Acknowledgements 5 the capability a
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1. Introduction Many people who en
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1. Introduction 9 capability approa
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