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

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3. Clarifications 139 work. She understands adaptive preferences as the preferences of people who do not want to have items of her list of capabilities, whereby these preferences are deformed due to injustices, oppression, ignorance and unreflective habit (Nussbaum 2000, 114). What questions do adaptive preferences raise for the capability approach? At the very minimum, they raise the following questions: first, why would adaptive preferences pose a problem for capability theories? Second, do we have any evidence about the prevalence of adaptive preferences? And third, how can capability scholars deal with adaptive preferences in their capability theories and applications? Let us start with the first of these questions: why would adaptive preferences pose a problem for capability theories? There are at least two reasons. The first lies in module B2, the selection of dimensions. If that selection is done in a participatory or democratic way, then it may be vulnerable to adaptive preferences. A group that is systematically socialised to have low aspirations and ambitions will perhaps not put certain capabilities on its list, thereby telling themselves that they are unachievable, whereas objectively speaking they are achievable, albeit perhaps only after some social changes have taken place. The second reason is that a person with adaptive preferences may objectively have access to a certain capability, but may believe that either this capability is not available to her, or else that she should not choose it, and hence she may pick from her capabilities set a suboptimal combination of functionings. If we then assume that this person (or group) has nonadaptive preferences, then we will wrongly interpret the choice not to exercise certain capabilities as a matter of personal agency, which a capability theory that focusses on capabilities rather than functionings, should respect. The capability approach by default regards adults as agents rather than patients, but this may be problematic in the case of adaptive preferences. So we can conclude that adaptive preferences can pose a problem for capability theories in which the choice of dimensions is made democratic, or in which we focus on capabilities rather than functionings. But a critic may raise the question: do we have any evidence about the prevalence of adaptive preferences? Is this not a theoretical problem invented by philosophers who like complex puzzles, or by western scholars who pity the lives of poor people in the Global South?
140 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice There are at least two answers to be given to this question. The first is that there are indeed good reasons to be very careful with the conclusions we draw when studying adaptive preferences, especially in a context with which one is not familiar. Serene Khader (2011, 55–60) provides a nuanced and convincing discussion of the various mistakes that can be made when we try to identify whether a person or group of persons living under unjust conditions expresses adaptive preferences. There are at least three ‘occupational hazards’ that those trying to identify adaptive preferences may make: we run the risk of psychologizing structural constraints, of misidentifying possible tradeoffs between various dimensions of wellbeing that a person makes, or we may be unable to recognise forms of flourishing in very different culture or class settings. All this shows that thinking about adaptive preferences needs to be done with great attention to contextual details and in a very careful manner; it is not an analysis that can easily be done by applying a rigid formula. Scholars should therefore be very cautious before concluding that someone or a group shows adaptive preferences, and carefully investigate alternative interpretations of what they observe, since otherwise they run the risk of seeing adaptive preferences where there are none. Having said this, it is clear from the literature that adaptive preferences are a genuine phenomenon. For example, Serene Khader (2011) discusses real cases of groups of women who had adaptive preferences. Tania Burchardt analysed the 1970 British Cohort Study and found that “among those able to formulate agency goals, the aspirations expressed are conditioned by their socio-economic background and experience” (Burchardt 2009, 13). She also found evidence that adaptation may play a role in the selection of functionings from one’s capability set, since among the sixteen-year-olds who have the capability to continue fulltime education, the choice whether or not to do so is highly influenced by past deprivation and experiences of inequality. Burchardt rightly concludes that if the influence on people’s choices is so systematically related to previous experiences of disadvantage, that this is a case of injustice. Hence the need, for capability theorists and not just for those endorsing the happiness approach or the desire-fulfilment theory of wellbeing, to take processes of adapted preferences and adapted aspirations seriously. On the other hand, as David Clark (2009, 32) argued in the context of development studies, adaptive preferences may
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Contents Acknowledgements 3 1. Intr
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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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1. Introduction 11 Moreover, it bri
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1. Introduction 13 Countries Outsi
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1. Introduction 15 capabilities of
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1. Introduction 17 their collaborat
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1. Introduction 19 This book has a
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Index 253 Fleurbaey, Marc 154 flour
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