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

146 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
or to the evaluation of social institutions, economic growth, technical
advancement, and so forth. While functionings and capabilities are of
ultimate concern, other dimensions can be important as well, but in
an instrumental way, or as indicators for what ultimately matters. For
example, in their evaluation of development in India, Drèze and Sen
have stressed that working within the capability approach in no way
excludes the integration of an analysis of resources:
It should be clear that we have tended to judge development by the
expansion of substantive human freedoms — not just by economic
growth (for example, of the gross national product), or technical progress,
or social modernization. This is not to deny, in any way, that advances in
the latter fields can be very important, depending on circumstances, as
‘instruments’ for the enhancement of human freedom. But they have to
be appraised precisely in that light — in terms of their actual effectiveness
in enriching the lives and liberties of people — rather than taking them
to be valuable in themselves. (Drèze and Sen 2002, 3)
Second, once we have decided which capabilities are relevant, we need
to investigate the determinants of those capabilities — the factors which
affect their emergence, size and robustness. As figure 2.1 illustrates,
these determinants include resources, a person’s set of conversion
factors and structural constraints. Hence if we want to expand the
capabilities of a person or a group, these are the levels at which we
could intervene. Resources are not the only things that matter, and for
some capabilities that we try to expand or try to equalise, resources
may not be the most effective factor of intervention. At the same time,
it is also clear that resources are very important for most capabilities
and there are hardly any capabilities where resources play no role at
all. Being able to buy presents enhances the capability of affiliation and
social interaction; being able to get the best medical care enhances the
capability of health; and being able to afford time off and time to travel
enhances the capability to enjoy nature. Hence even those capabilities
that could be seen as non-material dimensions of advantage are
nevertheless also aided by the availability of resources, albeit probably
not in a linear way, and perhaps only up to a certain threshold level. If
a capability analysis is aimed at making an intervention, then the exact
relationship between resources and functionings needs to be studied
for each capability analysis, rather than being assumed to have a
certain shape.