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

174 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
applications, and (b) as far as those capability theories and applications
are concerned, in favour of seriously considering procedural methods
to decide which capabilities matter.
However, even if we all accept that view, it doesn’t settle all disputes.
Even if we agree that a selection of capabilities for, say, a poverty
evaluation should differ from the selection of capabilities for a theory
of justice, this still allows for different views on how that selection
should be made. Some scholars have argued that it should be based on
normative grounds, in other words based on philosophical reasoning
and argumentation (Nussbaum 2000; 2006b; Claassen 2016). Others
have argued for a selection based on a procedural method (Byskov
2017). For empirical applications, it has been argued that the selection
of dimensions should be made in a way that minimises biases in the
selection (Robeyns 2003). For policy-relevant applications, it has been
argued that the freedoms listed in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights could provide a good starting point, and should plausibly be
playing a larger role in the selection of capabilities (Vizard 2007; Burchardt
and Vizard 2011). There are by now various overviews published on
how to select functionings and capabilities but, interestingly, they
almost always are limited to a certain type of capability theory, such
as wellbeing for policy making (Hick and Burchardt 2016; Alkire 2016),
multidimensional poverty measurement (Alkire 2016; Alkire et al.
2015), human development projects and policies (Alkire 2002; Byskov
forthcoming) and theories of justice (Robeyns 2016d). Thus, there are
a range of arguments pointing out that the selection of capabilities for
particular capability theories needs to be sensitive to the purpose of the
theory in question, hence selection is a matter to be decided at the level
of the individual capability theories, rather than at the more general and
abstract level of the capability approach (see also Sen 2004a).
By introducing the concepts of ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’, the
capability approach offers some specific notions of ‘advantage’ and
provides an ethical framework to guide our actions and institutional
design. It is also a theoretical framework with clear commitments
to practice and policy making in the world as it is, not just in some
hypothetical world or in a stylized model. However, the same can be