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

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4. Critiques and Debates 187 another, e.g. women and men (Kynch and Sen 1983; Nussbaum 2000; Robeyns 2003, 2006a) or the disabled versus those without disabilities (Kuklys 2005; Zaidi and Burchardt 2005). Capability theorists have also written on the importance of groups for people’s wellbeing, like Nussbaum’s discussion of women’s collectives in India. Several lists of capabilities that have been proposed in the literature include capabilities related to community membership: Nussbaum stresses affiliation as an architectonic capability, Alkire (2002) discusses relationships and participation, and in earlier work I have included social relationships (Robeyns 2003). The UNDP (1995, 2004) has produced Human Development Reports on both gender and culture, thus policy reports based on the capability approach focus on groups. The weaker claim states that the present state of the literature on the capability approach does not pay sufficient attention to groups. I agree that contemporary mainstream economics is very badly equipped to account for group membership on people’s wellbeing. But is this also the case for the capability approach? While some capability theorists have a great faith in people’s abilities to be rational and to resist social and moral pressure stemming from groups (e.g. Sen 1999b, 2009b), other writers on the capability approach pay much more attention to the influence of social norms and other group-based processes on our choices and, ultimately, on our wellbeing (e.g. Alkire 2002; Nussbaum 2000; Iversen 2003; Robeyns 2003a). There is thus no reason why the capability approach would not be able to take the normative and constitutive importance of groups fully into account. Admittedly, however, this is a theoretical choice that needs to be made when making scholarly decisions in modules B3, B5 and C1, hence we may not agree with the assumptions about groups in each and every capability theory. If we return to the reasons Stewart gave for a focus on group capabilities, we notice that the main reason stated is that analysis of group capabilities is needed to understand outcomes. Yet that is precisely what the just mentioned capability applications do (since they do not only measure group inequalities in capabilities but also try to understand them). Those applications also investigate how group identities constrain groups to different degrees, or which privileges they ensure for certain groups. In my reading of the literature, many
188 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice capability scholars do precisely this kind of work, and to the extent that they do not do so, one important reason is that they are engaging in documenting and measuring inequalities, rather than in explaining them. The complaint should then be that capability analysis should be less concerned with documenting and measuring inequalities, and should spend more time on understanding how inequalities emerge, are sustained, and can be decreased — but that is another complaint. Still, I do think that a consideration of the role of groups in the capability approach gives us a warning. To fully understand the importance of groups, capability theories should engage more intensively in a dialogue with disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, and gender and cultural studies. This will make the choices of the account of human diversity (module B3), the account of structural constraints (module B5), and of ontological and explanatory theories (module C1) more accurate. Disciplinary boundaries and structures make these kinds of dialogues difficult, but there is no inherent reason why this could not be done. in the capability approach The critique that the capability approach is too individualistic is sometimes also put in another way, namely that the capability approach should pay more attention to collective features, such as social structures, social norms, and institutions. How can the capability approach account for such collective aspects of human living? At the theoretical level, the capability approach does account for social relations and the constraints and opportunities of societal structures and institutions on individuals in two ways. First, by recognising the social and environmental factors which influence the conversions of commodities into functionings. For example, suppose that Jaap and Joseph both have the same individual conversion factors and possess the same commodities. But Jaap is living in a town with cycle lanes and low criminality rates, whereas Joseph is living in a city with poor infrastructure for cyclists, and with high levels of criminality and theft. Whereas Jaap can use his bike to cycle anywhere he wants, at any moment of the day, Joseph will be faced with a much higher chance that his bike will be stolen. Hence, the same commodity (a bike) leads
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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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2. Core Ideas and the Framework Th
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Index abortion 15, 145 advantage 25
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Index 253 Fleurbaey, Marc 154 flour
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Index 255 political institutions 14
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