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

5. Which Future for the Capability Approach?
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This is especially important since we want to avoid the hijacking of the
capability approach by powerful societal actors or organisations who
will start to propagate a very uncritical and reductionist version of
the approach, and push that as the only right interpretation of it. The
general account of the capability approach that I have defended in this
book tries to be as politically and ideologically neutral as possible; but
that doesn’t mean that I personally, as a scholar who has written a lot
on questions of injustice, believe that all possible capability theories are
equally plausible. In fact, my own substantive work in which I have
used the capability approach confirms that I do not, and that I think that
a critical account of social structures and power is needed (e.g. Robeyns
2003, 2010, 2017b, 2017a). But I think we should then argue directly about
the unjust nature of social structures, economic institutions, or social
norms. I hope that the modular view presented in this book makes clear
that many of the intellectual and ideological battles actually take place
in arguing about the B-modules and the C-modules.
Sixth and finally, the capability approach should be used in guiding
existing practices on the ground, in many different segments of society,
and in many different societies of the world. This is not easy, since there
are quite significant challenges for theorists to bridge the gap between
their work and practices on the ground, as several theorists who
engaged in such theory-practice collaborations have pointed out (e.g.
Koggel 2008; Wolff 2011). Yet if the capability approach aspires to make
a difference in practice — which many capability scholars do — then
thinking carefully about how to move to practice without diluting the
essence of the framework is crucial. Luckily, there are signs that more
of these ‘on-the-ground applications’ are being developed, and that the
capability approach is not only of interest to scholars and policy makers,
but also for practitioners and citizens. One example is Solava Ibrahim’s
(2017) recent model for grassroots-led development, which is primarily
a conceptual and theoretical framework, yet is also based on ten years
of fieldwork. Another example is the practical field of social work in
the Netherlands, where social work professionals have recently argued
that the field is in need of a new moral compass, in order to counter the
technocratic developments that, it is argued, have dominated changes in
social work in recent decades. Some social workers argue that the human
rights framework could provide a useful theory (Hartman, Knevel and