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

22 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
This chapter gives an account of that general framework. It provides
explanations and insights into what the capability approach is, what its
core claims are, and what additional claims we should pay attention to.
This chapter will also answer the question: what do we mean exactly
when we say that the capability approach is a framework or an approach?
In other words, in this chapter, I will give an account (or a
description) of the capability approach at the most general level. I will
bracket additional details and questions about which disagreement or
confusion exists; chapter 3 will offer more detailed clarifications and
chapter 4 will discuss issues of debate and dispute. Taken together, these
three chapters provide my understanding of the capability approach.
Chapter 2 is structured as follows. In the next section, we look at a
preliminary definition of the capability approach. Section 2.3 proposes
to make a distinction between ‘the capability approach’ and ‘a capability
theory’. This distinction is crucial — it will help us to clarify various
issues that we will look at in this book, and it also provides some answers
to the sceptics of the capability approach whom we encountered in the
previous chapter. Section 2.4 describes, from a bottom-up perspective,
the many ways in which the capability approach has been developed
within particular theories, and argues why it is important to acknowledge
the great diversity within capabilitarian scholarship. Sections 2.5 to 2.11
present an analytic account of the capability approach, and show what is
needed to develop a particular capability theory, application or analysis.
In 2.5, I propose the modular view of the capability approach, which
allows us to distinguish between three different types of modules that
make up a capability theory. The first, the A-module, consists of those
properties that each capability theory must have (section 2.6). This is the
non-optional core of each capability theory. The B-modules are a set of
modules in which the module itself is non-optional, but there are different
possible choices regarding the content of the module (section 2.7). For
example, we cannot have a capability theory or application without
having chosen a purpose for that theory or application — yet there are
many different purposes among which we can choose. The third group
of modules, the C-modules, are either non-optional but dependent on
a choice made in the B-modules, or else are completely optional. For
example, if the purpose you choose is to measure poverty, then you
need to decide on some empirical methods in the C-modules; but if your