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

24 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
conceptual framework for a range of evaluative exercises, including
most prominently the following: (1) the assessment of individual levels
of achieved wellbeing and wellbeing freedom; (2) the evaluation and
assessment of social arrangements or institutions; 3 and (3) the design of
policies and other forms of social change in society.
We can trace some aspects of the capability approach back to,
among others, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, 4
yet it is Sen who pioneered the approach and a growing number of
other scholars across the humanities and the social sciences who have
significantly developed it — most significantly Martha Nussbaum, who
has developed the capability approach into a partial theory of social
justice. 5 Nussbaum also understands her own capabilities account as a
version of a theory of human rights. 6 The capability approach purports
that freedom to achieve wellbeing is a matter of what people are able to
do and to be, and thus the kind of life they are effectively able to lead. The
capability approach is generally conceived as a flexible and multipurpose
framework, rather than a precise theory (Sen 1992a, 48; Alkire 2005;
Robeyns 2005b, 2016b; Qizilbash 2012; Hick and Burchardt 2016, 78).
The open-ended and underspecified nature of the capability approach is
crucial, but it has not made it easier for its students to understand what
kind of theoretical endeavour the capability approach exactly is. How
should we understand it? Isn’t there a better account possible than the
3 Amartya Sen often uses the term “social arrangement”, which is widely used in the
social choice literature and in some other parts of the literature on the capability
approach. Yet this term is not very widely used in other disciplines, and many
have wondered what “social arrangement” exactly means (e.g. Béteille 1993). Other
scholars tend to use the term “institutions”, using a broad definition — understood
as the formal and informal rules in society that structure, facilitate and delineate
actions and interactions. “Institutions” are thus not merely laws and formal rules
such as those related to the system of property rights or the social security system,
but also informal rules and social norms, such as social norms that expect women
to be responsible for raising the children and caring for the ill and elderly, or forbid
members of different castes to work together or interact on an equal footing.
4 See Nussbaum (1988, 1992), Sen (1993a, 1999a, 14, 24); Walsh (2000); Qizilbash
(2016); Basu and López-Calva (2011, 156–59).
5 A partial theory of justice is a theory that gives us an account of some aspects
of what justice requires, but does not comment on what justice requires in other
instances or areas.
6 On the relationship between capabilities and human rights, see section 3.14.