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

2. Core Ideas and the Framework
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somewhat limited description of the capability approach as ‘an open,
flexible and multi-purpose framework’? Answering these questions will
be the task of this chapter. 7
The open and underspecified nature of the capability approach also
explains why the term ‘capability approach’ was adopted and is now
widely used rather than ‘capability theory’. Yet as I will argue in section
2.3, we could use the terms ‘capability theory’ and ‘capability approach’
in a more illuminating way to signify a more substantive difference,
which will help us to get a better grip on the capability literature.
It may be helpful to introduce the term ‘advantage’ here, which is a
technical term used in academic debates about interpersonal comparisons
and in debates about distributive justice. 8 A person’s advantage is
those aspects of that person’s interests that matter (generally, or in a
specific context). Hence ‘advantage’ could refer to a person’s achieved
wellbeing, or it could refer to her opportunity to achieve wellbeing, or
it could refer to her negative freedoms, or to her positive freedoms, or
to some other aspect of her interests. By using the very general term
‘advantage’, we allow ourselves to remain agnostic between the more
particular specifications of that term; 9 our analysis will apply to all
the different ways in which ‘advantage’ could be used. This technical
term ‘advantage’ thus allows us to move the arguments to a higher
level of generality or abstraction, since we can focus, for example, on
which conditions interpersonal comparisons of advantage need to meet,
without having to decide on the exact content of ‘advantage’.
7 For earlier attempts to describe the capability approach, see amongst others
Deneulin (2014); Gasper (2007, 1997); Alkire, Qizilbash and Comim (2008); Qizilbash
(2012); Robeyns (2005b, 2016b).
8 A ‘technical term’ is a term which is used in a specialist debate, and has a meaning
that is defined within that debate. In many cases, the term refers to something other
than its referent in common-sense language (that is, a layperson’s use of language).
9 To ‘remain agnostic’ means that, for the purpose of that analysis, one does not
make a choice between different options, and hence proceeds with an analysis that
should be valid for all those options. This does not mean that one cannot make a
choice, or really believes that all available options are equally good, but rather that
one wants to present an analysis that is applicable to as wide a range of choices as
possible.