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

2. Core Ideas and the Framework
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Within the capability approach human diversity is a core characteristic,
and indeed a core motivation for developing the capability approach
in the first place. Yet the account of human diversity that one endorses
can differ. For example, scholars with a background in structuralist
sociology or Marxism often believe that the social class to which one
belongs is a very important factor in human diversity, which has great
influence on which options lie open to a person, but also on how a
person’s character and aspirations are formed. For those scholars, class
interacts with, and in some cases even outweighs, all other identity
aspects. For others, such as libertarians, these differences are not so
important. 36 They would not attach much (normative or explanatory)
importance to one’s gender, ethnicity, race, social class, and so forth:
everyone is, first and foremost, an individual whose personal ambitions
and projects matter. Yet, whether one is a Marxist or a libertarian or one
of the many other positions one can take, one always, either implicitly
or explicitly, endorses a view on human nature and on human diversity.
That choice should be made in capability theories, since the capability
approach rejects the use of an implicit, unacknowledged account of
human diversity. Hence such an account belongs to the B-modules: one
has to have an account of human diversity, but, as long as one is willing
to defend one’s account and it survives critical analysis, there are several
accounts that one can opt for.
Note that if one puts all the modules A, B and C together, a picture
will emerge about the great importance attached to human diversity in
the capability approach; this will be analysed in more detail in section 3.5.
Another B-module is the acknowledgement of agency. As a working
definition, we can use Sen’s definition of an agent as “someone who
acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in
36 For an introduction to libertarianism, see Vallentyne and Van der Vossen (2014).