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

66 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice
In sum, structural constraints can have a very important role in
shaping people’s capability sets, and therefore have to be part of
capability theories. Structural constraints vary depending on one’s
caste, class, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, (dis)abilities, and
the economic system in which one lives. These structural constraints
are very likely to have an influence on a person’s capability set (and in
most cases also do have that influence). Having an account of structural
constraints is therefore non-optional: every capability theory has one,
although sometimes this account will be very implicit. For example, I
will argue in section 4.10 that part of the critique of mainstream welfare
economics is that it has a very weak or minimal account of structural
constraints. Heterodox welfare economists who are embracing the
capability approach are not only doing so because they think the
endorsement of the capability account of wellbeing is better than the
preferences-based accounts that are dominant in mainstream economics,
but often also because they hope that the minimal account of structural
constraints in welfare economics can be replaced by a richer account
that is better informed by insights from the other social sciences and
from the humanities.
capabilities, or both
In developing a capability theory, we need to decide whether we think
that what matters are capabilities, functionings, or a combination of
both. The core proposition that functionings and capabilities form
the evaluative space (A5), was not decisive regarding the question of
whether it is only functionings, or only capabilities, or a mixture of both,
that form this space.
There are various arguments given in the literature defending a
range of views that only capabilities matter; or that primarily secured
functionings matter; or that for particular capability theories it is
impossible only to focus on capabilities; or that we sometimes have good
reasons to focus on functionings. These various claims and arguments
will be reviewed in section 3.4; as will be argued in that section, there
are good reasons why people could reasonably disagree on whether the
capability analysis they are conducting should focus on functionings or