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

2. Core Ideas and the Framework
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the content of which one must adopt, the B-modules, which are nonoptional
but have optional content, and the C-modules, which are
contingent — we can get a better grasp of the peculiar nature of the
capability approach: not exactly a precise theory, but also not something
that can be anything one likes it to be. I hope that this way of looking at
the anatomy of the capability approach will help us to understand what
the approach is, but also provide more guidance to those who want to
use the general capability approach as a guiding theoretical framework
to work on particular theoretical or empirical issues and problems.
The content of the A-module, the B-modules and C-modules is,
as with everything in scholarship, a proposal that can be modified
to accommodate new insights. If someone has convincing arguments
why one element or module should be deleted, modified, or added,
then that should be done. Given what we know from the history of
scholarship, it is rather unlikely that no further modifications will be
proposed in the future.
In the previous sections, we have seen which modules are core in a
capability theory, which ones need to be addressed but have optional
content, and which ones may or may not be necessary to add to a
particular capability theory. One question that this modular view raises is
what we should think of a theory or an application that uses the addition
of normative principles that are in contradiction with a property of the
A-module. For example, suppose one would want to add the normative
principle that institutions and personal behaviour should honour the
traditions of one’s local community. There may be aspects of those
traditions that are in tension with the principle of treating each person
as an end, for example, because women are not given the same moral
status in those traditions as men. What should we then say? Would such
a theory no longer be a capability theory, even if the bulk of the theory is
trying to think about the quality of life and desirable institutions in terms
of the enhancement of functionings and capabilities?
I propose that we introduce the notion of a hybrid theory — theories
or applications that use the notions of ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’