View Capabilities theory
Capabilities theory (or the Capability Approach) began life in the 1980s as an approach to welfare economics. In this approach, Amartya Sen brought together a range of ideas that were hitherto excluded from traditional approaches to welfare economics.
Initially Sen argued for:
1. the importance of real freedoms in the assessment of a person’s advantage
2. individual differences in the ability to transform resources into valuable activities
3. the centrality of the distribution of welfare within society
4. the multi-variate nature of activities that give rise to happiness
5. against excessive materialism in the evaluation of human welfare
Subsequently, and in collaboration with others including political philosopher Martha Nussbaum, Sen worked to make the Capabilities Approach important in human development policy where it led to the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a framework for discussing equality of opportunity, especially with respect to gender.
The approach emphasizes functional capabilities (“substantive freedoms,” such as participating in political activities); in terms of the substantive freedoms people have reason to value, instead of utility (happiness, desire-fulfillment, or choice) or access to resources (income, commodities, assets). Emphasis is not only on how human beings actually function but on the capability to function in important ways if they so wish. Someone could be deprived of such capabilities in many ways, e.g. by ignorance, lack of financial resources, or false consciousness.
Nussbaum lists ten capabilities, real opportunities, based on personal and social circumstance. This contrasts with the view of development as purely GDP growth, and poverty purely as income-deprivation.
The ten capabilities that Nussbaum argues should be supported by all democracies are:
1. Life. Being able to live a full human life; not dying prematurely.
2. Bodily Health. Good health, including reproductive health; adequate nourishment and shelter.
3. Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against any form of violent assault; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction.
4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a “truly human” way.
5. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger.
6. Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good (religious liberty).
7. Affiliation. Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to imagine the situation of another. Being treated with dignity and equality. (Entailing non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin, and species.)
8. Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals and plants.
9. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, and to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over one’s Environment. Political participation and freedom of speech. Having equality in property rights and employment opportunities; freedom from unwarranted search and seizure.
Sources:
Wikipedia