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Paper short abstract

This paper proposes a revision of the concept of capability within Sen’s capability approach. Employing a methodical approach in Philosophy, known as Conceptual (Re-)Engineering, the semantic definition is improved to fulfil the practical functions of capability that Sen intended. Through the re-engineering, this paper aims to enhance the functionality of capability within the capability approach.

Paper long abstract

This paper proposes a revision of the concept of capability within Sen’s capability approach. While the concepts of functioning and capability are devised to serve as informational bases surpassing limitations of traditional evaluation frameworks in assessing quality of life, the capability concept is often criticised as a pitfall of the capability approach. However, such criticism is primarily related to the semantic definition and its implications, rather than Sen’s original purposes, rationales, and practical functions of capability. Thus, this paper argues that, instead of abolishing the concept, it should be ameliorated within the capability approach to better fulfil its intended roles in evaluating quality of life. The argument posits that Sen’s definition fails to adequately capture the practical functions of capability. Therefore, this paper targets to improve Sen’s semantic definition of capability within the approach.

To enhance the concept of capability, this paper employs a methodical approach in philosophy, known as conceptual (re-)engineering. This methodology seeks to improve, revise, or create semantic definitions and logical references for concepts to achieve practical impacts. Conceptual (re-)engineering is motivated by the recognition that certain concepts are defective and in need of amelioration to implement their practical functions for beneficial consequences. This suggests that conceptual engineering focuses on clarifying practical functions of targeted concepts, including their purposes, essential features, and beneficial usages. Once relevant conceptual functions are identified, the semantic definitions are expected to be critically assessed to determine their effectiveness. In case of deficiencies, the conceptual (re-)engineering process is followed by enhancing or changing the semantic definitions by addressing them to achieve the conceptual functions. Based on this methodical approach, this paper examines how Sen initially develops the semantic definition of capability into which the conceptual functions are transformed in arguably inappropriate ways. Subsequently, it highlights defects in Sen’s definition of capability and its implications. Lastly, the semantic definition of capability is re-engineered to overcome the deficiencies in fulfilling its intended roles within the capability approach.

An analysis of Sen’s capability approach reveals the practical functions of functioning and capability in assessing a person’s actual achievement concerned with the ends of life and an agent’s substantial opportunity towards the quality of life, respectively. These conceptual functions are transformed into semantic definitions to which Sen attaches normative priorities. In the case of functioning, it is defined as a person’s achieved being and doing that she may value or have reason to value. The practical function of assessing ‘actual achievement’ is specified to measure someone’s actual ‘being’ and ‘doing’ with evaluative priorities placed on these objective aspects over subjective or indirect contents in the quality of life. The feature related to ‘the ends of life’ is crystalised into having ‘value’ or ‘reason to value’. In the case of capability, the concept is semantically defined as alternative functioning that a person can choose. The objectives to assess someone’s ‘substantial opportunity’ are projected to ‘alternative functioning’ with normative priorities given to possibilities that the person can do and be. More importantly, the emphasis on the agency aspect is translated into someone’s ‘choice’ as Sen attaches particularly significant values to the freedom of choice. These demonstrates that Sen’s evaluative priorities are reflected in the semantic definitions of functioning and capability in line with the conceptual functions.

Although the capability approach is widely praised with its practical functions, capability is often left behind functioning in terms of normative priority and applicability. This discrepancy arises due to the semantic definition and the logical reference of capability. Defined as a substantial opportunity that an agent ‘can choose’, the capability approach considers ‘choosable’ substantial opportunities as relevant and significant informational bases, excluding non-choosable ones. However, this concept may not be relevant in evaluating individuals who face difficulties in making normative or reasonable choices. Even when capability is deemed relevant, actual achievements (functionings) are considered more important than alternative states (capabilities). This is because the achievement of relevant functioning is clearly intended within capability. In other words, the semantic meaning of capability, defined as ‘alternative functioning’, is dependent on that of functioning. Furthermore, capability is argued to be conceptually derivative of functioning because someone’s alternative states can be understood as parts of their achievements. Indeed, there is no restriction in the definition of functioning to include ‘being able to choose’ or ‘choosing’. This implies that the logical reference of functioning includes that of capability. If so, the capability information may not be necessary in evaluation. Therefore, Sen’s capability concept is argued as dysfunctional within the capability approach as long as the semantic definition remains unchanged.

Despite the challenges in Sen’s definition of capability, it is important to recognise that the conceptual functions remain valid in evaluation. If agents’ substantial opportunities toward the quality of life are regarded as essential information in evaluation, the concept of capability should not be overlooked. Instead, it should be semantically improved because Sen’s original definition deviates from the conceptual functions. Thus, this paper proposes a re-engineered semantic definition of capability with the following arguments. Firstly, the choice condition should be eliminated from the definition because ‘choosing’ is not always relevant or significant in assessment. Even if the freedom of choice is not explicitly expressed in the formal definition, the logical reference can imply the exercise of freedom as possible contents in capability when it is considered as significant in some contexts. Secondly, the ‘achievability’ of substantial opportunity should be emphasised in the definition because the value of capability depends on its achievability rather than its ‘alternatively choosability’. Thirdly, the definition of capability should be semantically independent from that of functioning. Although capability is considered to have its independent values in the capability approach, Sen’s original definition of capability, which is alternative ‘functioning’, assumes its values to depend on actual achievement of relevant functioning. Consequently, the semantic definition of capability is re-engineered in this paper as a person’s achievable being and doing that the person may value or have reason to value. With the conceptual re-engineering, this paper encourages the capability approach to go beyond functioning to the post-engineered capability.

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Paper short abstract

Beginning with Ghosh's and Whyte's analysis the climate crisis and colonial injustices are intimately linked, I argue that a sustainable solution to the climate crisis requires not only technological fixes but also a focus on indigenous peoples' access to the capability of affiliation and the (re-)building of kin relationships across different social institutions.

Paper long abstract

The year 2023, which by a large margin was the hottest year on record and for the first time pushed past the 1.5-degree goal of the 2015 Paris agreement, was a stark reminder of the urgency of the climate crisis. In his 2021 book "The Nutmeg’s Curse" the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh, who was born in Kolkata, convincingly shows that injustices against indigenous peoples are intimately connected and arise from the same perspective on the world as the climate crisis. Ghosh argues that both injustices are the direct result of centuries of colonialism and a capitalism that views “the world as resource; landscapes as factories, nature a cheap.” (Ghosh 2022, 73)

The philosopher Kyle White, a North American Potawatomi relative, argues that, for reasons similar to those identified by Ghosh, that we have reached a crisis or tipping points in kin relationships of trust, mutual consent, and reciprocity across different societies, which are due to “the operations and impacts of colonialism, industrialization, and capitalism” (Whyte 2020, 5). This, Whyte argues, results in an apparently irresolvable tension: On the one hand, the climate crisis requires urgent action. But treating this crisis purely as managerial technological problem threatens to perpetuate colonial injustices. On the other hand, restoring trust and building kin relationships across societies requires time, maybe even several generations—that is, it requires times, which in light of the urgency of the climate crisis we don't have. As Whyte argues we are confronted with two urgent crisis which would have to be solved together but require dramatically different speeds to resolve. Whyte ends his essay with the plea that “urgency must be aimed at addressing ecological and relational tipping points together” (6) but leaves completely open how this could be possible in light of the tension he has identified.

In this talk I provide a philosophical analysis of the climate and relational crises from the perspective of the capabilities approach and the related integral human development approach (Keleher 2018) to suggest a pragmatic response to the entwinements identified by Whyte and Ghosh. According to Martha Nussbaum’s version of a capabilities approach (Nussbaum 2011), being able to engage in various forms of social relations is required by human dignity and human flourishing. Many indigenous peoples understand their societies and relationships to include beings and entities beyond humans (see Whyte 2019). Colonialism and the climate crisis interfere with human flourishing by interfering with reciprocal social relations within indigenous societies and by violating social relations of trust, mutual consent and reciprocity between indigenous peoples and other institutions. Or, from the perspective of integral human development, colonialism and the climate crisis undermine persons standing in relation of radical solidarity with each other (and with other beings or entities recognized as part of the social network of kin relationships). But is it “too late for indigenous climate justice” as Whyte suggests, because restoring the capability of social affiliation and building kinship relationships requires time which the climate crisis does not grant us?

I argue that at least a partial answer to Whyte’s worry lies in recognizing that addressing climate injustices and standing in solidarity with one another does not require equal and equally timed contributions or “sacrifices” from all of us In fact, our responsibilities in face of the climate crisis are dramatically unequally distributed, as the World Inequality Report 2022 makes amply clear (https://wir2022.wid.world/chapter-6/), with the top 10% of emitters being responsible for close to 50% of all carbon emissions. The dramatic imbalances in responsibilities allow for differential responses. We should ask for urgent “sacrifices” from the highest emitters. But these responses will to a large extent consist in technological “fixes”. At the same time, we urgently ought to begin to address the injustices resulting from denying the capability of engaging in rich kin relationships characterized by trust and reciprocity. (Re-)Building such relationship takes time. But if, as Ghosh and Whyte argue, solving both the climate crisis and the relational crisis requires going beyond managerial and technological solutions, a sustained and long-term solution to the climate crisis will require urgent action on solving the relational crisis as well – with its own different time-scales: we need both quick action by the highest emitters but also long-term solutions that will require relationships of trust, mutual consent and reciprocity—relationships of radical solidarity—across different societies, including indigenous peoples with their richer perspective on the entities and beings that can be embedded in social relationships of mutual solidarity.

References:

Ghosh, Amitav. 2022. The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo125517349.html.

Keleher, Lori. 2018. “Integral Human Development.” In Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics, edited by Jay Drydyk and Lori Keleher, 29–34. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315626796.

Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Harvard University Press.

Whyte, Kyle. 2020. “Too Late for Indigenous Climate Justice: Ecological and Relational Tipping Points.” WIREs Climate Change 11 (1): e603. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.603.

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Paper short abstract

This presentation examines the dialectic between egocentrism and responsibility. First, it describes how a semiology of capitalism constructs human development and the ability to actualize free choice. Second, it engages in a discussion of a type and level of reflection that challenges these distortions in thinking. Third, it develops an ethical account of responsibility that promotes freedom.

Paper long abstract

The Dialectic Between Egocentrism and Responsibility

Abstract

Research Context

My thesis is two-fold: First, that in order to achieve the aims of the capabilities approach, we must develop a theory of personal responsibility to others; and second, that inculcating one’s faculty for this commitment to responsibility allows us to achieve lives we value. It is this conception of responsibility that can mediate our capabilities approach in three parts.

Methodology

This is purely a theoretical-conceptual paper.

Analysis and Conclusion

ONE: SEMIO-CAPITALISM

First, I lay out current conditions of capitalism in which autonomy and free choice are debilitated. In our current historical period, we are structuralized by semio-capitalism, which is the overarching semiology that prioritizes capitalism, accumulation, and commodification as the main hermeneutic allocation of value in our politics and culture.

We see in this semio-space the potential further erosion of the fictions of autonomy and individualism given that choices and perceived freedom are already pre-structured. These exogenous forces create neurological limits to the brain and, derivatively, limits to existential imagination and freedom.

Unfortunately, these capitalist formations disengage our existential experience from deeper cultural meaning by separating the humanities from science, the technical from the social, and the cultural from the natural. At an individual level, this results in existential fragmentation. It distorts and narrows our source of meaning to one that that is circumscribed by accumulation and growth, possession, and control. The acquisition of knowledge thus becomes a teleological enterprise of assimilating and learning capitalist ideologies and dogmas. If we do not understand these foundations, then what we perceive as critical thinking and reflection is instead a mass manipulation through power and the way it utilizes language.

Because capitalism becomes the chief semiological fulcrum, we lose an authentic relation to the environment and all the life and being in it. This raises the issue of our human anthropology and our relation to the cosmos. Currently, we operate primarily from a foundation of humanism, in which humans believe that they are more ontologically valuable than other life forms and compete with each other for important goods and, in so doing, elevate capitalism and competition above all other values. This creates a valorization of autonomy, individualism, competition, evolution, acquisition, narcissism, and egocentrism, which becomes an unbridled violence contextualized in automation. This leads to an evental interrogation of the human anthropology and our most basic interpretational structures. This opens transcendent space in which we can choose to re-define ourselves and shift the source of meaning elsewhere.

TWO: REFLECTION

Second, I explain a level of reflection that challenges our enslavement to a subjectivity of desire. It challenges a kind of reflection that is conditioned by that very desire, or self-interest. I argue that self-interest often brings closure to availability and closure to deeper and broader reflection. Thus, when personal interest conflicts with reflection in some way, reflection is at risk for being suppressed or distorted. This is true, of course, unless there is a different kind of reflection, one that is more radical in that it interrogates the attachment we have to our self-interest. Therefore, is it not the case that the reflective self takes its own interest to task? That it thinks against itself? Doesn’t the virtue of responsibility require us to place full attention on the task of reflection itself? Doesn’t this full attention require us to bracket our very own interests and desires as we probe into the transcendent field from which they arise? Without this deeper level of reflection, we cannot be sure that any sort of reflection outstrips self- interest. The countermove trends toward a different kind of reflection – and truth. This countermove tends toward truth because it opens to the world of others and to things, instead of closing itself to them.

THREE: RESPONSIBILITY

Third, I develop an account of responsibility that challenges personal egocentric interest at the expense of the whole community, and therefore, which can result in the loss of freedom for all. This means that we must seek a form of resoluteness and responsibility to our own self-understanding and moral development, coincidental with our inter-relationship to all Others. The search for an authentic self lies in that dialectical process of inter-relationship but not just with other humans. It must be with all Others, human and non-human, in order to move beyond our egocentrism and our anthro-centrism. Further, this means that the quest must not just be an outward study of the objective. Instead, it must focus inward, on our very noetic structure and our own consciousness of how and to what extent we are

presencing in this world, in this situation.

It is this primary signifier that must be overcome and transcended and replaced by a signifier of life and its presencing. Methodologies toward this goal include phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory purified from a semiology of capitalism and a noetic architecture of the possessory, acquisitive self. This is the self that pursues a fiction of autonomy and individualism at the ontic level, while not understanding that their choices have been pre-determined by that very semiological structure. Thus, it is an opportunity for radical reflection, free from both personal desire and interest, and from a semiology that pre-structures what counts as valuable and good.

We see that a rights-based approach to ethics and the law that manifests itself in terms of one’s ability to self-actualize their autonomous desires results in a polis based on power. Our responsibility, in this system, is unfortunately measured solely by applying the law in a competitive, win-lose method, in which everyone seeks to manifest their desires with the resources and abilities they have. However, in contrast, there is a type of thinking about responsibility that mediates desirous, egocentric impulses toward self-actualization that do not include an extensive thinking about the Other. This presentation is an examination of such thinking about responsibility.

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Paper short abstract

This paper challenges the capability approach’s respect for individual choices in the domain of politics. It does so from the viewpoint of gender equality and argues for capabilitarians’ strategic alliance with advocates for compulsory voting.

Paper long abstract

This paper challenges the capability approach’s respect for individual choices in the domain of politics. It does so from the viewpoint of gender equality and argues for capabilitirians’ strategic alliance with advocates for compulsory voting.

As the liberal founders of the capability approach, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have stressed the importance of capabilities, not functionings. In Sen’s approach, political freedoms such as civil and political rights are taken as having intrinsic values (Sen, 1999). They are essential in preventing famines, spotting injustices, and creating agency (Sen, 2009). In Nussbaum’s approach, “having the right of political participation” under the heading of “Control over one’s political environment” is part of Central Capabilities to which every member of a polity is entitled (Nussbaum, 2006). In short, “Sen and Nussbaum’s writings on the capability approach are liberal in the philosophical sense, which refers to a philosophical tradition that values individual autonomy and freedom” (Robeyns, 2017, p. 196).

Thus, the capability approach generally keeps distance from making judgements about the good or bad of converting a capability into a functioning. The aim of empowering individuals is to make them free to choose what they have reason to value. The same is true with political capabilities. With respect to the right of political participation, what matters is that you can vote. Whether or not you actually exercise the voting rights is beyond the scope. You may choose not to vote based on your conception of good life, as Nussbaum suggests in her account of the Amish case (Nussbaum, 2003).

Does this respect for individual choices help battling with existing gender inequality? Take Japanese society as an example. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), Japan ranks 125th out of 145 countries. It does relatively well in the domains of education and health. In the GGGI’s Educational Attainment subindex, it scores 0.997 and ranks 47th. In the Health and Survival subindex, it scores 0.973 and ranks 59th. However, in the domains of economy and politics, it does very bad. In the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, it scores 0.561 and ranks 123rd. In the Political Empowerment subindex, it scores 0.057 and ranks 138th.

There can be several explanations for this gross gender inequality in the domains of economy and politics in Japan, such as the absence of legal statutes that prohibit discrimination against women or the enduring background traditional culture that finds beauty and virtues in women’s passiveness. Whatever the main reasons are, the fact is that women themselves are generally quiet. When it was exposed in 2017 that some medical schools in Tokyo had secretly taken away points from female applicants’ entrance exam scores, there wasn’t really a public burst of rage. Also, Japan is the only country in the world where legally married couples have to have the same surnames and 95 % of couples have chosen husband’s surnames. Moreover, a recent study shows how modern sexism may be involved in the thin public support for electoral gender quotas in Japan (Miura, McElwain, and Kaneko, 2023).

This stagnation in gender equality has certainly discouraged women and they seem to have developed what psychologists have called "leaned helplessness". In fact, a recent empirical study in Japan shows that ‘emotions’, together with ‘other species’, among Nussbaum’s list of the Central Capabilities were not mentioned at all by unmarried non-regular female workers as ‘necessary functionings’ in their lives (Yamamoto, 2019). As Nussbaum describes the capability to emotions as “in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety” (Nussbaum, 2006, pp. 76-77), emotions, being eudaimonistic (Nussbaum, 2001), are essential to one's well-being. Why are women quiet? Are they silenced or acting on their virtues?

One way to ascertain the capability approach’s potentials as a theory of gender justice, I suggest that capabilitarians ally with advocates for compulsory voting. Compulsory voting is a means for full participation (Birch, 2009). It not only gives women voices and opportunities to function as agents but also enhances the authenticity of democracy. Moreover, though it forces individuals to function in certain ways, compulsory voting does not necessarily violate ”the principle of each person as an end”, the principle Ingrid Robeyns emphasizes as the core of both a liberal theory and a capability theory (Robeyns, 2017, p. 197). Therefore, though compulsory voting may at first seem illiberal and paternalistic, capabilitarians should accept the instrumental value it has in achieving gender equality.

Keywords: compulsory voting, gender equality, the capability approach, Japan, learned helplessness

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Sen's broad consequentialism and argues for a legitimate freedoms approach based on a critical consequentialism. This is applied to the case of capabilities and biodiversity loss.

Paper long abstract

Amartya Sen has been unjustly criticized for having an apparently lassiez faire approach to freedoms. For some, he appears to place no limits on the freedoms people may have. Such a criticism fails to take Sen’s work on consequentialism - his so-called broad consequentialism - into consideration. Nor too does it discuss his work on responsibility. Thus, the first part of this paper outlines Sen’s “broad consequentialism”, which takes agency, processes and social relationships of people into consideration, and contrasts it and its benefits, with traditional consequentialism. This section also criticizes Sen’s approach for being unclear not leat in terms of prioritization especially in relation to rights which is left to a vague discussion of public reasoning. (Sen, 2008).

Section 2, begins by outlining a legitimate freedom or critical contractualist approach to the limits of freedoms is defended which, drawing on Scanlon (1998) and Forst (2011), emphases the importance of justification to others. It defends the approach against Sen’s criticisms of Scanlon which, I shall maintain involves a misunderstanding of Scanlon’s work as providing a unique set of principles for all cases (Sen, 2008).

The argument is made concrete by examining The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework which is concerned with preventing the huge biodiversity loss that is currently taking place (sometimes called the sixth mass extinction). The framework aims to conserve aims to protect at least 30% of all terrestrial, inland water and marine areas by 2030 (also known as 30 by 30) (Target 3).

At the same time, it requires the respecting of indigenous people and local communities rights which includes “their cultures and their rights over lands, territories, resources, and traditional knowledge”. Additionally the rights of ”women and girls, children and youth, and persons with disabilities and ensure the full protection of environmental human rights defenders are also to be recognized” (Target 22). This includes the right to free, prior and informed consent of indigenous people or local communities before environmental conservation schemes are put in place. In other words, protection has to be justified and clear principles are employed.

The implication of this is that Target 3 will not be met. One reason for this is “practical”, the processes of obtain free, prior and informed consent will require a great deal of time even if the end result is free, prior and informed consent. A second issue concerns the kind of protection involved. Fortress conservation, which has often involved the removal of indigenous people from their lands (Shetler, 2007). In other words, the freedoms of those implementing the conservation schemes are limited by the rights of others and it will not be legitimate to archive 30 by 30 (other targets may be). It is unclear how Sen’s approach can deal with such problems as it is not clear how consequences are to be valued and weighed against each other beyond a vague concept of public deliberation (Sen, 2008). The differences will be brought out by analysing the specific case of Conservation International’s guidelines on the principle’s application (2013).

Buppert, T and McKeehan, A (2013). Guidelines for Applying Free, Prior and Informed Consent: A Manual for Conservation International. Arlington, VA: Conservation International.

Forst, R. (2011). The right to justification: Elements of a constructivist theory of justice (Vol. 46). Columbia University Press.

Scanlon, T. M. (2000). What we owe to each other. Harvard University Press.

Sen, A. (2008) The Idea of Justice, Allen Lane, London

Shetler, J. B. (2007). Imagining Serengeti: A history of landscape memory in Tanzania from earliest times to the present. Ohio University Press.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework https://www.cbd.int/gbf/targets accessed 9/02/24.

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Paper short abstract

This paper aims to unpack the concept of crisis which in capabilities approach relates to the agents' experience of material and identity crises. Using sociological theory I explore areas in need of illumination within the capability approach (e.g. its lack of a system perspective, a risk of a fundamentalism of commitments) and I propose a problem shift that can perhaps mitigate this risk.

Paper long abstract

For Jürgen Habermas, and sociological system theories in general, the analytical idea of crisis is attributed to a system’s incapacity to steer the expected societal functions; this shortage of expected performances and functions jeopardizes a social system’s continued existence. A sociological approach is held to locate crises on the levels of systems’ incapacity to solve specific problems central to the system’s identity (e.g. the economy’s goal of growth). These problems stem from a system’s environment (e.g. other social systems), but mainly from a system’s own structurally-inherent contradictions. As this year’s HDCA umbrella topic indicates we live in an era when “many multi-faceted crises assail us”. The protracted sense of a series of crises encompasses the global and the local level. For capability approach (CA) scholars, crises indicate, among others, capability deprivations that stem from deep inequalities as well as from singular identity affiliations (e.g. the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis). If crises tend to manifest themselves through instances of societal disintegration often attributed to neo-liberalism’s global hegemony, then one question that arises addresses the state of the legitimacy of collective values that are held to be disturbed by crises as well as the normative buttressing of institutional arrangements that foster and protect human capabilities. However, if crises tend to be widely perceived as global and interlinked, what must be addressed is if the current categories that normative programs like CA draw upon to identify and explain them are themselves free of explanatory crises. By explanatory crises we can consider situations where theoretical categories cannot steer sufficient problem-solving potential.

Drawing on this perception of multifaceted crises that afflict contemporary societies and burden citizens with capability deprivations, undue risks, insecurities, unfreedoms and suffering, this paper asks the following questions:

a) How are ‘crises’ theorized? If crises reflect systemic accumulations of anomalies how do social systems generate them and overcome them? The fact that the CA lacks a theory of social systems calls for an urgent deployment of relevant theoretical models, mainly from sociology, that can illuminate the wider systemic framework within which capability empowerment can be activated. CA seems to presuppose a pattern of institutions across contemporary societies: in identifying crises levels, CA addresses ‘economic policies’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘social solidarity’, the ‘welfare state’, ‘collective action’ among others. It also, as is the case with Sen in his Development as Freedom (1999), prioritizes certain instrumental freedoms, but it seems that a logic of connectedness between these discrete social sub-systems (or ‘instrumental freedoms’) is wanting.

b) Social systems also draw on legitimation processes. Sociologically, these are theorized in terms of mechanisms conducive to ‘latent pattern maintenance’, but in less technical language they reflect collective values. CA had always a robust value-orientation and, as Hilary Putnam has argued, its theoretical categories cross the fact-value dichotomy. The relevant question now is: Do values tend to regress to fundamentalist patterns of legitimation and thus generate crises rather than resolving them? In different words how does value-tyranny (Hartmann) in various shapes (communitarian, merit-based, cultural, ideological, economic, religious, ethnic, etc.) exacerbates what Sen had identified as identity confinement and hoped to rectify through the heuristic trope of ‘comparative broadening’, namely the ability to see oneself through the lens of different identities. This brings us to the third question of this paper:

c) CA claims to be a normative and policy program that aspires to resolving crises through commitments (i.e. values) along the local, national, regional and global level. Against the aforementioned risk of value-inflation Sen’s and Nussbaum’s cautionary calls against some sort of value-imperialism of value-colonization seem to preempt the risk. Moreover, the pragmatic turn in CA aims, among others, to mitigate risks of value fundamentalism, despite its emphatic democratic and ethical commitments. While CA and other normative programs call for processes that energize commitments across different publics and contexts, the problem of coordination (and convergence) among such commitment seems to be caught into the ‘steering problems’ (Habermas) that different social systems face. A logic that accounts of how systems’ internal problems of compatibility of imperatives (e.g. the polity’s frequent interventions to what is set up as an intervention-free social system of market economy) spill over to people’s identity crises that are manifested in a wide scope of capability deprivations must be accommodated by CA. According to Habermas “only when members of a society experience structural alterations as critical for continued existence and feel their social identity threatened can we speak of crises” (Legitimation Crisis, 3). If CA struggles to empower such agents through approximate accomplishments of, say, a Central Capabilities List (Nussbaum) the risk, on account of a systems-theoretical perspective, is that capability-empowerment may enhance contingency and thus contribute to new steering problems within a system. A CA policy would risk inflating normative and ethical commitments within a social system (e.g. education) the concomitant implication being an intensification of its resource management imperatives. We thus confront a paradox: enhancing capabilities leads to greater complexity (i.e. stemming from agents’ freedoms to choose the lifestyles they have reason to value) and reopens a problem that is endemic to system differentiation: namely, the activation of the system’s reactive reflexes that could escalate to forms of ‘exclusion’ as a means to manage a hyper-complexity that stems from an ever-inclusive capability enhancement. It must be underlined that CA deploys such a logic of distinctions between central and, by default, ‘peripheral’ capabilities, but transfers its immanent paradoxes to the sphere of public deliberation rather than endorsing top-down implementations. But if the reasoning about prioritizing certain capabilities (as in the shape of human rights) is worth pursuing, then the very necessity to ‘qualify’ these must somehow tilt focus: capabilities as conditions for the integration of societies and the well-being of its citizens could be a progressive problem shift within CA; in this fashion people’s exclusion from capabilities would be seen as enhancing a contingency that can jeopardize social systems.

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Paper short abstract

In this paper I analyze the ten central capabilities which Martha Nussbaum posits as being at the core of the capabilities approach. As I demonstrate here through a comparative analysis, Nussbaum’s ten central capabilities overlap considerably with a number of key values and principles found in the classical Chinese text of Laozi’s Daodejing and in other early Daoist writings.

Paper long abstract

Research Context: This paper offers a Chinese philosophical and ethical perspective on international development by drawing upon seasoned wisdom from classical Daoist texts. At first glance, Daoist thought in general and Chinese thinking about international development appears to have little or nothing in common with the human development and capabilities approach (HDCA) promoted globally by the United Nations since 1990. In fact, very few member of the human development and capabilities association are from China, even though it is one of the world's most populous and economically significant countries. There are also very few publications by Chinese scholars engaging with the HDCA. Does this mean that China has nothing in common with the HDCA?

Methodology: In this paper I examine compatibility between one of the most important schools of classical Chinese philosophy and the HDCA through a comparison of Martha Nussbaum's writings on the capabilities approach (and its ten central capabilities) and the foundational texts of China's indigenous religion, Daoism (a.k.a. Taoism). As I demonstrate here through a comparative discourse analysis, Nussbaum’s ten central capabilities actually overlap considerably with a number of key values and principles found in the classical Chinese text of Laozi’s Daodejing (a.k.a. Tao Te Ching) and other early Daoist writings. Her discussion of bodily health and bodily integrity mirrors the Daoist concept of yangsheng. Her emphasis on senses, imagination, and reason resembles Daoist writings on xiaoyao you (wandering at ease in the world). The importance of play and valuing other species that she mentions are also captured in the Daoist ideas of ziran (the intrinsic nature of things) and buzheng (not fighting).

Conclusion: What the comparative analysis in this paper reveals is that an important set of traditional Chinese and Asian values long surviving for centuries within the Daoist tradition and into the new millennium are indeed rather compatible with many though not all aspects of the HDCA. The HDCA is admittedly more anthropocentric than Daoism and focuses less on simplicity and emptiness than Daoism. That said, both traditions appreciate the idea of valuing life and encouraging freedom. Thus, overall there appear to be more similarities than differences between these two schools of normative thought about individual and global development of humans and human societies.

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Paper short abstract

Is it possible to use the capability approach to critique structures of injustice? In this paper, I sketch a capabilitarian critique of structural injustice based on agency freedom, drawing from the conception of agency in the capability approach literature on the one hand, and the literature on structural injustice from feminist critical social theory on the other.

Paper long abstract

Drawing from the conception of agency in the capability approach literature on the one hand (particularly in the work of Amartya Sen, Sabina Alkire, and Jay Drydyk), and the literature on structural injustice from feminist critical social theory (particularly from Iris Marion Young and Sally Haslanger) on the other, I argue that a capabilitarian critique of structural injustice, based on agency (analogous to an analysis of capabilities in order to assess wellbeing), enables the capability approach to contribute to deeper ‘synchronic and diachronic explanations’ of what Drydyk has called the ‘background conditions’ of injustice, an area of research that has been often overlooked within the capability approach and its applications, which has mostly focused on the foreground (i.e. capability measurement) or the mid-ground (i.e. expanding capability) of injustice.

I claim that a more thorough account of structural injustice for the capability approach will help us get closer to actualizing and applying the “comparative, non-ideal approach to justice” that Sen proposed in The Idea of Justice, which I illustrate through an application in a development research project conducted in the Southern Philippines. The Land Use Change in the Uplands: Impacts and Drivers (LUCID) Project was a multidisciplinary research project that investigated the social and economic impact of the widespread adoption of genetically-modified (GM), high-yield variety corn among small farmers of the Upper Pulangi Watershed, in the province of Bukidnon. One aspect of the research sought to understand the social practices and structures that led the small farmers to articulate a "loss of freedom," or feelings of being constrained to continue farming GM corn despite the financial risks they themselves identified.

Finally, I also assert that such a capabilitarian critique of structural injustice allows the articulation and identification of factors that typically aren’t accounted for in policy-making analyses, describing the background conditions of injustice--particularly, social relations and practices--moving beyond just individuals and the state.

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Paper short abstract

Below, I examine the roles that social practices play regarding the concept and purpose of human capabilities; utilise social practices and human needs to argue for individual and collective human capabilities; and review these capability insights for their potential to shed further light on the concept of social practice as well as the distinction between individual and collective human needs.

Paper long abstract

It is no accident that many academic disciplines (eg, sociology, marketing, international relations, organisation studies) have been subject to their version of the ‘social practice turn’ in recent years. After all, social practices – conceptualised here separately, though with crucial interconnections, at both the levels of individual practitioner and practice community (details below) – provide an essential link between two types of ontological entities that many scholars, especially in Western academic traditions, regard as being opposed to each other: the individual performer and the community of which she is a member. In fact, the concept explains why and how the two are mutually dependent. Firstly, without individual performers who, through recurring activities, carry forth the social practices they enact, these practices – and, logically, practice communities – would cease to exist. Secondly, without being immersed in practice communities (eg, throughout childhood), the individual would fail to become practically socialised and thus fail to turn into a competent human being (forever lacking practical competence in numerous activity patterns that we expect typical adults around us to possess, and hence also the ability to comprehend, anticipate, and explain what others do).

Traditionally, human needs have been conceptualised as qualities of the individual. For example, basic needs have been construed as things that any human individual requires to survive, avoid (serious) harm, or achieve minimum flourishing. By contrast, the view that (at least some) human needs are qualities of the collective remains unpopular. However, social practices demonstrate why such a position is untenable. If we go beyond the elemental requirements represented by basic needs and construe human needs more broadly as things that are necessary to secure human flourishing to any degree, then it is rather uncontroversially true that a human individual requires social practices to live well (at basic, middling, and high degrees): without access to social practices (eg, during childhood) and becoming a competent practitioner, human flourishing to degrees that exceed mere biological survival is impossible.

Yet, as social practices represent attributes not just of the individual practitioner but also of her practice community, it is no less true that human communities need social practices as well. After all, the persistence of these communities depends on the persistence of the patterns we call ‘social practices’. In fact, how well a human community does in the long run depends on the quality of its communal practice portfolio (with practices that pertain to climate change mitigation and adaptation being merely one of the more contemporary examples).

Yet, if we can use social practices to argue for the existence of individual and collective human needs, the same can plausibly be done with regard to individual and collective human capabilities as well (despite objections by Sen and others). After all needs and capabilities resemble each other in multiple ways and have been used to play similar functions in social, political, and moral philosophy. In this paper, I will therefore proceed in three main steps. Firstly, I examine the important roles that social practices play regarding the philosophical concept and purpose of human capabilities in general. Secondly, I utilise social practices and human needs to argue for individual and collective human capabilities more specifically. And thirdly, I retrospectively review these capability insights for their potential to shed further light on the concept of social practice as well as the distinction between individual and collective human needs.

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Definitions:

At the level of the practitioner, a practice is a series of habitualised individual activities that are dispersed across time, properly causally related, and subject to norms. Each practice is constituted by behaviour patterns that represent specific combinations of mental and bodily performances (doings), physical and mental attributes (beings), and person-external resources utilised by the individual throughout (havings).

At the level of the community, a practice is a class of habitualised activities that are dispersed across time, space, and individuals; that are properly causally related; and that are subject to norms. Each practice incorporates similar combinations of the three interconnected elements of doings, beings, and havings. Thus, any individual’s performance pattern is also part of a social practice if it is sufficiently similar to the performance patterns of others and causally related to them in relevant ways.

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Selected References:

Doyal & Gough (1991). A Theory of Human Needs. London: Macmillan.

Evans (2002). Collective Capabilities, Culture and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom. Studies in Comparative International Development, 37(2), 54-60.

Fardell (2020). Conceptualising Capabilities and Dimensions of Advantage as Needs. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 21(3), 263-276.

Grix & McKibbin (2015). Needs and Well-Being. In Fletcher (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being (pp. 292-306). London: Routledge.

Grix (2019). The Ethics and Politics of Consumption (Doctoral Thesis). Auckland: University of Auckland.

Grix & Watene (2022). Communities and Climate Change: Why Practices and Practitioners Matter. Ethics & International Affairs, 36(2), 215-230.

Grix (forthcoming). Social Practices, Practice Communities, and Climate Justice. Journal of Global Ethics, Taylor & Francis.

Grix & Watene (forthcoming). Global Justice and Practice-Centred Thought. In Ackerly, Johnson, … Wiener (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Grounded and Engaged Normative Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ibrahim (2020). Individualism and the Capability Approach: The Role of Collectivities in Expanding Human Capabilities. In Chiappero-Martinetti, Osmani, & Qizilbash (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach (pp. 206-226). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

MacIntyre (2007). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (3rd ed.). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Reckwitz (2002). Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243-263.

Robeyns (2017). Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

Schatzki (1996). Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sen (2002). Response to Commentaries. Studies in Comparative International Development, 37(2), 78-86.

Sen (2009). The Idea of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wiggins (1998). Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (3rd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Paper short abstract

This paper argues for supplementing Drydyk’s concept of agency for empowerment with Pettit’s conception of agency freedom as discursive control to form a concept, termed as, “agency centric empowerment”. The paper reasons further that agency centric empowerment can be considered as a norm and this normative aspect of agency centric empowerment be located with respect to development ethics.

Paper long abstract

Development Ethics, focuses itself on the core idea that subjects of development can exert agency, and for development to be ethical, they should. This brings into debate the concepts of agency and empowerment. This paper looks into these concepts and tries bring forth a synthesis.

The concept of agency freedom is discussed following Philip Pettit’s conceptualization of freedom as discursive control. Pettit has argued that an agent shall be considered free when she has control in a discourse. This control is constituted upon two factors, the capacity to take part in the discourse and the capacity to enjoy relationships that are discourse friendly. Pettit reaches this conceptualization of freedom by countering the dimensions of freedom as rational control and freedom as volitional control. The dimension of freedom as rational control, which focuses on the agent’s ability to function according to their intentional states, such as beliefs and desires, brings forth the bystander problem, where an agent does not own her actions; further freedom seems possible even in in hostile coercion. The dimension of freedom as volitional control, where an agent is considered free if she can form second-order desires with regard to first-order desires, does take care of the bystander issue, but issues with regard to fixing responsibility and hostile coercion still remain. The dimension of freedom as discursive control is inconsistent with hostile coercion, which is not discourse friendly.

The concept of empowerment is centered around Jay Drydyk’s conceptualization which traverses through the concepts well-being and agency freedom of Sen’s Capability Approach. Drydyk is opposed to the idea of conceptualizing empowerment exclusively on the basis of well-being, since there can be many instances where the expansion of capabilities and thus well-being can take place in passive and dependent circumstances. This defeats the very idea of empowerment, that forms the “instrumental value”, which is greater authority and control over resources and choices that have an impact on an individual or group. Drydyk further delves into the concept of Sen’s agency freedom and is of the opinion that the aspect of active decision making is ignored at certain times. Drydyk here takes into account Crocker’s presentation of agency as a scalar property dependent on four factors, namely an agent’s role, it’s impact in the world, self-choice, choice based on reasons of their own. Drydryk’s approach to empowerment is that it is concerned with agency but not reducible to it. Power is another dimension that Drydyk ropes into the discussion of empowerment, as he explores the fact that gain in power does not always directly transform into gain in empowerment. Drydyk reasons for empowerment that considers the relational dimensions of agency that define power relations. The concept of agency that Drydyk conceptualizes with regard to empowerment is active agency, that an agent can exercise. Drydyk has not restricted empowerment to agency only, but is in favor of including certain aspects of well-being into the empowerment question.

This paper argues for supplementing Drydyk’s concept of agency for empowerment with Pettit’s conception of agency freedom as discursive control to form a concept, termed as, “agency centric empowerment”. Bringing Pettit’s approach to the forefront, agency centric empowerment can address concerns with regard to coordination between Sen’s well-being and agency freedom. Since freedom as discursive control always vouches for a consistency among the past actions of the agent, acts that are done beyond well-being can be explained for if they are consistent with the legacy that an agent with discursive control possesses.

The paper reasons further that agency centric empowerment can be considered as a norm following Pettit’s conceptualization of norm as an attitude-based derivative, which depends upon the assumptions of interaction, publicity, perception, sanction and motivation. In this context, to conclude, this paper raises a question: Can this normative aspect of agency centric empowerment be located with respect to development ethics? the answer is in affirmation.

Keywords: Development Ethics, Capability Approach, Agency, Empowerment, Norm

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Paper short abstract

In this paper, we would like to compare the common good approach and the capability approach and raise three critical questions regarding the capability approach’s capacity to do justice to relationships, social dynamics, and institutions. We argue that true human development is one that, aside from expanding individual freedoms, promotes shared human development.

Paper long abstract

Research context:

One of the most fertile topics of discussion within the capability literature has been the role of social and collective categories in promoting individual freedoms and the extent to which the capability approach is able to embrace those categories. Whereas defendants of ethical individualism have no problem in recognising, and indeed in highlighting, the social influences of those social and collective categories on individuals (e.g., through the notions of adaptive preferences, socially dependent capabilities, social conversion factors, and commitment) (Robeyns 2005), other scholars argue that the CA does not go deep enough to account for the pervasive influence of social structures on people’s freedoms and the instrumental and intrinsic role of groups and collectivities for their well-being (Deneulin 2008; Giraud et al. 2013; Ibrahim 2006, 2008; Leßmann 2022; Longshore & Seward 2009). As a result, the conceptual framework of the capability approach as discussed in the literature has moved beyond a purely individualistic lens and has begun to incorporate collective and relational understandings of the notion of capability. However, drawing on a common good approach to development, we argue that the capability approach remains insufficiently equipped to diagnose, and thus make use of, the role of social relations, solidarity, cooperation, and collective practices in order to promote shared human development.

Methodology:

In our contribution, we primarily rely on conceptual analysis (Olsthoorn 2017) and defend our thesis based on philosophical and ethical arguments (Thomson 1999; Walton 2003). Conceptual analysis provides us with a novel understanding of the connections between individual capabilities and social and collective categories. Philosophical arguments help us to analyse the tension between synchronic and diachronic approaches and the tension between individual well-being and the common good.

Analysis & Conclusion:

The common good approach (CGA) was developed to analyse the complexity of social realities (Nebel, Garza-Vázquez & Sedmak 2022). It focuses on the interdependence of human beings and the way in which they organize their interactions and collaborate to create the conditions that enable their own well-being and that of their community. Consequently, the approach understands people as social beings who relate to others and who depend on others to fully flourish. From this perspective, we raise three critical questions regarding the capability approach’s capacity to do justice to relationships, social dynamics, and institutions. First, while the CGA understands human beings as constituted by their relationships and centres its attention on people’s ability to organise and cooperate, the CA considers individual agency as primary value. Second, the CA is only able to provide a snapshot of individual outcomes within a complex social reality, whereas the CGA observes the development processes of a community in a diachronic way throughout time and space. Third, the CGA focuses on common goods and institutions as enabling and restricting, whereas the CA restricts institutions to the level of conversion factors. We therefore argue that true human development is one that, aside from expanding individual freedoms, promotes shared human development.

Bibliography:

- Deneulin, Séverine. 2008, Beyond individual freedom and agency: structures of living together in the capability approach. In: Comim F, Qizilbash M, Alkire S, eds. The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications. Cambridge University Press; 2008: 105–124.

- Giraud, Gaël, Cécile Renouard, Hélène L’Huillier, Raphaële de la Martinière, and Camille Sutter. 2013. Relational Capability: A Multidimensional Approach. ESSEC Working Paper 1306. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2333529

- Ibrahim, Solava. 2006. From individual to collective capabilities: The capability approach as a conceptual framework for self-help, Journal of Human Development 7/3, 397–416.

- Ibrahim, Solava. 2008. “Collective Agency: Wider Freedoms and New Capabilities through Self-Help”, in Dubois, J. L. et al. (eds), Repenser L’Action Collective: une Approche par les Capabilitiés, Paris: Réseau IMPACT Network.

- Leßmann, Ortrud. 2022, Collectivity and the capability approach: survey and discussion, Review of Social Economy, pp. 461–490

- Longshore Smith, Matthew, and Carolina Seward, 2009, The Relational Ontology of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach: Incorporating Social and Individual Causes, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 10:2, pp. 213–235

- Nebel, Mathias, Oscar Garza-Vázquez, and Clemens Sedmak. 2022. A Common Good Approach to Development: Collective Dynamics of Development Processes. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

- Olsthoorn, Johan. 2017. ‘Conceptual Analysis’. In Methods in Analytical Political Theory. Edited by Adrian Blau, 153-191. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

- Robeyns, Ingrid. 2005. The Capability Approach: A theoretical survey, Journal of Human Development 6/1, 93–117, https://doi.org/10.1080/146498805200034266.

- Thomson, Anne. 1999. Critical Reasoning in Action: A Practical Introduction. London: Routledge.

- Walton, Douglas. 2003. Ethical Argumentation. Oxford: Lexington Books.

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Paper short abstract

In articulating his Capability Approach to Justice, Amartya Sen seems to mark a departure from the dominant understandings of justice. Though he claims to engage from a completely different perspective, it seems he falls short of going beyond the contractarian reasoning of justice in society. This paper will critically examine his engagements and try to look for an alternative in Plato.

Paper long abstract

Amartya Sen (1995, 2009) in developing the Capability Approach to justice, rejects the idea that institutions or transcendental institutions should necessarily be seen as manifestations of justice as put forth by John Rawls (1971). Instead of considering institutions as the locus of justice, we need to investigate whether, as an outcome of institutional justness, justice has been realized in society or not. He argued against the Rawlsian belief that under certain constraints on social contract, rational agents would necessarily arrive at a unanimous rational decision. He believes in the possibility of apprehending plural notions of impartial reasons from that kind of setup. Sen also opposes the approach that considers resources or distribution of it is the ultimate concern of social justice. Instead, he proposes capability which should be the primary object of distribution. Though Sen strongly advocates the concerns of equity in terms of taking into consideration different abilities to convert resources into valuable life, he does not deviate from the understanding that distribution is the ultimate concern of justice. The difference lies in the question of the object of distribution and the method of how it should be distributed. Equal distribution of resources would be inadequate in securing justice in society, instead, we should focus on the distribution of capabilities keeping in mind the heterogenous factors that influence people’s capability.

It seems that Sen’s engagement through his Capability Approach with modern political thought marks a significant departure from dominant liberal understandings of justice. We need to acknowledge his effort to make it a substantial departure and to provide an alternative way of how justice should be understood. But his engagement of understanding justice not only revolves around a similar kind of approach but also similar kinds of presuppositions. Similar to the dominant liberal understanding of justice and also to the Rawlsian conception of it. First, Sen does not disapprove of the contractarian reasoning of justice. Unsurprisingly, as a consequence, he does emphasize the role of institutions to bring justice to society. Instead of adhering to one kind of institution that Rawls talks about, we need a comparative analysis of institutions to see which one would better address the concerns of justice, not only in terms of policymaking but also in realizing justice. For justice to be there in society we tend to rely only on institutions. The fundamental question that arises here is - does a person’s being just/unjust, truthful/untruthful, being kind or not, honest/dishonest etc. have any relevance in making a society a just society?

Second, going against the idea of an objective/ideal conception of justice, Sen gives priority to identifying injustices in society and reducing that would amount to justice. In the absence of a standard criterion, apart from capability deprivation or non-proportional distribution of capabilities any form of injustice should have been counted as injustice and addressed accordingly. How this theory would address the problem of greed/desire to accumulate more in people which leads to corruption with impunity in the institutional sphere? Theoretically, is there any instrument to identify this as a problem and address it? While Sen’s approach is more into analyzing injustices and removal of them, it fails to consider the character trait of a corrupt person or dishonesty as unjust and responds to it accordingly. At best, it can measure the outcome of corruption in the form of capability deprivation of someone else. But it is less likely that it can treat the dishonesty/character trait of a corrupt person as a problem for justice to be there in society. Almost every theory of justice that emerges out of the social contract tradition seems to be incapable of addressing this issue plausibly. Problematizing Sen’s notion of justice, I would try to bring in Plato’s idea of justice in The Republic where he conceives justice primarily as a virtue of the human soul and explores how justice from the individual level gets reflected in the State institutions. He considers both of them i.e., individual and institution, as significant in establishing a just society. This way of understanding provides us with a holistic and much more profound way of being just individually and institutionally.

Keywords – Justice, Capability, Social Contract.

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Paper short abstract

This work shows how the Italian Constitution from 1948 relates to the Amartya Sen’s version of the capability approach. It examines articles 2 and 3 from the Constitution and show how Amartya Sen's rejection of utilitarianism and theory of development as freedom can be the basis of constitutionaly gounded public policies in Italy

Paper long abstract

This work shows how the Italian Constitution from 1948 relates to the Amartya Sen’s version of the capability approach. It starts from the political context of the Constitution, after the World War II, and its characterization as an antifascist Constitution by Italian political scientists and legal scientists. The antifascist inspiration and the Welfare State ideas are both elements that lie in the foundation of article 2 and article 3 of the Constitution. According to Article 2, the Italian Republic recognizes and guarantees the inviolable rights of people, both as individuals and in the social formations in which the personality is developed, and requires the fulfillment of the mandatory duties of economic, political and social solidarity. According to Article 3, comma 1, all citizens have the same social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinctions of sex, race, language, religion, political opinions, and personal and social conditions. Article 3, comma 2, states as a task of the Republic the removal of economic and social obstacles that, by factually limiting the freedom and equality among people, prevent the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the Country’s political, economic, and social organization. This constitutional contempt can be philosophically linked with the capability approach and examined under its concepts ant theoretical construction. The duties of solidarity relates to Amartya Sen’s conception of the human being as not exclusively self-interested and the rejection of the utilitarian racionality. The idea of removal of obstacles that limit freedom and equality and prevent full human development are very similar to Amartya Sen’s own theory of development as freedom, which means that Sen’s construction and the ways he suggest on the removal of obstacles can be the basis for public policies with constitucional ground in the Italian Republic.

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Paper short abstract

This article engages with the contemporary literature (e.g. Robeyns, 2017; Baujard and Gilardone, 2017 and Erasmo, 2024, among others) that examines the Capability Approach from a historical perspective. It provides an overview and a categorisation of its main streams since the first Cambridge and Pavia conferences. It focuses on key questions that remain to be solved by the approach.

Paper long abstract

Research Context

Amartya Sen's groundbreaking article "Equality of What" (1979) is often considered as the genesis of the Capability Approach (Crocker, 1995; Qizilbash, 1996). Much has been written on how Sen has tried many different evaluative approaches in the field of social welfare, such as ‘the meta-ranking approach’ (1974, 1979), ‘the named goods approach’ (1979), ‘the vector view’ (1980-1), ‘the capabilities right system’ (1982), ‘the positional approach’ (1983) and ‘the intersection approach’ (1986). But in the history of the Capability Approach, it seems that Sen has maintained an incredible degree of analytical coherence throughout his many articles and books dedicated to the capability approach based on his work as a social choice theorist (Sen, 1970, 2017). An investigation of the genesis of Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach provides a similar history, starting with her collaborative work with Sen (Nussbaum and Sen, 1989 and 1993) towards more elaborated forms of her approach (2000) grounded on her Aristotelian background (Nussbaum, 1990, 1992).

However, it seems reasonable to argue from a historical perspective that the Capability Approach today has evolved into an ecosystem of frameworks that is broader than the ones put forward by its two main exponents in the last century. First, because they changed their approaches in important aspects (e.g. Sen, 2009 and Nussbaum, 2022) leading to distinct potential variants of their own approaches. Secondly, because there is enough diversity within the standard approaches and their applications, as highlighted by recent contributions, such as Robeyns (2017), Baujard and Gilardone (2017), Comim, Fennell and Anand (2018) and Erasmo (2024), among others. Finally, because there are many original queries raised by the approach that have not been totally settled, for instance about its individualistic foundations.

Methodology

Given this context, we provide here a historical overview and a categorisation of the main streams of the Capability Approach in the 21st century, starting from the first Cambridge and Pavia Conferences that launched the HDCA and finishing with the most recent contributions presented at last year’s HDCA conference.

The objective is to provide not only a historical account of the evolution of the Capability Approach but also an analytical discussion about the sort of issues that remain unsettled within the approach. In a moment that we will celebrate 20 years of HDCA in this conference, it seems suitable to take stock of the path pursued by distinct research lines within the capability scholarship in order to examine its structural limitations and future possibilities.

Conclusions

We focus here on the issues that remain to be addressed by the approach, highlighting what separates and what brings together capability scholars.

Some key references

Baujard, A. and Gilardone, M. (2017) Sen is not a capability theorist. Journal of Economic Methodology, vol. 24, n. 1, p. 1-19.

Crocker, D. (1995) “Functioning and Capability: The Foundations of Sen's and Nussbaum's Development Ethic, Part 2”. In: Nussbaum, M. and Glover, J. (1995) Women, Culture and Development: a study of human capabilities.

Erasmo, V. (2024) Who are the capability theorists?: a tale of the origins and development of the capability approach.

Gasper, D. (2017). What is the capability approach? Its core, rationale, partners and dangers, pp. 217–242 in Gasper, D. and St Claire, A. (eds.), Development Ethics. London, Routledge

Nussbaum, M. (1992) Human functioning and social justice: in defense of Aristotelian essentialism. Political Theory, vol. 20, n. 2, pp. 202-246

Nussbaum, M. (2000). Women and Human Development: A Study in Human Capabilities, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Nussbaum, M. (2022) Justice for Animals: our collective responsibility. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Nussbaum, M. and Sen, A. (1993) The Quality of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum and Sen, Amartya (1989). ʻInternal Criticism and Indian Rationalist Traditionsʼ, in M. Krausz (ed.), Relativism, Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press.

Qizilbash, M. 1996. Capabilities, well-being and human development: a survey, Journal of Human Development, vol. 33, no. 2, 143–62

Robeyns, I. and Byskov, M. F. 2020. The Capability Approach, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/capability-approach

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Paper short abstract

This study probes agency measurement in closed societies like North Korea. Despite control mechanisms, societal shifts post-famine hint at altered gender roles and emergent markets. Divided ideologies complicate measurement amid varied perceptions. The study delves into philosophical dimensions and challenges of assessing agency amidst divergent societal perspectives.

Paper long abstract

The concept of agency, particularly within closed societies like North Korea, poses intricate questions about individual autonomy and societal constraints. Agency, defined as the capacity of individuals to act according to their own beliefs and values, becomes challenging to measure when people operate within rigid ideological frameworks. In North Korea, a closed authoritarian state often likened to an Owenian panopticon, the government exerts pervasive control through various channels including public education, political indoctrination, and community surveillance systems. Despite these controls, evidence post the mid-1990s famine suggests shifts in North Korean society, notably the emergence of autonomous markets and changes in gender roles due to domestic and transborder migration. These shifts signal a nuanced evolution within North Korean society, where traditional ideologies coexist with emerging market principles.

In examining North Korean society, it becomes evident that diverse perceptions and belief systems shape individual agency and responses to social change. While some embrace market principles, others adhere steadfastly to established norms propagated by the ruling regime since the inception of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This diversity underscores the complex interplay between Asiatic rights, emphasizing collective welfare, and Western notions of human rights, which prioritize individual liberties. Amidst these contrasting ideologies, the measurement of agency assumes significance, yet proves challenging given the multitude of perspectives and the inherent limitations of closed societies.

Exploring ontological and philosophical considerations of agency, as articulated by scholars like Walter Johnson in "On Agency," provides insight into the complexities inherent in measuring individual autonomy within constrained environments. The capability approach, which emphasizes the importance of agency in enhancing human well-being and societal development, offers a lens through which to understand the dynamics of change in closed societies like North Korea. Despite the complexities and challenges associated with measuring agency, its exploration remains crucial for understanding social dynamics, promoting human rights, and fostering meaningful dialogue on the future trajectory of closed societies.