Capabilities Approach

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 1

A Sen
Amartya Sen, key author Born 1933 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Primary education in Tagore’s school in Santiniketan, India.
Witnessed Bengal famine in which 2-3 million people died.
Studied in Kolkata and Cambridge UK.
Taught in Delhi School of Economics.
London School of Economics, Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard.
Received Nobel prize 1998, for welfare economics ( social
choice theory ).
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 01-08-2020 2

 • Amartya Sen developed the Capability’s Approach in 1980’s as an
alternative to assessing the welfare economics
• his approach has strong conceptual connections with Aristotle’s
understanding of human flourishing (this was the initial foundation for
Nussbaum’s alternative Capability Theory)
• The Income centric / utility centric approach to welfare had many
problems
• When evaluating well-being, Sen argues, the most important thing is to
consider what people are actually able to be and do. The commodities or
wealth people have or their mental reactions (utility) are an
Capability inappropriate focus because they provide only limited information about
the wellbeing of a person. Sen illustrates his point with the example of a
Approach standard bicycle. This has the characteristics of ‘transportation’ but
whether it will actually provide transportation will depend on the
characteristics of those who try to use it.
• It looked at income as an end in itself, leaving out people and their
wellbeing as a subsequent outcome
• Capability Approach was an attempt to bring people and their choices/
ability to make and achieve the choices at the center of the debate of
development
• It has been used in the conceptualizing of the HDI
• The Approach is influenced/borrowed from Philosopher Maratha
Nussbaum
01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 3
 The Approach is Normative rather than explanatory
It uses moral, ethical value Judgements in analysing
capabilities
The approach has been much discussed by political theorists,
philosophers, and a range of social scientists, including those
with a particular interest in human health.
Capability It proposes that social arrangements should be primarily
Approach evaluated according to the extent of freedom people have to
promote or achieve functionings they value.
Key texts by Sen: – 1984: Commodities and Capabilities –
1992: Inequality Re-Examined. – 1993: Quality of Life (edited
with Martha Nussbaum) – 1999: Development as Freedom –
2009.

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 4

What is the Capability Approach ?
The Approach can be understood with the help of the following ideas

Entitlements

Capabilities

Conversion
Functionings
factors

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 5

 Entitlements
Alternative bundle of commodities that a person can get by selling his labour
It depends on the price
It depends on the availability of commodities
It depends on its access

Entitlements represent income in simple terms but with other added requisites which
make the concept more relevant and complete than what income alone can command.

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 6

Functionings
The various things a person may value and have reason to value doing or being
intuitive
intrinsically valuable to the person - ( Simple functionings )
Example : To be well fed, clothed etc
intrinsic value (have reason to value) – ( Complex Functionings )
Example : To learn a new language, higher studies, to work, to have freedom of participate in
politics etc

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 7

Conversion factors
Factors which can be understood as the links between functioning and
Capability
These take many forms
For some they may be favourable and unfavourable for others
Many are given. Cannot be changed ( even if one wishes )
They help in understanding the complexity of the subject of welfare and thereby
respecting and valuing people’s choices.

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 8

Conversion Factors
Personal Heterogenicity

Environmental Diversities

Variation in Social climate

Distribution of Income within family

Gender roles / disparity

Differences in relational perspectives

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 9

 “The freedom that a person has in terms of the choice of functionings,
given his personal features (conversion of characteristics into
functionings) and his command over commodities.” A Sen
Capabilities are a step ahead of functionings
Given the functioning, what a person chooses is the actual capability
Indeed, for many, achievement of some functionings itself may suffice
“The focus here is on the freedom that a person actually has to do this
or be that – things that he or she may value doing or being.” Idea of
Capabilities Justice.
Note the difference in two words : The freedom that one has to do or
be VS what one Values to do or be
Example : A person may value being well fed, but does he have the
capability to be so??
Example : A person may be materially wealthy and happy but if he has
the freedom to renounce the world?
Sen’s key contribution has been to unite the two concepts of
functioning and Capability

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 10

 The Capability Approach attempts to address the following concerns which
the contemporay approaches of well-being have overlooked . They are :
(1) Individuals can differ greatly in their abilities to convert the same
resources into valuable functionings (‘beings’ and ‘doings’). For example,
those with physical disabilities may need specific goods to achieve mobility,
and pregnant women have specific nutritional requirements to achieve good
health. Therefore, evaluation that focuses only on means, without
considering what particular people can do with them, is insufficient.
(2) People can internalize the harshness of their circumstances so that they
do not desire what they can never expect to achieve. This is the
phenomenon of ‘adaptive preferences’ in which people who are objectively
very sick may, for example, still declare, and believe, that their health is
Summary fine. Therefore, evaluation that focuses only on subjective mental metrics is
insufficient without considering whether that matches with what a neutral
observer would perceive as their objective circumstances,.
(3) Whether or not people take up the options they have, the fact that they
do have valuable options is significant. For example, even if the nutritional
state of people who are fasting and starving is the same, the fact that fasting
is a choice not to eat should be recognized. Therefore evaluation must be
sensitive to both actual achievements (‘functionings’) and effective freedom
(‘capability’).
(4) Reality is complicated and evaluation should reflect that complexity
rather than take a short-cut by excluding all sorts of information from
consideration in advance. Therefore, evaluation of how well people are
doing must seek to be as open-minded as possible.
01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 11
One understands the heavy emphasis on health, education and empowerment of
women that developmental economics places
For a large number of countries and people, capabilities to alleviate themselves
from hunger and poverty are the biggest freedoms they aspire to get.
For Sen, human “well-being” means being well, in the basic sense of being
healthy, well nourished, well clothed, literate, and long-lived, and more broadly,
being able to take part in the life of the community, being mobile, and having
freedom of choice in what one can become and can do.

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 12

Limitations
The approach is a paradigm shift from the previous notions of development
It suffers from the problems of value judgement and normative thinking
Cannot separate valuable and non valuable capability
Difficult to formulate policies basis the notion of capabilities
Measurement not possible

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 13

 Nussbaum and Sen collaborated in the late 1980s and early 1990s and since they are
the most high-profile writers in the Capability Approach their accounts are often
elided, despite significant differences. When they are distinguished, Nussbaum’s
account is often seen as the more ‘philosophical’ because she has developed the
Capability Approach in a more orthodox philosophical way, for example, by focusing on
theoretical rigor, coherence and completeness. As a result, Sen’s approach is
sometimes perceived merely as a predecessor to Nussbaum’s more developed second
generation account, and therefore of primarily historical interest to understanding the
Capability Approach rather than a parallel account in its own right.

The accounts of Sen and Nussbaum differ significantly in ways that relate to their
different concerns and backgrounds. In particular:

• Nussbaum is concerned to produce a philosophically coherent normative (partial)

Sen and theory of justice; Sen is concerned with producing a general framework
for evaluating the quality of lives people can lead that can incorporate the very diverse

Nussbaum concerns and dimensions that may be applicable.

• While Sen’s approach is founded on enhancing individual freedom, Nussbaum’s theory

is founded on respecting human dignity.

• Sen’s comprehensive consequentialism makes room for incorporating empirical

information about feasibility and instrumental relationships between capabilities when
considering policies; Nussbaum largely rejects such instrumental analysis because she
is wary of its ‘Utilitarian associations’.

• Sen’s Capability Approach in its normative ‘developmental’ aspect, is mainly concerned

with practical incremental improvements; Nussbaum’s approach is rather more utopian
in that it demands the full implementation of minimal justice (achievement of the
minimum thresholds of all fundamental capabilities) for all, and this is specified so
demandingly that no country yet meets it (though she has suggested that Finland may
be close).
01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 14
Thank You

01-08-2020 CAPABILITY APPROACH - VAIDEHI DHAMANKAR 15