Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice

Front matter

The Capability Approach Re-Examined

To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions

Go to:

Contents

Acknowledgements

1.1 Why the capability approach? 1.2 The worries of the sceptics

1.3 A yardstick for the evaluation of prosperity and progress

Conclusion

45 47 51

53 55 57 59

60 61 63 63 65 66

67 67 68

69 72 73

75 77 80 84 87

3.1 3.2

3.3

3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

3.8

Introduction Refining the notions of ‘capability’ and ‘functioning’

3.2.1 Capability as an opportunity versus capability as an opportunity set

3.2.2 Nussbaum’s terminology

3.2.3 What are ‘basic capabilities’?

3.2.4 Conceptual and terminological refinements Are capabilities freedoms, and if so, which ones?

3.3.1 Capabilities as positive freedoms?

3.3.2 Capabilities as opportunity or option freedoms?

3.3.3 Are capabilities best understood as freedoms? Functionings or capabilities?

Human diversity in the capability approach Collective capabilities

Which notion of wellbeing is used in the capability approach?

3.7.1 The aim and context of accounts of wellbeing

3.7.2 The standard taxonomy of philosophical wellbeing accounts

3.7.3 The accounts of wellbeing in the capability approach

Happiness and the capability approach 3.8.1 What is the happiness approach? 3.8.2 The ontological objection 3.8.3 Mental adaptation and social comparisons 3.8.4 Comparing groups 3.8.5 Macro analysis

3.8.6 The place of happiness in the capability approach

89 90 91

92 94 96 98 99 102

106 107 113 115 118

119 121

3.9 3.10

3.11 3.12 3.13

3.14

3.15

The capability approach and adaptive preferences

Can the capability approach be an explanatory theory?

A suitable theory for all normative questions?

The role of resources in the capability approach The capability approach and theories of justice

3.13.1 A brief description of the literature on theories of justice

3.13.2 What do we need for a capability theory of justice?

3.13.3 From theories of justice to just practices and policies

Capabilities and human rights

3.14.1 What are human rights?

3.14.2 The interdisciplinary scholarship on human rights

3.14.3 Why a capability-based account of human rights?

3.14.4 Are capabilities sufficient to construct a theory of human rights?

3.14.5 The disadvantages

Conclusion

4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5

4.6

Introduction

Is everything that’s called a capability genuinely a capability?

Should we commit to a specific list of capabilities? Why not use the notion of needs?

Does the capability approach only address the government?

Is the capability approach too individualistic? 4.6.1 Different forms of individualism 4.6.2 Does the capability approach pay sufficient attention to groups? 4.6.3 Social structures, norms and institutions in the capability approach

137 142

143 145 147 148

160 161 162

167 168

169 170

171 174 179

183 184 186

4.7 What about power and political economy? 4.7.1 Which account of power and choice?

4.7.2 Should we prioritise analysing the political economy?

4.8 Is the capability approach a liberal theory? 4.9 Why ‘human development’ is not the same idea

4.10 Can the capability approach change welfare economics?

4.10.1 Welfare economics and the economics discipline

4.10.2 Non-welfarism

4.10.3 Empirical possibilities and challenges

4.10.4 Towards a heterodox capabilitarian welfare economics?

4.11 Taking stock

5. Which Future for the Capability Approach?