Sens Capabilities Approach

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The Capability Approach and Human Development
Sabina Alkire sabina_alkire_at_harvard.edu Somervil
le College and Queen Elizabeth House 13 September
2004
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outline

• Objective of Development
• Functioning
• Capability and Freedom
• Information and Analysis
• Basic Capabilities
• Value Judgements and Public Debate

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Objective of Development

• Development can be seenas a process of
  expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.
  Opening Sentence, Development as Freedom
• The goal of development is the promotion and
  expansion of valuable capabilities. Sen,
  Development as Capability Expansion
• People are the real wealth of nations. Indeed,
  the basic purpose of development is to enlarge
  human freedoms. The process of development can
  expand human capabilities by expanding the
  choices that people have to live full and
  creative lives. And people are both the
  beneficiaries of such development and the agents
  of the progress and change that bring it about.
  This process must benefit all individuals
  equitably and build on the participation of each
  of them. This approach to developmenthuman
  developmenthas been advocated by every Human
  Development Report since the first in 1990.
• HDR 2004 p 127

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Sens Capabilities Approach

• Capability is the Freedom to Achieve Valuable
  Beings and DoingsTWO MAIN IDEAS Freedom
  Valuable Beings and Doings (Sen
  calls these functionings)

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Valuable Beings and Doings(functionings)

• These are all the ends of human life (They can
  also be means)
• They can be elementary escaping morbidity and
  mortality nourishment mobility
• They can be complex self-respect, participation
  in community life, ability to appear in public
  without shame.
• They can be general capability to be nourished
• Or they can be specific - capability to drink 7up.

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Functionings

• the various things a person may value doing or
  being
• functionings are constitutive of a persons
  being.
• Achieved Functionings measurable, observable,
  comparable. Example, literacy life
  expectancy.

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Freedomfor Sen, Freedom has two aspects

• Process Aspect ability to be agents to
  affect the processes at work in their own lives
  or as general rules in the working of society

• Opportunity Aspect ability to achieve valued
  functionings -

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Freedom and Capability

• Capability represents the various
  combinations of functionings (beings and doings)
  that the person can achieve. Capability is,
  thus, a set of vectors of functionings,
  reflecting the persons freedom to lead one type
  of life or another...to choose from possible
  livings. IR p 40
• Intrinsic and Instrumental Value The good
  life is partly a life of genuine choice, and not
  one in which the person is forced into a
  particular life however rich it might be in
  other respects.

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Dimensions of Human Development

• life (health, reproduction, security)
• knowledge
• work and play
• relationships
• spirituality
• participation
• inner peace
• appreciation of beauty
• harmony with the non-human world

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Sample lists of functionings there are many!


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Participation and Trade Offs

• Participation also has intrinsic value for the
  quality of life. Indeed being able to do
  something not only for oneself but also for other
  members of the society is one of the elementary
  freedoms which people have reason to value. The
  popular appeal of many social movements in India
  confirms that this basic capability is highly
  valued even among people who lead very deprived
  lives in material terms. Dreze and Sen
  1995106

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Freedom and Individualism

• Freedom can seem individualistic, even selfish.
  It does not capture the altruism of a mother, or
  the social goals and self-sacrifice of an
  activist, much less any moral duties that should
  constrain our freedoms so that we do not freely
  oppress, or trample others rights.
• Pyschologist Richard Ryan (University of
  Rochester) distinguishes helpfully between
  autonomy and individualism/collectivism,
  dependence/independence, and verticalism/horizonta
  lism. These distinctions hold empirically. If by
  agency Sen means autonomy, this breaks the link
  between agency and individualism.

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Additional Information

• Principles / processes affirmative action,
  fairness, targetting, sustainability, efficiency
• Human Rights
• Situated Evaluation
• Unintended Consequences
• Motivations
• Imperfect Obligations
• Perfect Obligations
• Menus of Choice
• Utility / Happiness / Psychic State

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In sum alternative paradigm

• Objective capability expansion. Vs maximizing
  GNI/capita
• Multidimensional and trade-offs are value
  judgments, not optimization ex.
• Shifts boundary of politics and economics many
  economic judgements need to be subject to
  explicit public scrutiny and debate.

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The Problem Capabilities Contract as well as
Expand