Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach re-examined

Robeyns, Ingrid Book — Published Version Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach re-examined Provided in Cooperation with: Open Book Publishers Suggested Citation: Robeyns, Ingrid (2017) : Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach re-examined, ISBN 978-1-78374-459-6, Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0130 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/182376 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ INGRID ROBEYNS Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice 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: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/682 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined Ingrid Robeyns https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2017 Ingrid Robeyns This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). 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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-421-3 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-422-0 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-423-7 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-424-4 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-425-1 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0130 Cover image: Weaving by Aaron Robeyns (2015). Photo by Roland Pierik (2017), CC-BY 4.0. Cover design by Heidi Coburn. All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) Certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) Contents Acknowledgements 3 1. Introduction 7 1.1 Why the capability approach? 7 1.2 The worries of the sceptics 10 1.3 A yardstick for the evaluation of prosperity and progress 11 1.4 Scope and development of the capability approach 16 1.5 A guide for the reader 19 2. Core Ideas and the Framework 21 2.1 Introduction 21 2.2 A preliminary definition of the capability approach 23 2.3 The capability approach versus capability theories 29 2.4 The many modes of capability analysis 31 2.5 The modular view of the capability approach 36 2.6 The A-module: the non-optional core of all capability theories 38 2.6.1 A1: Functionings and capabilities 38 2.6.2 A2: Functionings and capabilities are valueneutral categories 41 2.6.3 A3: Conversion factors 45 2.6.4 A4: The means-ends distinction 47 2.6.5 A5: Functionings and capabilities as the evaluative space 51 2.6.6 A6: Other dimensions of ultimate value 53 2.6.7 A7: Value pluralism 55 2.6.8 A8: The principle of each person as an end 57 2.7 The B-modules: non-optional modules with optional content 59 2.7.1 B1: The purpose of the capability theory 60 2.7.2 B2: The selection of dimensions 61 2.7.3 B3: Human diversity 63 2.7.4 B4: Agency 63 2.7.5 B5: Structural constraints 65 2.7.6 B6: The choice between functionings, capabilities, or both 66 2.7.7 B7: Meta-theoretical commitments 67 2.8 The C-modules: contingent modules 67 2.8.1 C1: Additional ontological and explanatory theories 68 2.8.2 C2: Weighing dimensions 69 2.8.3 C3: Methods for empirical analysis 72 2.8.4 C4: Additional normative principles and concerns 73 2.9 The modular view of the capability account: a summary 73 2.10 Hybrid theories 75 2.11 The relevance and implications of the modular view 77 2.12 A visualisation of the core conceptual elements 80 2.13 The narrow and broad uses of the capability approach 84 2.14 Conclusion 87 3. Clarifications 89 3.1 Introduction 89 3.2 Refining the notions of ‘capability’ and ‘functioning’ 90 3.2.1 Capability as an opportunity versus capability as an opportunity set 91 3.2.2 Nussbaum’s terminology 92 3.2.3 What are ‘basic capabilities’? 94 3.2.4 Conceptual and terminological refinements 96 3.3 Are capabilities freedoms, and if so, which ones? 98 3.3.1 Capabilities as positive freedoms? 99 3.3.2 Capabilities as opportunity or option freedoms? 102 3.3.3 Are capabilities best understood as freedoms? 106 3.4 Functionings or capabilities? 107 3.5 Human diversity in the capability approach 113 3.6 Collective capabilities 115 3.7 Which notion of wellbeing is used in the capability approach? 118 3.7.1 The aim and context of accounts of wellbeing 119 3.7.2 The standard taxonomy of philosophical wellbeing accounts 121 3.7.3 The accounts of wellbeing in the capability approach 125 3.8 Happiness and the capability approach 126 3.8.1 What is the happiness approach? 127 3.8.2 The ontological objection 129 3.8.3 Mental adaptation and social comparisons 130 3.8.4 Comparing groups 133 3.8.5 Macro analysis 134 3.8.6 The place of happiness in the capability approach 135 4 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Over the last fifteen years, I have published quite a number of articles, book chapters and online pieces on the capability approach, including many that had as their main aim to clarify or explain certain aspects of it. But I kept receiving many emails from students who had questions about the capability approach. Their emails, as well as conversations with scholars sceptical of the importance of this approach, made it clear that a general introduction was necessary to answer as many of these questions as possible. I decided to write an introductory overview of the capability approach, in which the aim was not to develop my own, novel version of a capability theory, but rather to try to present a general helicopter view of the approach. In addition, I felt that too many claims about or critiques of the capability approach that were circulating were based either on some scholar’s own interest in seeing the approach develop exclusively in a certain direction, or else were based on misunderstandings, often due to miscommunication between different disciplines. The result lies in front of you. Unfortunately, it took me much longer to write this than I had originally planned; almost twelve years lie between the initial idea and its completion. Yet in hindsight, despite that at many points the ambition of writing this book felt like a heavy psychological burden, I have no regrets that I’m only now completing it. Only in the last year, after the publication of an article in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities in which I offered a general definition of the capability approach (Robeyns 2016b), did it became clear to me exactly what the general anatomy of the approach looked like. Thanks to discussions with students and other scholars, the generalisation of the capability approach that emerged from that journal article was further crystallised and polished. That generalisation is the heart of this book, and it is presented in chapter 2. In addition, I also provide what one could see as an F.A.Q. guide to the capability literature — the most frequently voiced questions and criticisms will be clarified and discussed in chapters 3 and 4. Over the many years of developing my own understanding of the capability approach, I have learnt a lot from other scholars as well as from those whom I taught. Intellectually, my biggest debt is no doubt to Amartya Sen, who had the single most important influence on my intellectual development. I also learnt a lot from conversations on 5 Acknowledgements the capability approach with people working in different disciplines and in different corners of the world. I cannot possibly list everyone who contributed to my understanding and thinking, yet I would like to express my gratitude to Bina Agarwal, Sabina Alkire, Constanze Binder, Harry Brighouse, Morten Fibieger Byskov, Enrica ChiapperoMartinetti, Rutger Claassen, Ina Conradie, Andrew Crabtree, David Crocker, Séverine Deneulin, Avner De-Shalit, Jay Drydryk, Des Gasper, Pablo Gilabert, Reiko Gotoh, Govert den Hartogh, Martin van Hees, Jane Humphries, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Matthias Kramm, Sem de Maagt, Martha Nussbaum, Ilse Oosterlaken, Antonella Picchio, Roland Pierik, Mozaffar Qizilbash, Erik Schokkaert, Elaine Unterhalter, Robert van der Veen, Sridhar Venkatapuram, Polly Vizzard, Melanie Walker, Krushil Watene, Tom Wells, Jonathan Wolff, as well as my late friend and co-author Wiebke Kuklys. I also benefited a lot from teaching the capability approach to hundreds of students, but in particular during a week-long course at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, in 2011; during a workshop at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo in March 2016; during a Masterclass at the London School of Economics in which I worked on a draft of this book manuscript in February 2017; and during a Research Master’s tutorial in practical philosophy at Utrecht University during the academic year 2016–2017. I benefited from the comments I received at two book manuscript workshops that were held over the last year, one at the Erasmus University Rotterdam organised by Constanze Binder and Sem de Maagt, and the other as a session at the 2017 Human Devolpment & Capability Association (HDCA) conference in Cape Town, organised by Morten Fibieger Byskov and Rebecca Gutwald. I benefited from the comments I received at those occasions from Morten Fibieger Byskov, Willem van der Deijl, Monique Deveaux, Akshath Jitendranath, Caroline Suransky and Miriam Teschl in Rotterdam, and from Solava Ibrahim, Serene Khader and Henry Richardson in Cape Town. In addition, I also received comments on parts of the draft manuscript from Conrad Heilmann, Chris Lyon, Bart Mijland, Raphael Ng, Petra van der Kooij, Roland Pierik and Polly Vizard. I owe special thanks to Constanze Binder, Séverine Deneulin, Morten Fibieger Byskov, Matthias Kramm, Sem de Maagt and Henry Richardson, whose comments led to multiple substantive changes. Thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers who 6 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice reviewed the book proposal in 2011 and especially to Tania Burchardt, who reviewed the final manuscript and provided very valuable suggestions for final revisions. My thanks are also due to Robert van der Veen, for his permission to draw on our joint work in section 3.8. I would furthermore like to acknowledge generous research funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), who awarded me three grants over the last 15 years that allowed me to further develop my research on the capability approach: a four-year postdoctoral scholarship (2002–2006) to work on the capability approach and theories of justice; a VIDI grant (2006–2011) to work on demographic changes and social justice using the capability approach as one of the normative tools; and finally the Horizon grant (2011–2016) awarded to a consortium of scholars from three universities and led by Marcus Düwell, for an interdisciplinary analysis of practical self-understanding. Thanks also to the team at Open Book Publishers — in particular Lucy Barnes, Bianca Gualandi, Alice Meyer, and Alessandra Tosi — who have been a real pleasure to work with. This book is dedicated to my family — to my husband Roland Pierik and our children Aaron and Ischa. This book contains not only almost half a million characters typed and retyped by me, but also visible and less visible contributions from my three (little) men. Obviously, as a fellow political philosopher with interdisciplinary leanings, there are insights from Roland in various places in this book, including some direct citations. Moreover, Roland helped me not to let the best be the enemy of the good, and kept encouraging me to finish this book. If I waited until I was happy with each sentence and paragraph, this book probably would never see the light of day. Ischa’s contribution may be the least visible, yet it is there. It is his unconventional view of human affairs that keeps prompting me not to accept norms or practices that are unjust or make no sense. Aaron provided the artwork for the cover. The woven piece very well represents the multi-dimensional nature of the capability approach, as well as the fact that life is made up by one’s own choice of functionings, which follows a dynamic and always unfinished pattern. If one has enough bright and colourful functionings, they can be woven together to become something bigger than the mere functionings taken separately — a flourishing life worth living. 1. Introduction 1.1 Why the capability approach? Many people who encounter the capability approach for the first time find the ideas embedded within it intuitively attractive. The basic claim of the capability approach is that, when asking normative questions, we should ask what people are able to do and what lives they are able to lead. That claim resonates with widespread ideas among citizens, academics, and politicians about how to make policies, views about what social justice requires, or bottom-up views about development and social progress. Perhaps the most important contribution the capability approach makes is to prompt us to ask alternative questions, and to focus on different dimensions when we make observations or when we gather the relevant data for making evaluations or judgements. What is the capability approach? This book will answer that question in detail. But let us start with a first, preliminary description, taken from a quote by Amartya Sen, who introduced the theoretical idea of the capability approach in his 1979 Tanner Lecture (Sen 1980a) and soon after in empirical work (Sen and Sengupta 1983; Sen 1985a). According to Sen, the capability approach “is an intellectual discipline that gives a central role to the evaluation of a person’s achievements and freedoms in terms of his or her actual ability to do the different things a person has reason to value doing or being” (Sen 2009a, 16). As we will see later in this book, I will propose a definition and an account of the capability approach that does not exactly equal Sen’s but rather can be interpreted © 2017 Ingrid Robeyns, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0130.01 8 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice as a generalisation of Sen’s definition.1 Yet Sen’s definition is a good way to start, since it highlights that the capability approach is concerned with aspects of people’s lives such as their health, the education they can enjoy and the support they enjoy from their social networks; it is also concerned with what people can do, such as being able to work, raise a family, travel, or be politically active. The capability approach cares about people’s real freedoms to do these things, and the level of wellbeing that they will reach when choosing from the options open to them. It is a rich, multidimensional approach. Here’s an example illustrating the difference the capability approach makes. Everyone agrees that poverty needs to be combatted — but who are the people that suffer from poverty? Which conceptual and normative framework do we use when we identify the poor? Which definition of poverty do we use when we analyse the incidence of poverty in a country? As empirical research has shown, it does matter whether one uses the widespread income-based metric, or whether one takes a capability perspective and focuses on a set of thresholds of basic functionings, the lack of which indicates a dimension of poverty. Caterina Ruggeri Laderchi (1997) used data from a Chilean household survey to investigate the extent to which an income-based measure is able to capture some basic functionings that could arguably be seen as central to poverty analysis: basic education, health and nutrition. She found that the income variable in itself is insignificant as a determinant of the shortfall in health, schooling and child nutrition and that the role that income plays is highly non-linear and depends on a number of other personal, household and regional characteristics. In other words, looking at the income level in a household to determine whether the members of that household are poor may be an unreliable indicator for the prevalence of poverty. The difference between, on the one hand, the income-based measurements and, on the other hand, measurements based on a selection of basic indicators that reflect how people are doing has also been confirmed by a large number of other studies in the last twenty-five years.2 It is for that income-based approach that the 1 The exact definition and description of the capability approach that I will develop in this book is broader than Sen’s own. The reason, as will become clear in due course, is that the “having reason to value” clause in Sen’s definition is, in my view, a special case of the general definition of the capability approach. 2 See, among others, Klasen 2000; Laderchi, Saith and Stewart 2003; Qizilbash 2002; Reddy, Visaria and Asali 2009; Alkire et al. 2015. 9 1. Introduction capability approach offers an alternative — but, as will be explained in this book, it is also an alternative to many other approaches and theories, such as the happiness approach or resources-based theories of justice. While the capability approach has been used to identify the poor, it has also been used for many other purposes. Over the last twentyfive years, the range of fields in which the capability approach has been applied and developed has expanded dramatically, and now includes global public health, development ethics, environmental protection and ecological sustainability, education, technological design, welfare state policies and many, many more.3 Nor has the use of the capability approach been restricted to empirical research only. Some of its purposes have been theoretical, such as the construction of theories of justice (Anderson 1999; Nussbaum 2000; Nussbaum 2006b; Claassen 2016), or the development of a riches-line, which allows us to identify the rich (Robeyns 2017b). Other uses of the capability approach have combined theoretical and empirical research, such as Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit’s (2007) study of disadvantage. For all these endeavours, the capability approach asks: What are people really able to do and what kind of person are they able to be? It asks what people can do and be (their capabilities) and what they are actually achieving in terms of beings and doings (their functionings). Do the envisioned institutions, practices and policies focus on people’s capabilities, that is, their opportunities to do what they value and be the kind of person they want to be? Do people have the same capabilities in life?4 Or do global economic structures, domestic policies or brute bad luck make people’s capabilities unequal, and if so, is that unfair and should we do something about that? Do development projects focus on 3 See section 1.4 for a more detailed discussion of the scope of the capability approach, and some references to the various fields in which it is now applied and developed. 4 Some capability scholars, in particular Martha Nussbaum, have extended the capability approach to include the functionings of non-human animals. In this book, I restrict the discussion to human functionings and human capabilities. This is not to deny that the functionings of non-human animals are important, nor that for some ethical questions we need to consider both humans and non-human animals. There is a literature that analyses whether the capability approach can plausibly be extended to include non-human animals, which will not be discussed here, given the focus on humans (e.g. Nussbaum 2006b; Schinkel 2008; Cripps 2010; Wissenburg 2011; Holland and Linch 2016). Note that there is also a large literature on ‘the capabilities of firms’, which is not related to how the term ‘capabilities’ is used in the capability approach. In this book, the term ‘capabilities’ refers only to the capabilities of members of the human species. 10 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice expanding people’s capabilities, or do they have another public policy goal (such as economic growth), or are they merely serving the interests of a dominant group? The capability approach thus offers a different perspective than alternative approaches that focus on the accumulation of material resources, or the mental states of people, such as their overall satisfaction with their lives. 1.2 The worries of the sceptics Although the capability approach appeals to many readers, others have wondered whether this theory is really any different from other more established theories, or whether the capability approach is promising as a theory with sufficient bite. For example John Rawls (1999, 13), while acknowledging that the idea of basic capabilities is important, calls it “an unworkable idea” for a liberal conception of justice. John Roemer (1996, 191–93) has criticized the capability approach for being insufficiently specified — a complaint that is also echoed in the critique made by Pratab Bhanu Mehta (2009). Others have questioned the practical significance of the capability approach for policy making and empirical assessment. For instance, Robert Sugden (1993, 1953) has questioned the usefulness of the capability approach for welfare economics — a critique to which we will return in section 4.10. In addition, at seminars and other scholarly gatherings, an often-heard criticism is that the capability approach is old wine in new bottles — it aims to do what the non-economic social sciences have been doing all along. If that is the case, then why should we bother?5 There are two types of answer to the sceptics. The first is conceptual or theoretical and that answer will be given in the remainder of this book. In a nutshell, the reason the capability approach is worth our time and attention is that it gives us a new way of evaluating the lives of individuals and the societies in which these people live their lives. The attention is shifted to public values currently not always considered most important — such as wellbeing, freedom and justice. It is an alternative discourse or paradigm, perhaps even a ‘counter-theory’ to a range of more mainstream discourses on society, poverty and prosperity. 5 Several more specific critiques on the capability approach will be discussed in chapter 4. 11 1. Introduction Moreover, it brings insights from several disciplines together, and gives scholars a common interdisciplinary language. Nevertheless, it doesn’t follow that the capability approach will always offer a framework that is to be preferred over other frameworks: as this book will show, the capability approach can contribute something, but we should be careful not to overplay our hand and believe that it can do a better job for all ethical questions. The second answer to the sceptic is empirical — to show the sceptic what difference the capability approach makes. The earlier mentioned study by Ruggeri Laderchi (1997) and dozens of similar studies do exactly that. In 2006, I provided a survey of the studies in which the capability approach had been put into practice (Robeyns 2006b) — a task that I think is no longer feasible today in a single paper or chapter, given that the empirical literature of applications of the capability approach has grown dramatically. But in order to illustrate in somewhat greater depth this kind of answer to the sceptic, let us focus on one type of empirical application of the capability approach: namely how we perceive and evaluate our lives at a macro level, and how we evaluate the social arrangements in which we live those lives. 1.3 A yardstick for the evaluation of prosperity and progress For many decades, the dominant way to measure prosperity and social progress has been to focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Product (GNP) per capita. The more we produce, the more developed our country has been taken to be. Yet a large literature has emerged showing that GDP per capita is limited and often flawed as a measure of social and economic progress (Fleurbaey 2009; Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi 2010; Fleurbaey and Blanchet 2013; Coyle 2015). In one of the very first empirical applications of the capability approach, Amartya Sen (1985a) used some very simple statistics to illustrate how deceiving GDP per capita can be as a measure of prosperity and progress.6 Sen showed that, in the early 1980s, the (roughly 6 An even earlier empirical study, in which the capability approach is referred to as the right evaluative framework, was done by Amartya Sen and Sunil Sengupta (1983). 12 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice equivalent) GNP per capita of Brazil and Mexico was more than seven times the (roughly equivalent) GNP per capita of India, China and Sri Lanka — yet performances in life expectancy, infant mortality and child death rates were best in Sri Lanka, better in China compared to India and better in Mexico compared to Brazil. Important social indicators related to life, premature death and health, can thus not be read from the average national income statistic. Another finding was that India performs badly regarding basic education but has considerably higher tertiary education rates than China and Sri Lanka. Thus, Sen concluded that the public policy of China and especially Sri Lanka towards distributing food, public health measures, medical services and school education have led to their remarkable achievements in the capabilities of survival and education. What can this application teach us about the capability approach? First, the ranking of countries based on GNP per capita can be quite different from a ranking based on the selected functionings. Second, growth in GNP per capita should not be equated with growth in living standards. Sen has often made use of the power of comparing the differences in the ranking of countries based on GDP per capita with indicators of some essential functionings. Recently Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (2013, 46–50) used the capability approach to develop an analysis of India’s development policies. For example, as table 1.1 shows, they compared India with the fifteen other poorest countries outside subSaharan Africa in terms of development indicators.7 Of those sixteen countries, India ranks on top in terms of GDP per capita, but ranks very low for a range of functionings, such as life expectancy at birth, infant mortality, undernourishment, schooling and literacy. Other countries, with fewer financial means, were able to achieve better outcomes in terms of those functionings. Once again, the point is made that focussing on income-based metrics such as disposable income at the household level, or GDP per capita at the national level, gives limited information on the lives people can lead. 7 Those other countries are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen. 13 1. Introduction Table 1.1 Selected Indicators for the World’s Sixteen Poorest Countries Outside Sub-Saharan Africa India Average for other poorest countries India’s rank among 16 poorest countries GDP per capita, 2011 (PPP Constant 2005 international $) 3,203 2,112 1 Life expectancy at birth, 2011 (years) 65 67 9 Infant mortality rate, 2011 (per 1,000 live births) 47 45 10 Under-5 mortality rate, 2011 (per 1,000 live births) 61 56 10 Total fertility rate, 2011 (children per woman) 2.6 2.9 7 Access to improved sanitation, 2010 (%) 34 57 13 Mean years of schooling, age 25+, 2011 4.4 5.0 11 Literacy rate, age 14–15 years, 2010 (%) Female 74 79 11 Male 88 85 9 Proportion of children below 5 years who are undernourished, 2006–2010 (%) Underweight 43 30 15 Stunted 48 41 13 Child immunization rates, 2011 (%) DPT 72 88 13 Measles 74 87 11 Source: Drèze and Sen (2013, 47). 20 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice the other, will clear the capability literature of many confusing and unnecessary criticisms, so that we can devote our energy to those that are powerful and with which we need to engage. Moreover, let us not forget that the capability approach is a tool and not an end in itself; we should master it as well as we can, perhaps also as efficiently as we can, and then move on to use it in the work that really matters. 2. Core Ideas and the Framework 2.1 Introduction The previous chapter listed a range of fields in which the capability approach has been taken up, and in chapters 3 and 4 we focus in more detail on how the capability approach can (or cannot) make a difference for thinking about wellbeing, social and distributive justice, human rights, welfare economics and other topics. This broad uptake of the capability approach across disciplines and across different types of knowledge production (from theoretical and abstract to applied or policy oriented) is testimony to its success. But how is the capability approach understood in these different fields, and is it possible to give a coherent and clarifying account of how we can understand the capability approach across those fields?1 In other words, how should we understand the capability approach as an overarching framework, that unites its more specific uses in different fields and disciplines? 1 In developing the account of the capability approach as presented in this book, I have started in an inductive way by trying to generalize from how the capability approach has been used in the literature. However, that literature has been critically scrutinized, and in some cases I have come to the conclusion that some ideas in this broad ‘capabilities literature’ do not survive careful analysis, and should be rejected. Put differently, my methodology has been to be as inclusive as possible, but not at the cost of endorsing (what I believe to be) confusions or errors. © 2017 Ingrid Robeyns, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0130.02 22 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice This chapter gives an account of that general framework. It provides explanations and insights into what the capability approach is, what its core claims are, and what additional claims we should pay attention to. This chapter will also answer the question: what do we mean exactly when we say that the capability approach is a framework or an approach? In other words, in this chapter, I will give an account (or a description) of the capability approach at the most general level. I will bracket additional details and questions about which disagreement or confusion exists; chapter 3 will offer more detailed clarifications and chapter 4 will discuss issues of debate and dispute. Taken together, these three chapters provide my understanding of the capability approach. Chapter 2 is structured as follows. In the next section, we look at a preliminary definition of the capability approach. Section 2.3 proposes to make a distinction between ‘the capability approach’ and ‘a capability theory’. This distinction is crucial — it will help us to clarify various issues that we will look at in this book, and it also provides some answers to the sceptics of the capability approach whom we encountered in the previous chapter. Section 2.4 describes, from a bottom-up perspective, the many ways in which the capability approach has been developed within particular theories, and argues why it is important to acknowledge the great diversity within capabilitarian scholarship. Sections 2.5 to 2.11 present an analytic account of the capability approach, and show what is needed to develop a particular capability theory, application or analysis. In 2.5, I propose the modular view of the capability approach, which allows us to distinguish between three different types of modules that make up a capability theory. The first, the A-module, consists of those properties that each capability theory must have (section 2.6). This is the non-optional core of each capability theory. The B-modules are a set of modules in which the module itself is non-optional, but there are different possible choices regarding the content of the module (section 2.7). For example, we cannot have a capability theory or application without having chosen a purpose for that theory or application — yet there are many different purposes among which we can choose. The third group of modules, the C-modules, are either non-optional but dependent on a choice made in the B-modules, or else are completely optional. For example, if the purpose you choose is to measure poverty, then you need to decide on some empirical methods in the C-modules; but if your 23 2. Core Ideas and the Framework aim is to make a theory of justice, you don’t need to choose empirical methods and hence the C-module for empirical methods (module C3) is not relevant for your capability application (section 2.8).2 In the next section, 2.9, I discuss the possibility of hybrid theories — theories that give a central role to functionings and capabilities yet violate some other core proposition(s). Section 2.11 rounds up the discussion of the modular view by discussing the relevance and advantages of seeing the capability approach from this perspective. Section 2.12 summarises the conceptual aspects that have been explained by presenting a visualisation of the conceptual framework of the capability approach. Section 2.13 uses the modular view to illuminate the observation, which has been made by several capability scholars, that the capability approach has been used in a narrow and in a broad sense, and explains what difference lies behind this distinction. In the broader use of the capability approach, supporting or complementary theories or additional normative principles are added to the core of the approach — yet none of them is itself essential to the capability approach. These are choices made in B-modules or the C-modules. The modular view of the capability approach that will be central to this chapter can thus help to formulate in a sharper manner some observations that have already been made in the capability literature. The chapter closes by looking ahead to the next chapter. 2.2 A preliminary definition of the capability approach The capability approach has in recent decades emerged as a new theoretical framework about wellbeing, freedom to achieve wellbeing, and all the public values in which either of these can play a role, such as development and social justice. Although there is some scholarly disagreement on the best description of the capability approach (which will be addressed in this chapter), it is generally understood as a 2 To the reader who finds this ultra-brief summary of the modular account of the capability approach here unclear: please bear with me until we have reached the end of this chapter, when the different modules will have been unpacked and explained in detail. 24 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice conceptual framework for a range of evaluative exercises, including most prominently the following: (1) the assessment of individual levels of achieved wellbeing and wellbeing freedom; (2) the evaluation and assessment of social arrangements or institutions;3 and (3) the design of policies and other forms of social change in society. We can trace some aspects of the capability approach back to, among others, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill,4 yet it is Sen who pioneered the approach and a growing number of other scholars across the humanities and the social sciences who have significantly developed it — most significantly Martha Nussbaum, who has developed the capability approach into a partial theory of social justice.5 Nussbaum also understands her own capabilities account as a version of a theory of human rights.6 The capability approach purports that freedom to achieve wellbeing is a matter of what people are able to do and to be, and thus the kind of life they are effectively able to lead. The capability approach is generally conceived as a flexible and multipurpose framework, rather than a precise theory (Sen 1992a, 48; Alkire 2005; Robeyns 2005b, 2016b; Qizilbash 2012; Hick and Burchardt 2016, 78). The open-ended and underspecified nature of the capability approach is crucial, but it has not made it easier for its students to understand what kind of theoretical endeavour the capability approach exactly is. How should we understand it? Isn’t there a better account possible than the 3 Amartya Sen often uses the term “social arrangement”, which is widely used in the social choice literature and in some other parts of the literature on the capability approach. Yet this term is not very widely used in other disciplines, and many have wondered what “social arrangement” exactly means (e.g. Béteille 1993). Other scholars tend to use the term “institutions”, using a broad definition — understood as the formal and informal rules in society that structure, facilitate and delineate actions and interactions. “Institutions” are thus not merely laws and formal rules such as those related to the system of property rights or the social security system, but also informal rules and social norms, such as social norms that expect women to be responsible for raising the children and caring for the ill and elderly, or forbid members of different castes to work together or interact on an equal footing. 4 See Nussbaum (1988, 1992), Sen (1993a, 1999a, 14, 24); Walsh (2000); Qizilbash (2016); Basu and López-Calva (2011, 156–59). 5 A partial theory of justice is a theory that gives us an account of some aspects of what justice requires, but does not comment on what justice requires in other instances or areas. 6 On the relationship between capabilities and human rights, see section 3.14. 25 2. Core Ideas and the Framework somewhat limited description of the capability approach as ‘an open, flexible and multi-purpose framework’? Answering these questions will be the task of this chapter.7 The open and underspecified nature of the capability approach also explains why the term ‘capability approach’ was adopted and is now widely used rather than ‘capability theory’. Yet as I will argue in section 2.3, we could use the terms ‘capability theory’ and ‘capability approach’ in a more illuminating way to signify a more substantive difference, which will help us to get a better grip on the capability literature. It may be helpful to introduce the term ‘advantage’ here, which is a technical term used in academic debates about interpersonal comparisons and in debates about distributive justice.8 A person’s advantage is those aspects of that person’s interests that matter (generally, or in a specific context). Hence ‘advantage’ could refer to a person’s achieved wellbeing, or it could refer to her opportunity to achieve wellbeing, or it could refer to her negative freedoms, or to her positive freedoms, or to some other aspect of her interests. By using the very general term ‘advantage’, we allow ourselves to remain agnostic between the more particular specifications of that term;9 our analysis will apply to all the different ways in which ‘advantage’ could be used. This technical term ‘advantage’ thus allows us to move the arguments to a higher level of generality or abstraction, since we can focus, for example, on which conditions interpersonal comparisons of advantage need to meet, without having to decide on the exact content of ‘advantage’. 7 For earlier attempts to describe the capability approach, see amongst others Deneulin (2014); Gasper (2007, 1997); Alkire, Qizilbash and Comim (2008); Qizilbash (2012); Robeyns (2005b, 2016b). 8 A ‘technical term’ is a term which is used in a specialist debate, and has a meaning that is defined within that debate. In many cases, the term refers to something other than its referent in common-sense language (that is, a layperson’s use of language). 9 To ‘remain agnostic’ means that, for the purpose of that analysis, one does not make a choice between different options, and hence proceeds with an analysis that should be valid for all those options. This does not mean that one cannot make a choice, or really believes that all available options are equally good, but rather that one wants to present an analysis that is applicable to as wide a range of choices as possible. 26 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Within the capability approach, there are two different specifications of ‘advantage’: achieved wellbeing, and the freedom to achieve wellbeing. The notions of ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ — which will be explained in detail in section 2.6.1 — are used to flesh out the account of achieved wellbeing and the freedom to achieve wellbeing.10 Whether the capability approach is used to analyse distributive injustice, or measure poverty, or develop curriculum design — in all these projects the capability approach prioritises certain people’s beings and doings and their opportunities to realize those beings and doings (such as their genuine opportunities to be educated, their ability to move around or to enjoy supportive social relationships). This stands in contrast to other accounts of advantage, which focus exclusively on mental categories (such as happiness) or on the material means to wellbeing (such as resources like income or wealth).11 Thus, the capability approach is a conceptual framework, which is in most cases used as a normative framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual wellbeing and that of institutions, in addition to its much more infrequent use for non-normative purposes.12 It can be used to evaluate a range of values that draw on an assessment of people’s wellbeing, such as inequality, poverty, changes in the wellbeing of persons or the average wellbeing of the members of a group. It can also be used as an evaluative tool providing an alternative for social cost-benefit analysis, or as a framework within which to design and 10 Following Amartya Sen (1985c), some would say there are four different ideas of advantage in the capability approach: achieved wellbeing, freedom to achieve wellbeing, achieved agency, and freedom to achieve agency. Yet whether the capability approach should always and for all purposes consider agency freedom to be an end in itself is disputed, and depends in large measure on what one wants to use the capability approach for. 11 Of course, it doesn’t follow that mental categories or the material means play no role at all; but the normative priority lies with functionings and capabilities, and hence happiness or material resources play a more limited role (and, in the case of resources, a purely instrumental role). The relations between functionings/ capabilities and resources will be elaborated in 3.12; the relationship between functionings/capabilities and happiness will be elaborated in more detail in section 3.8. 12 On whether the capability approach can be used for explanatory purposes, see section 3.10. 27 2. Core Ideas and the Framework evaluate policies and institutions, such as welfare state design in affluent societies, or poverty reduction strategies by governments and non-governmental organisations in developing countries. What does it mean, exactly, if we say that something is a normative analysis? Unfortunately, social scientists and philosophers use these terms slightly differently. My estimate is that, given their numerical dominance, the terminology that social scientists use is dominant within the capability literature. Yet the terminology of philosophers is more refined and hence I will start by explaining the philosophers’ use of those terms, and then lay out how social scientists use them. What might a rough typology of research in this area look like? By drawing on some discussions on methods in ethics and political philosophy (O. O’Neill 2009; List and Valentini 2016), I would like to propose the following typology for use within the capability literature. There are (at least) five types of research that are relevant for the capability approach. The first type of scholarship is conceptual research, which conducts conceptual analysis — the investigation of how we should use and understand certain concepts such as ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘wellbeing’, and so forth. An example of such conceptual analysis is provided in section 3.3, where I offer a (relatively simple) conceptual analysis of the question of what kind of freedoms (if any) capabilities could be. The second strand of research is descriptive. Here, research and analyses provide us with an empirical understanding of a phenomenon by describing it. This could be done with different methods, from the thick descriptions provided by ethnographic methods to the quantitative methods that are widely used in mainstream social sciences. The third type of research is explanatory analysis. This research provides an explanation of a phenomenon — what the mechanisms are that cause a phenomenon, or what the determinants of a phenomenon are. For example, the social determinants of health: the parameters or factors that determine the distribution of health outcomes over the population. A fourth type of research is evaluative, and consists of analyses in which values are used to evaluate a state of affairs. A claim is evaluative if it relies on evaluative terms, such as good or bad, better or worse, or desirable or undesirable. Finally, an analysis is normative if it is 28 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice prescriptive — it entails a moral norm that tells us what we ought to do.13 Evaluative analyses and prescriptive analyses are closely intertwined, and often we first conduct an evaluative analysis, which is followed by a prescriptive analysis, e.g. by policy recommendations, as is done, for example, in the evaluative analysis of India’s development conducted by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (2013). However, one could also make an evaluative analysis while leaving the prescriptive analysis for someone else to make, perhaps leaving it to the agents who need to make the change themselves. For example, one can use the capability approach to make an evaluation or assessment of inequalities between men and women, without drawing prescriptive conclusions (Robeyns 2003, 2006a). Or one can make a prescriptive analysis that is not based on an evaluation, because it is based on universal moral rules. Examples are the capability theories of justice by Nussbaum (2000; 2006b) and Claassen (2016). The difference with the dominant terminology used by economists (and other social scientists) is that they only distinguish between two types of analysis: ‘positive’ versus ‘normative’ economics, whereby ‘positive’ economics is seen as relying only on ‘facts’, whereas ‘normative economics’ also relies on values (e.g. Reiss 2013, 3). Hence economists do not distinguish between what philosophers call ‘evaluative analysis’ and ‘normative analysis’ but rather lump them both together under the heading ‘normative analysis’. The main take-home message is that the capability approach is used predominantly in the field of ethical analysis (philosophers’ terminology) or normative analysis (economists’ terminology), somewhat less often in the fields of descriptive analysis and conceptual analysis, and least in the field of explanatory analysis. We will revisit this in section 3.10, where we address whether the capability approach can be an explanatory theory. 13 Alkire (2008) calls these normative applications “prospective analysis”, and argues that we need to distinguish the evaluative applications of the capability approach from the “prospective applications” of the capability approach. I agree, but since we should avoid introducing new terms when the terms needed are already available, it would be better to use the term ‘prescriptive applications’ or, as philosophers do, ‘normative analysis’, rather than introducing ‘prospective applications’ as a new term. 29 2. Core Ideas and the Framework 2.3 The capability approach versus capability theories The above preliminary definition highlights that the capability approach is an open-ended and underspecified framework, which can be used for multiple purposes. It is open-ended because the general capability approach can be developed in a range of different directions, with different purposes, and it is underspecified because additional specifications are needed before the capability approach can become effective for a particular purpose — especially if we want it to be normative (whether evaluative or prescriptive). As a consequence, ‘the capability approach’ itself is an open, general idea, but there are many different ways to ‘close’ or ‘specify’ this notion. What is needed for this specifying or closing of the capability approach will depend on the aim of using the approach, e.g. whether we want to develop it into a (partial) theory of justice, or use it to assess inequality, or conceptualise development, or use it for some other purpose. This distinction between the general, open, underspecified capability approach, and its particular use for specific purposes is absolutely crucial if we want to understand it properly. In order to highlight that distinction, but also to make it easier for us to be clear when we are talking about the general, open, underspecified capability approach, and when we are talking about a particular use for specific purposes, I propose that we use two different terms (Robeyns 2016b, 398). Let us use the term ‘the capability approach’ for the general, open, underspecified approach, and let us employ the term ‘a capability theory’ or ‘a capability analysis, capability account or capability application’ for a specific use of the capability approach, that is, for a use that has a specific goal, such as measuring poverty and deriving some policy prescriptions, or developing a capabilitarian cost-benefit analysis, or theorising about human rights, or developing a theory of social justice. In order to improve readability, I will speak in what follows of ‘a capability theory’ as a short-hand for ‘a capability account, or capability application, or capability theory’.14 14 I kindly request readers who are primarily interested in the capability approach for policy design and (empirical) applications to read ‘capability application’ every time the term ‘capability theory’ is used. 36 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice 2.5 The modular view of the capability approach It is time to take stock. What do we already know about the capability approach, and what questions are raised by the analysis so far? The capability approach is an open approach, and depending on its purpose can be developed into a range of capability theories or capabilitarian applications. It is focused on what people can do and be (their capabilities) and on what they are actually achieving in terms of beings and doings (their functionings). However, this still does not answer the question of what kind of framework the capability approach is. Can we give an account of a capability theory that is more enlightening regarding what exactly makes a theory a capabilitarian theory, and what doesn’t? In this book, I present an account of the capability approach that, on the one hand, makes clear what all capability theories share, yet on the other hand allows us to better understand the many forms that a capability theory or capability account can take — hence to appreciate the diversity within the capability approach more fully. The modular view that I present here is a modified (and, I hope, improved) version of the cartwheel model that I have developed elsewhere (Robeyns 2016b). The modular view shifts the focus a little bit from the question of how to understand the capability approach in general, to the question of how the various capability accounts, applications and theories should be understood and how they should be constructed. After all, students, scholars, policy makers and activists are often not concerned with the capability approach in general, but rather want to know whether it would be a smart idea to use the capability approach to construct a particular capability theory, application or account for the problem or question they are trying to analyse. In order to answer the question of whether, for their purposes, the capability approach is a helpful framework to consider, they need to know what is needed for a capability theory, application or account. The modular view that will follow will give those who want to develop a capability theory, application or analysis a list of properties their theory has to meet, a list of choices that need to be made but in which several options regarding content are possible, and a list of modules that they could take into account, but which will not always be necessary. 37 2. Core Ideas and the Framework Recall that in order to improve readability, I use the term ‘a capability theory’ as a short-hand for ‘a capability account, or capability analysis, or capability application, or capability theory’. A capability theory is constructed based on three different types of module, which (in order to facilitate discussion) will be called the A-module, B-modules and C-modules. The A-module is a single module which is compulsory for all capability theories. The A-module consists of a number of propositions (definitions and claims) which a capability theory should not violate. This is the core of the capability approach, and hence entails those properties that all capability theories share. The B-modules consist of a range of non-optional modules with optional content. That is, if we construct a capability theory, we have to consider the issue that the module addresses, but there are several different options to choose from in considering that particular issue. For example, module B1 concerns the ‘purpose’ of the theory: do we want to make a theory of justice, or a more comprehensive evaluative framework for societal institutions, or do we want to measure poverty or inequality, or design a curriculum, or do we want to use the capability approach to conceptualise ‘social progress’ or ‘efficiency’ or to rethink the role of universities in the twenty-first century? All these purposes are possible within the capability approach. The point of seeing these as B-modules is that one has to be clear about one’s purpose, but there are many different purposes possible. The C-modules are either contingent on a particular choice made in a B-module, or they can be fully optional. For example, one can offer a comprehensive evaluation of a country’s development path, and decide that as part of this evaluation, one wants to include particular accounts of the history and culture of that country, since this may make more comprehensible the reasons why that country has taken this particular development path rather than another. The particular historical account that would be part of one’s capability theory would then be optional.16 16 To say that the insertion of those theories is fully optional is not the same as saying that capability theories that will be developed with different types of additional complementary theories will all be equally good. For example, historians are very likely to think that most theories, even normative theories, have to be historically informed, and hence the relevant historical knowledge will need to be added to a capability theory. But these are matters of dispute that have to be debated, and cannot be settled by narrowing down the definition of a capability theory. 38 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Given this three-fold structure of the modular view of capability theories, let us now investigate what the content of the compulsory module A is, as well as what the options are within the B-modules and C-modules. 2.6 The A-module: the non-optional core of all capability theories What, then, is the content of the A-module, which all capability theories should share? Table 2.2 presents the keywords for the eight elements of the A-module. Table 2.2 The content of the compulsory module A A1: Functionings and capabilities as core concepts A2: Functionings and capabilities are value-neutral categories A3: Conversion factors A4: The distinction between means and ends A5: Functionings and/or capabilities form the evaluative space A6: Other dimensions of ultimate value A7: Value pluralism A8: Valuing each person as an end 2.6.1 A1: Functionings and capabilities Functionings and capabilities are the core concepts in the capability approach. They are also the dimensions in which interpersonal comparisons of ‘advantage’ are made (this is what property A5 entails).17 They are the most important distinctive features of all capabilitarian theories. There are some differences in the usage of these notions between different capability theorists,18 but these differences do not affect the essence of these notions: capabilities are what people are able to be and to do, and functionings point to the corresponding achievements. 17 See section 2.2 for an explanation of the technical term ‘advantage’. 18 For some core differences in the way Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen use the terms ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’, see section 3.2. 39 2. Core Ideas and the Framework Capabilities are real freedoms or real opportunities, which do not refer to access to resources or opportunities for certain levels of satisfaction. Examples of ‘beings’ are being well-nourished, being undernourished, being sheltered and housed in a decent house, being educated, being illiterate, being part of a supportive social network; these also include very different beings such as being part of a criminal network and being depressed. Examples of the ‘doings’ are travelling, caring for a child, voting in an election, taking part in a debate, taking drugs, killing animals, eating animals, consuming great amounts of fuel in order to heat one’s house, and donating money to charity. Capabilities are a person’s real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings.19 Thus, while travelling is a functioning, the real opportunity to travel is the corresponding capability. A person who does not travel may or may not be free and able to travel; the notion of capability seeks to capture precisely the fact of whether the person could travel if she wanted to. The distinction between functionings and capabilities is between the realized and the effectively possible, in other words, between achievements, on the one hand, and freedoms or opportunities from which one can choose, on the other. Functionings are constitutive of human life. At least, this is a widespread view, certainly in the social sciences, policy studies, and in a significant part of philosophy — and I think it is a view that is helpful for the interdisciplinary, practical orientation that the vast majority of capability research has.20 That means one cannot be a human being without having at least a range of functionings; they make the lives of human beings both lives (as opposed to the existence of innate objects) and human (in contrast to the lives of trees or animals). Human functionings are those beings and doings that constitute human life and that are central to our understandings of ourselves as human beings. It is hard to think of any phenomenological account of the lives of 19 See also section 3.3 which discusses in more depth the kind of freedoms or opportunities that capabilities are. 20 The exceptions are those philosophers who want to develop normative theories while steering away from any metaphysical claims (that is, claims about how things are when we try to uncover their essential nature). I agree that the description of ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ in this section makes metaphysical claims, but I think they are very ‘minimal’ (in the sense that they are not wildly implausible, and still leave open a wide variety of theories to be developed) and hence we should not be troubled by these metaphysical assumptions. 40 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice humans — either an account given by a human being herself, or an account from a third-person perspective — which does not include a description of a range of human functionings. Yet, not all beings and doings are functionings; for example, flying like a bird or living for two hundred years like an oak tree are not human functionings. In addition, some human beings or doings may not be constitutive but rather contingent upon our social institutions; these, arguably, should not qualify as ‘universal functionings’ — that is, functionings no matter the social circumstances in which one lives — but are rather ‘context-dependent functionings’, functionings that are to a significant extent dependent on the existing social structures. For example, ‘owning a house’ is not a universal functioning, yet ‘being sheltered in a safe way and protected from the elements’ is a universal functioning. One can also include the capability of being sheltered in government-funded housing or by a rental market for family houses, which is regulated in such a way that it does not endanger important aspects of that capability. Note that many features of a person could be described either as a being or as a doing: we can say that a person is housed in a pleasantly warm dwelling, or that this person does consume lots of energy to keep her house warm. Yet other functionings are much more straightforwardly described as either a being or a doing, for example ‘being healthy’ (a being) or ‘killing animals’ (a doing). A final remark. Acknowledging that functionings and capabilities are the core concepts of the capability approach generates some further conceptual questions, which have not all been sufficiently addressed in the literature. An important question is whether additional structural requirements that apply to the relations between various capabilities should be imposed on the capability approach in general (not merely as a particular choice for a specific capability theory). Relatively little work has been done on the question of the conceptual properties of capabilities understood as freedoms or opportunities and on the question of the minimum requirements of the opportunity set that make up these various capabilities. But it is clear that more needs to be said about which properties we want functionings, capabilities, and capability sets to meet. One important property has been pointed out by Kaushik Basu (1987), who argued that the moral relevance lies not in the various capabilities each taken by themselves and only considering 41 2. Core Ideas and the Framework the choices made by one person. Rather, the moral relevance lies in whether capabilities are truly available to us given the choices made by others, since that is the real freedom to live our lives in various ways, as it is truly open to us. For example, if a teenager lives in a family in which there are only enough resources for one of the children to pursue higher education, then he only truly has the capability to pursue higher education if none of his older siblings has made that choice before him.21 2.6.2 A2: Functionings and capabilities are value-neutral categories Functionings and capabilities are defined in a value-neutral way. Many functionings are valuable, but not all functionings necessarily have a positive value. Instead, some functionings have no value or even have a negative value, e.g. the functioning of being affected by a painful, debilitating and ultimately incurable illness, suffering from excessive levels of stress, or engaging in acts of unjustifiable violence. In those latter cases, we are better off without that functionings outcome, and the functionings outcome has a negative value. Functionings are constitutive elements of human life, which consist of both wellbeing and ill-being. The notion of functionings should, therefore, be valueneutral in the sense that we should conceptually allow for the idea of ‘bad functionings’ or functionings with a negative value (Deneulin and Stewart 2002, 67; Nussbaum 2003a, 45; Stewart 2005, 190; Carter 2014, 79–81). There are many beings and doings that have negative value, but they are still ‘a being’ or ‘a doing’ and, hence, a functioning. Nussbaum made that point forcefully when she argued that the capability to rape should not be a capability that we have reason to protect (Nussbaum 2003: 44–45). A country could effectively enable people to rape, for example, either when rape is not illegal (as it is not between husband and wife in many countries), or when rape is illegal, but de facto never leads to any 21 Arguably, some of that work is being done by social choice theorists and others working with axiomatic methods, but unfortunately almost none of the insights of that work have spread among the disciplines within the capability literature where axiomatic and other formal methods are not used (and, presumably, not well understood). See, for example, Pattanaik (2006); Xu (2002); Gotoh, Suzumura and Yoshihara (2005); Gaertner and Xu (2006, 2008). 42 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice punishment of the aggressor. If there is a set of social norms justifying rape, and would-be rapists help each other to be able to rape, then would-be rapists in that country effectively enjoy the capability to rape. But clearly, rape is a moral bad, and a huge harm to its victims; it is thus not a capability that a country should want to protect. This example illustrates that functionings as well as capabilities can be harmful or have a negative value, as well as be positive or valuable. At an abstract and general level, ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ are thus in themselves neutral concepts, and hence we cannot escape the imperative to decide which ones we want to support and enable, and which ones we want to fight or eliminate. Frances Stewart and Séverine Deneulin (2002, 67) put it as follows: […] some capabilities have negative values (e.g. committing murder), while others may be trivial (riding a one-wheeled bicycle). Hence there is a need to differentiate between ‘valuable’ and non-valuable capabilities, and indeed, within the latter, between those that are positive but of lesser importance and those that actually have negative value. The above examples show that some functionings can be unequivocally good (e.g. being in good health) or unequivocally bad (e.g. being raped or being murdered). In those cases, there will be unanimity on whether the functionings outcome is bad or good. But now we need to add a layer of complexity. Sometimes, it will be a matter of doubt, or of dispute, whether a functioning will be good or bad — or the goodness or badness may depend on the context and/or the normative theory we endorse. An interesting example is giving care, or ‘care work’.22 Clearly being able to care for someone could be considered a valuable capability. For example, in the case of child care, there is much joy to be gained, and many parents would like to work less so as to spend more time with their children. But care work has a very ambiguous character if we try to answer whether it should be considered to be a valuable functioning from the perspective of the person who does the care. Lots of care is performed primarily because there is familial or social pressure put on someone (generally women) to do so, or because no-one else is doing it 22 On the complex nature of ‘care’, and what the need to care and be cared for requires from a just society, see e.g. Tronto (1987); Kittay (1999); Nussbaum (2006b); Folbre (1994); Folbre and Bittman (2004); Engster (2007); Gheaus (2011); Gheaus and Robeyns (2011). 43 2. Core Ideas and the Framework (Lewis and Giullari 2005). There is also the hypothesis that care work can be a positive functioning if done for a limited amount of time, but becomes a negative functioning if it is done for many hours. Hence, from the functionings outcome in itself, we cannot conclude whether this is a positive element of that person’s quality of life, or rather a negative element; in fact, sometimes it will be an ambiguous situation, which cannot easily be judged (Robeyns 2003). One could wonder, though, whether this ambiguity cannot simply be resolved by reformulating the corresponding capability slightly differently. In theory, this may be true. If there are no empirical constraints related to the observations we can make, then one could in many cases rephrase such functionings that are ambiguously valued into another capability where its valuation is clearly positive. For example, one could say that the functioning of providing care in itself can be ambiguous (since some people do too much, thereby harming their own longer-term wellbeing, or do it because no-one else is providing the care and social norms require them to do it). Yet there is a closely related capability that is clearly valuable: the capability to provide hands-on care, which takes into account that one has a robust choice not to care if one does not want to, and that one does not find oneself in a situation in which the care is of insufficient quantity and/or quality if one does not deliver the care oneself. If such a robust capability to care is available, it would be genuinely valuable, since one would have a real option not to choose the functioning without paying an unacceptable price (e.g. that the person in need of care is not properly cared for). However, the problem with this solution, of reformulating functionings that are ambiguously valuable into capabilities that are unequivocally valuable, is the constraints it places on empirical information. We may be able to use these layers of filters and conditions in first-person analyses, or in ethnographic analyses, but in most cases not in large-scale empirical analyses. Many specific capability theories make the mistake of defining functionings as those beings and doings that one has reason to value. But the problem with this value-laden definition is that it collapses two aspects of the development of a capability theory into one: the definition of the relevant space (e.g. income, or happiness, or functionings) and, once we have chosen our functionings and capabilities, the normative 44 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice decision regarding which of those capabilities will be the focus of our theory. We may agree on the first issue and not on the second and still both rightly believe that we endorse a capability theory — yet this is only possible if we analytically separate the normative choice for functionings and capabilities from the additional normative decision of which functionings we will regard as valuable and which we will not regard as valuable. Collapsing these two normative moments into one is not a good idea; instead, we need to acknowledge that there are two normative moves being made when we use functionings and capabilities as our evaluative space, and we need to justify each of those two normative moves separately. Note that the value-laden definition of functionings and capabilities, which defines them as always good and valuable, may be less problematic when one develops a capability theory of severe poverty or destitution. We all agree that poor health, poor housing, poor sanitation, poor nutrition and social exclusion are dimensions of destitution. So, for example, the dimensions chosen for the Multidimensional Poverty Index developed by Sabina Alkire and her colleagues — health, education and living standard — may not elicit much disagreement.23 But for many other capability theories, it is disputed whether a particular functionings outcome is valuable or not. The entire field of applied ethics is filled with questions and cases in which these disputes are debated. Is sex work bad for adult sex workers, or should it be seen as a valuable capability? Is the capability of parents not to vaccinate their children against polio or measles a valuable freedom? If employees in highly competitive organisations are not allowed to read their emails after working hours, is that then a valuable capability that is taken away from them, or are we protecting them from becoming workaholics and protecting them from the pressure to work all the time, including at evenings and weekends? As these examples show, we need to allow for the conceptual possibility that there are functionings that are always valuable, never valuable, valuable or non-valuable in some contexts but not in others, or where 23 The Multidimensional Poverty Index is developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), under the leadership of Sabina Alkire. See http://www.ophi.org.uk/multidimensional-poverty-index/ for a clear introduction of the Multidimensional Poverty Index. For scholarly papers on the Index, as well as other work done by the scholars in OPHI, see http://www.ophi.org.uk/resources/ ophi-working-papers/ 45 2. Core Ideas and the Framework we simply are not sure. This requires that functionings and capabilities are conceptualised in a value-neutral way, and hence this should be a core requirement of the capability approach. 2.6.3 A3: Conversion factors A third core idea of the capability approach is that persons have different abilities to convert resources into functionings. These are called conversion factors: the factors which determine the degree to which a person can transform a resource into a functioning. This has been an important idea in Amartya Sen’s version of the capability approach (Sen 1992a, 19–21, 26–30, 37–38) and for those scholars influenced by his writings. Resources, such as marketable goods and services, but also goods and services emerging from the non-market economy (including household production) have certain characteristics that make them of interest to people. In Sen’s work in welfare economics, the notion of ‘resources’ was limited to material and/or measurable resources (in particular: money or consumer goods) but one could also apply the notion of conversion factors to a broader understanding of resources, including, for example, the educational degrees that one has. The example of a bike is often used to illustrate the idea of conversion factors. We are interested in a bike not primarily because it is an object made from certain materials with a specific shape and colour, but because it can take us to places where we want to go, and in a faster way than if we were walking. These characteristics of a good or commodity enable or contribute to a functioning. A bike enables the functioning of mobility, to be able to move oneself freely and more rapidly than walking. But a person might be able to turn that resource into a valuable functioning to a different degree than other persons, depending on the relevant conversion factors. For example, an able-bodied person who was taught to ride a bicycle when he was a child has a high conversion factor enabling him to turn the bicycle into the ability to move around efficiently, whereas a person with a physical impairment or someone who never learnt to ride a bike has a very low conversion factor. The conversion factors thus represent how much functioning one can get out of a resource; in our example, how much mobility the person can get out of a bicycle. 52 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice among scholars of the capability approach; for example, Sabina Alkire (2005, 122) described the capability approach as the proposition “that social arrangements should be evaluated according to the extent of freedom people have to promote or achieve functionings they value”. However, if we fully take into account that functionings can be positive but also negative (see 2.6.2), we should also acknowledge that our lives are better if they contain fewer of the functionings that are negative, such as physical violence or stress. Alkire’s proposition should therefore minimally be extended by adding “and to promote the weakening of those functionings that have a negative value”.29 However, what is relevant is not only which opportunities are open to us individually, hence in a piecemeal way, but rather which combinations or sets of potential functionings are open to us. For example, suppose you are a low-skilled poor single parent who lives in a society without decent social provisions. Take the following functionings: (1) to hold a job, which will require you to spend many hours on working and commuting, but will generate the income needed to properly feed yourself and your family; (2) to care for your children at home and give them all the attention, care and supervision they need. In a piecemeal analysis, both (1) and (2) are opportunities open to that parent, but they are not both together open to her. The point about the capability approach is precisely that it is comprehensive; we must ask which sets of capabilities are open to us, that is: can you simultaneously provide for your family and properly care for and supervise your children? Or are you rather forced to make some hard, perhaps even tragic choices between two functionings which are both central and valuable? Note that while most types of capability analysis require interpersonal comparisons, one could also use the capability approach to evaluate the wellbeing or wellbeing freedom of one person at one point in time (e.g. evaluate her situation against a capability yardstick) or to evaluate the changes in her wellbeing or wellbeing freedom over 29 Moreover, further extensions of this proposition may be needed. One issue is that we should not only focus on capabilities that people value, but also on capabilities that they do not, but should, value (see section 2.7.2). Another issue is that the evaluative space should not necessarily be restricted to capabilities only, but could also be functionings, or a combination of functionings and capabilities (see section 2.6.5). 53 2. Core Ideas and the Framework time. The capability approach could thus also be used by a single person in her deliberate decision-making or evaluation processes, but these uses of the capability approach are much less prevalent in the scholarly literature. Yet all these normative exercises share the property that they use functionings and capabilities as the evaluative space — the space in which personal evaluations or interpersonal comparisons are made. 2.6.6 A6: Other dimensions of ultimate value However, this brings us straight to another core property of module A, namely that functionings and/or capabilities are not necessarily the only elements of ultimate value. Capabilitarian theories might endorse functionings and/or capabilities as their account of ultimate value but may add other elements of ultimate value, such as procedural fairness. Other factors may also matter normatively, and in most capability theories these other principles or objects of evaluation will play a role. This implies that the capability approach is, in itself, incomplete as an account of the good since it may have to be supplemented with other values or principles.30 Sen has been a strong defender of this claim, for example, in his argument that capabilities capture the opportunity aspect of freedom but not the process aspect of freedom, which is also important (e.g. Sen 2002a, 583–622).31 At this point, it may be useful to reflect on a suggestion made by Henry Richardson (2015) to drop the use of the word ‘intrinsic’ when describing the value of functionings and capabilities — as is often done in the capability literature. For non-philosophers, saying that something has ‘intrinsic value’ is a way to say that something is much more important than something else, or it is used to say that we don’t need to investigate what the effects of this object are on another object. If we think that something doesn’t have intrinsic value, we would hold that it is desirable if it expands functionings and capabilities; economic 30 For example, if Henry Richardson (2007) is right in arguing that the idea of capabilities cannot capture basic liberties, then one need not reject the capability approach, but instead could add an insistence on basic liberties to one’s capability theory, as Richardson (2007, 394) rightly points out. 31 This distinction, and its relevance, will be discussed in more detail in section 3.3. 54 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice growth is a prominent example in both the capability literature and in the human development literature. Yet in philosophy, there is a longstanding debate about what it means to say of something that it has intrinsic value, and it has increasingly been contested that it is helpful to speak of ‘intrinsic values’ given what philosophers generally would like to say when they use that word (Kagan 1998; Rabinowicz and RønnowRasmussen 2000). In philosophy, the term ‘intrinsic’ refers to a metaphysical claim; something we claim to be intrinsically valuable only derives its value from some internal properties. Yet in the capability approach, this is not really what we want to say about functionings (or capabilities). Rather, as Richardson rightly argues, we should be thinking about what we take to be worth seeking for its own sake. Richardson prefers to call this ‘thinking in terms of final ends’; in addition, one could also use the terminology ‘that which has ultimate value’ (see also Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2000, 48).32 This has the advantage that we do not need to drop the widely used, and in my view very useful, distinction between instrumental value and ultimate value. Those things that have ultimate value are the things we seek because they are an end (of policy making, decision making, evaluations); those things that do not have ultimate value, hence that are not ends, will be valued to the extent that they have instrumental value for those ends. Of course, non-philosophers may object and argue they are using ‘intrinsic value’ and ‘ultimate value’ as synonyms. But if we want to develop the capability approach in a way that draws on the insights from all disciplines, we should try to accommodate this insight from philosophy into the interdisciplinary language of the capability approach, especially if there is a very easy-to-use alternative available to us. We can either, as Richardson proposes, speak of the selected functionings and capabilities as final ends, or we can say that the selected functionings and capabilities have ultimate value — that is, they have value as ends in themselves and not because they are useful for some 32 “[…] the relevant values can be said to be ‘end-point values’, insofar as they are not simply conducive to or necessary for something else that is of value. They are ‘final’, then, in this sense of being ‘ultimate’” (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2000, 48). 55 2. Core Ideas and the Framework further end. It is of course possible for a capability to have ultimate value and for the corresponding functioning to have instrumental value. For example, being knowledgeable and educated can very plausibly be seen as of ultimate value, but is also of instrumental value for various other capabilities, such as the capability of being healthy, being able to pursue projects, being able to hold a job, and so forth. However, the question is whether it is possible to change the use of a term that is so widespread in some disciplines yet regarded as wrong from the point of view of another discipline. It may be that the best we can hope for is to become aware of the different usages of the term ‘intrinsic value’, which in the social sciences is used in a much looser way than in philosophy, and doesn’t have the metaphysical implications that philosophers attribute to it. 2.6.7 A7: Value pluralism There are at least two types of value pluralism within the capability approach. One type is the other objects of ultimate value, which was briefly addressed in the previous section. This is what Sen called in his Dewey lectures principle pluralism (Sen 1985c, 176). Expanding capabilities and functionings is not all that matters; there are other moral principles and goals with ultimate value that are also important when evaluating social states, or when deciding what we ought to do (whether as individuals or policy makers). Examples are deontic norms and principles that apply to the processes that lead to the expansion of capability sets. This value pluralism plays a very important role in understanding the need to have the C-module C4, which will be discussed in section 2.8.4. It is interesting to note that at some stage in Sen’s development of the capability approach, his readers lost this principle-pluralism and thought that the capability approach could stand on its own. But a reading of Sen’s earlier work on the capability approach shows that all along, Sen felt that capabilities can and need to be supplemented with other principles and values. For example, in his 1982 article ‘Rights and Agency’, Sen argues that “goal rights, including capability rights, and other goals, can be combined with deontological values […], along with 56 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice other agent-relative considerations, in an integrated system” (Sen 1982, 4). Luckily, the more recent publications in the secondary literature on the capability approach increasingly acknowledge this principle pluralism; the modules A7 and C4 of the modular view presented in this book suggest that it is no longer possible not to acknowledge this possibility. The second type of value-pluralism relates to what is often called the multidimensional nature of the capability approach. Functionings and capabilities are not ‘values’ in the sense of ‘public values’ (justice, efficiency, solidarity, ecological sustainability, etc.) but they are objects of ultimate value — things that we value as ends in themselves. Given some very minimal assumptions about human nature, it is obvious that these dimensions are multiple: human beings value the opportunity to be in good health, to engage in social interactions, to have meaningful activities, to be sheltered and safe, not be subjected to excessive levels of stress, and so forth. Of course, it is logically conceivable to say that for a particular normative exercise, we only look at one dimension. But while it may be consistent and logical, it nevertheless makes no sense — for at least two reasons. First, the very reason why the capability approach has been offered as an alternative to other normative approaches is to add informational riches — to show which dimensions have been left out of the other types of analysis, and why adding them matters. It also makes many evaluations much more nuanced, allowing them to reflect the complexities of life as it is. For example, an African-American lawyer may be successful in her professional life in terms of her professional achievements and the material rewards she receives for her work, but she may also encounter disrespect and humiliation in a society that is sexist and racist. Being materially well-off doesn’t mean that one is living a life with all the capabilities to which one should be entitled in a just society. Only multidimensional metrics of evaluation can capture those ambiguities and informational riches. Second, without value pluralism, it would follow that the happiness approach is a special case of the capability approach — namely a capability theory in which only one functioning matters, namely being happy. Again, while this is strictly speaking a consistent and logical 57 2. Core Ideas and the Framework possibility, it makes no sense given that the capability approach was conceived to form an alternative to both the income metric and other resourcist approaches on the one hand, and the happiness approach and other mental metric approaches on the other. Thus, in order to make the capability approach a genuine alternative to other approaches, we need to acknowledge several functionings and capabilities, rather than just one. 2.6.8 A8: The principle of each person as an end A final core property of each capability theory or application is that each person counts as a moral equal. Martha Nussbaum calls this principle “the principle of each person as an end”. Throughout her work she has offered strong arguments in defence of this principle (Nussbaum 2000, 56): The account we strive for [i.e. the capability approach] should preserve liberties and opportunities for each and every person, taken one by one, respecting each of them as an end, rather than simply as the agent or supporter of the ends of others. […] We need only notice that there is a type of focus on the individual person as such that requires no particular metaphysical position, and no bias against love or care. It arises naturally from the recognition that each person has just one life to live, not more than one. […] If we combine this observation with the thought […] that each person is valuable and worthy of respect as an end, we must conclude that we should look not just to the total or the average, but to the functioning of each and every person. Nussbaum’s principle of each person as an end is the same as what is also known as ethical or normative individualism in debates in philosophy of science. Ethical individualism, or normative individualism, makes a claim about who or what should count in our evaluative exercises and decisions. It postulates that individual persons, and only individual persons are the units of ultimate moral concern. In other words, when evaluating different social arrangements, we are only interested in the (direct and indirect) effects of those arrangements on individuals. As will be explained in more detail in section 4.6, the idea of ethical individualism is often conflated with other notions of individualism, 58 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice such as the ontological idea that human beings are individuals who can live and flourish independently of others. However, there is no such claim in the principle of ethical individualism. The claim is rather one about whose interests should count. And ethical individualism claims that only the interests of persons should count. Ultimately, we care about each individual person. Ethical individualism forces us to make sure we ask questions about how the interests of each and every person are served or protected, rather than assuming that because, for example, all the other family members are doing fine, the daughter-in-law will be doing fine too. If, as all defensible moral theories do, we argue that every human being has equal moral worth, then we must attach value to the interests of each and every one of the affected persons. Thus, my first conclusion is that ethical individualism is a desirable property, since it is necessary to treat people as moral equals. But ethical individualism is not only a desirable property, it is also an unavoidable property. By its very nature the evaluation of functionings and capabilities is an evaluation of the wellbeing and freedom to achieve wellbeing of individual persons. Functionings are ‘beings’ and ‘doings’: these are dimensions of a human being, which is an embodied being, not merely a mind or a soul. And with the exception of the conjoined twins, and the case of the unborn child and the pregnant mother, bodies are physically separated from each other.33 We are born as a human being with a body and future of her own, and we will die as a human being with a body and a past life narrative that is unique. This human being, that lives her life in an embodied way, thus has functionings that are related to her person, which is embodied. It is with the functionings and capabilities of these persons that the capability approach is concerned with.34 However, as I will explain in detail in section 4.6, from this it does not follow that the capability approach conceptualises people in an atomistic fashion, and thus that the capability approach is ‘individualistic’ — meant in a negative, pejorative way. And it also does not imply that a capabilitarian evaluation could not also evaluate the 33 As Richardson (2016, 5) puts it, “all capabilities […] are dependent on the body. Without relying on one’s body there is nothing one can do or be”. 34 Some have argued in favour of what they call ‘collective capabilities’, which I will discuss in section 3.6. 59 2. Core Ideas and the Framework means (including social institutions, structures, and norms) as well as conversion factors, as well as non-capabilitarian elements of value — as long as we are clear what the role or status of each of those elements is.35 Note that the use of the term ‘normative individualism’ is deeply disputed. Some scholars see no problem at all in using that term, since they use it in a technical sense that they believe should not be conflated with any pejorative use of the term ‘individualism’ in daily life. Other scholars resist the term ‘ethical individualism’, since they cannot separate it from (a) the notions of ontological and explanatory individualism, and/or (b) from the pejorative meaning that the term ‘individualism’ has in daily life, which is probably close to a term such as ‘egoism’. While the first group is, in my view, right, the second group conveys important information about how the capability approach will be perceived in a broader setting, including outside academia. It may therefore be recommendable to replace the term ‘ethical or normative individualism’ with the term ‘the principle of each person as an end’ whenever possible. 2.7 The B-modules: non-optional modules with optional content I believe that the best way to understand the capability approach is by taking the content of the A-module as non-optional. All capability theories need to endorse the content of the A-module (ideally in an explicit way) or at a very minimum should not have properties that violate the content of the A-module. But there are also properties of a capability theory where the module is non-optional, yet there is choice involved in the content of the module. This doesn’t mean that ‘anything goes’ in terms of the choice of the content, but it does mean that within each module, there is a range of options to choose from. These are the B-modules, each of which contains a range of possible content, 35 However, the question remains whether the capability approach is fully compatible with indigenous world views and normative frameworks, as well as thick forms of communitarianism. This is a question that doesn’t allow for a straightforward answer, and requires more analysis. For some first explorations of the compatibility of indigenous world views with the capability approach, see Binder and Binder (2016); Bockstael and Watene (2016); Watene (2016). 60 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice from which the capability theorist can decide what content to adopt. However, the range of content of the B-modules must not contradict the A-module. The following table lists the non-optional B-modules with optional content. Table 2.3 The B-modules: non-optional modules with optional content B1: The purpose of the capability theory B2: The selection of dimensions B3: An account of human diversity B4: An account of agency B5: An account of structural constraints B6: The choice between functionings, capabilities, or both B7: Meta-theoretical commitments 2.7.1 B1: The purpose of the capability theory The first module, which is itself non-optional, but where the content can be chosen, is the purpose of the theory. For example, one could use the capability approach to construct a theory of justice, to develop an international empirical comparison, to reform an educational curriculum, to develop alternative welfare economics, or to evaluate the effects of laws on people’s capabilities. Questions of scope and reach also need to be addressed in this module. For example, is a theory of justice a political or a comprehensive theory? Is such a theory domestic or global? Other questions that need to be addressed involve the intended audience. Is one constructing an academic theory where great attention is given to detail and even the smallest distinctions are taken as relevant, or is one addressing policy makers or societal organisations for whom every detail does not matter and the time to think and read may be much more constrained, while the accessibility of the ideas is much more important? Of course, one could argue that B1 is not specific to capability theories, and also holds for, say, deontological theories, or utilitarian theories, or theories that use care ethics as their basic normative foundation. 61 2. Core Ideas and the Framework While that is true, there are two reasons to highlight B1, the purpose of the capability theory, in the account that I am developing. The first is that it will help us to be explicit about the purpose. There are plenty of pieces published in the capability literature in which the purpose of the application or theory is not made explicit, and as a consequence it leads to people based in different disciplines or fields talking alongside each other. Second, it seems that the need to be explicit about the purpose (including the audience) of one’s capability theory or application is stronger in the capability literature than in other approaches, because in comparison to those other approaches it has a much more radically multidisciplinary uptake. 2.7.2 B2: The selection of dimensions The second B-module is the selection of capabilities and/or functionings. We need to specify which capabilities matter for our particular capability theory. This is a deeply normative question, and touches the core of the difference that the capability approach can make. After all, the dimensions that one selects to analyse will determine what we will observe — and also, equally importantly, what we will not observe since the dimensions are not selected. There is, by now, a large body of literature discussing the various ways in which one can make that selection, including some overview articles that survey the different methods for particular purposes (e.g. Alkire 2002; Robeyns 2005a; Byskov forthcoming). These methods explicitly include various participatory, deliberative and/or democratic approaches, which are widely used in capability applications. There are two crucial factors determining which selection procedure is suitable. The first is the purpose of the capability theory (hence the choice made in B1). If we develop an account of wellbeing for thinking about how our lives are going, we are not constrained by questions such as the legitimate scope of government intervention, whereas a theory of political justice would need to take that element into account. Another example is if we would like to use the capability approach to think about what is universally demanded by moral principles, hence to develop the capability approach into a theory of morality: there the selection 68 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Table 2.4 The C-modules: contingent modules C1: Additional ontological and explanatory theories C2: Weighing dimensions C3: Methods for empirical analysis C4: Additional normative principles and concerns 2.8.1 C1: Additional ontological and explanatory theories Two capabilitarian thinkers could each aspire to make a theory of justice, yet embrace very different views on human nature and on the degree to which certain outcomes can be explained solely by people’s choices or are also affected by structural constraints. This can matter a lot for the particular capability theories that one develops. For example, in earlier work, I showed that the capability approach’s answer to whether there is anything wrong with the traditional gender division of labour depends a lot on the social ontological claims related to gender that are (implicitly) endorsed as well as the explanatory views of how that division of labour came about (Robeyns 2008c). If one believes that the fact that women end up doing most of the unpaid and care work, while men end up doing most of the paid labour market work, is a result of differences in talents, dispositions and preferences, then one would judge that the different functionings outcomes that result for men and women within households provide them with maximal levels of wellbeing given the formal institutional background that they face. But if one endorses a feminist explanation of this division of labour between men and women within households, then one is likely to stress power differences, the role of societal expectations and social norms in decision making, and so forth (e.g. Okin 1989; Folbre 1994). The same observed functionings outcomes in households with a traditional gender division of labour would then be evaluated differently. Similarly, Miriam Teschl and Laurent Derobert argue that a range of different accounts of social and personal identity are possible, and this may also impact on how we interpret a person forfeiting a capability that we would all deem valuable (Teschl and Derobert 2008). If we believe that 69 2. Core Ideas and the Framework our religious identities are a matter of rational deliberation and decisionmaking, then we will judge the choice to physically self-harm because of one’s religion differently than if we have an account of identity where there is much less scope for choice and rational deliberation regarding our religious affiliation or other group memberships. In short, different ontological and explanatory options are available in module C1, and they may have effects on various other elements or dimensions of the capability theory that are being constructed. However, we should be careful and not mistakenly conclude that ‘anything goes’ when we add additional ontological theories, since there should not be any conflicts with the propositions of the A-module — and, in addition, some ontological and explanatory accounts are much better supported by critical analysis and empirical knowledge. 2.8.2 C2: Weighing dimensions For some capability theories, the prioritising, weighing or aggregating of dimensions (functionings and capabilities) may not be needed. For example, one may simply want to describe how a country has developed over time in terms of a number of important functionings, as a way of giving information about the evolution of the quality of life that may give different insights than the evolution of GDP (e.g. Van Zanden et al. 2014). Weighing dimensions is therefore not required for each capability theory or capability application, in contrast to the selection of dimensions, which is inevitable. However, for some other choices that one can make in B1, the capabilitarian scholar or practitioner needs to make choices related to the weighing of the different dimensions. If that is the case, then there are different methods for how one could weigh. When considering which weighing method to use, the same factors are relevant as in the case of selecting the dimensions: the purposes of one’s capability theory, and the constraints one has to take into account when choosing a method. In contrast to the overview works that have been written on how to select dimensions (e.g. Alkire 2002; Robeyns 2005a; Byskov forthcoming), capability scholars have written much less about which methods one could use to decide on the weights given to each dimension, specifically 70 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice focussing on functionings or capabilities as the dimensions. What lessons and insights can we learn from what has so far been argued in this literature on the weighing of dimensions? (Alkire 2016; Alkire et al. 2015, chapter 6; Robeyns 2006b, 356–58) First, the selection of weights for the capability approach is structurally similar to other multidimensional metrics (in the case of evaluations) or decision-making procedures (in case one needs to decide to which capabilities to give priority in policies or collective decision making). Hence one should consult existing discussions in other debates where multidimensionality plays an important role. Let us first look at the group of applications in which the capability approach is used to make decisions about what we, collectively, ought to do. That may be in an organisation; or at the level of a community that needs to decide whether to spend tax revenues on investing more in public green spaces, or in social services for particular groups, or in taking measures to prevent crime, or in anything else that can likely be understood as leading to positive effects on our capabilities. In those cases, we can learn from social choice theory, and from theories of democratic decision making, how we could proceed.38 Decisions could be made by voting, or by deliberation, or by deliberation and/or voting among those who are the representatives of the relevant population. Second, the applications of the capability approach that involve a multidimensional metric of wellbeing or wellbeing freedom could use (most of) the weighing methods that have been discussed for multidimensional metrics in general. Koen Decancq and María Ana Lugo (2013) have reviewed eight different approaches to set weights for multidimensional metrics, which they categorize in three classes: data-driven weights in which the weights are a function of the distribution of the various dimensions in the population surveyed; normative approaches in which either experts decide on the weights, or the weights are equal or arbitrary; and hybrid weights that are in 38 In the case of democratic theory, the discussion is often about which laws to implement, but the same insights apply to policy making. Both the literature on democratic theory (e.g. Dryzek 2000; Gutmann and Thompson 2004) and social choice theory (e.g. Arrow, Sen and Suzumura 2002, 2010; Sen 1999c, 2017; Gaertner 2009) are vast and will not be further discussed here. 71 2. Core Ideas and the Framework part data-driven but in addition depend on some normative decision. Note that in the data-driven and hybrid approaches, the selection of dimensions and the weights tends to be done through a process in which the selection of dimensions and the determination of the weights go hand in hand. One example is the proposal by Erik Schokkaert (2007) of using happiness as the master-value by which we weigh the various capabilities that together form the multidimensional account of wellbeing. In this proposal, if the functionings do not contribute to one’s happiness, they are given a zero weight and hence no longer count in the wellbeing index. In methods such as this one, there are two rounds of the selections of the dimensions: the first before one collects the data, and the second when one uses econometric techniques to determine the contribution that the various functionings make to the master-value (here: life-satisfaction) and uses those as weights; those functionings that will make no contribution will receive a weight of zero, which is the same as being deleted as a dimension in the wellbeing index. Third, for non-empirical applications, we can categorize methods to determine weights in the same way as we could categorise methods for the selection of dimensions. Morten Fibieger Byskov (forthcoming) distinguishes between ad-hoc methods (such as the data-driven methods discussed by Decancq and Lugo), procedural methods, or foundational methods. A theoretical capability application could include answers to all B-modules (including the selection of dimensions) yet decide that the weighing of those dimensions should be done in a procedural way, e.g. via a democratic decision-making process. Alternatively, one could introduce one master-value that will determine which capabilities are relevant, and also what weights they should be given. One example is the empirical work done by Erik Schokkaert (2007), which was discussed above. Another example, which is theoretical, is Rutger Claassen’s capabilitarian theory of justice, in which the selection and weighing of capabilities is done based on their contribution to that person’s “navigational agency” (Claassen 2016). Note that in the case in which one has essentially a monistic theory in which there is a master-value, one may doubt whether this doesn’t violate property A7 from the A-module. At first value, it seems that it does. But proponents of a monistic theory may respond that all theories 72 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice or measures ultimately must choose one principle or value that tells us something about the relative weight of the different dimensions. In Nussbaum’s work, they argue, there is also an implicit master-value, namely human dignity. It seems to me that this issue is not sufficiently analysed and the dispute not settled. One question one could raise is whether all master-values have the same function. It seems to be different whether the capabilities constitute the dimensions of a good life (as in the case of flourishing), or whether they contribute to the mastervalue. For the time being, we should in any case flag this as an issue to which more attention should be paid in the further development of our understanding of the capability approach. 2.8.3 C3: Methods for empirical analysis. If in B1 one chooses an empirical study, one needs to know which methods to use. This is the task of the module C3. For example, the study could contain choices about which multivariate analysis tools to use or whether certain existing data sets are capturing functionings, capabilities, or merely rough indicators. In C3, we also make methodological choices related to empirical analysis: does a particular capability issue require quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, or a combination? In part, the contours of the empirical analysis will be influenced by one’s ambitions and goals: is one trying to measure functionings and/or capabilities directly, or is one measuring resources and conversion factors in order to infer the capability set? For empirical capability applications, these are of course huge methodological questions that need to be answered. These empirical methods questions may be particularly challenging for the capability approach for two reasons. First, because it is a radically multidimensional approach, and multidimensional analysis is by its very nature more complicated than a one-dimensional analysis. Second, in many cases, the relevant dimensions will include dimensions on which the collection of data is difficult, or on which no data are available — such as the quality of our social networks, the degree to which we do not suffer from excessive levels of stress, or our mental health. Nevertheless, as Alkire 73 2. Core Ideas and the Framework (2005, 129) rightly points out in her discussion on what is needed for the empirical operationalisation of the capability approach, one has to adopt the best existing empirical research (and its methods) that exists, and either master those new techniques that have been developed in other fields, or else engage in collaborations. Hick and Burchardt (2016, 88) raise the related point that there is a need for capability scholars to reach out and engage with related fields where similar themes and problems are faced. Only after that route has been travelled can we know the limits of empirical analyses of the capability approach. 2.8.4 C4: Additional normative principles and concerns Finally, module C4 provides room for additional normative concerns or moral principles that capability scholars aim to add to their capability theory. For example, in a particular capability theory, a principle of non-discrimination may play a role or, alternatively, one may want to work out a capabilitarian theory that subscribes to the non-domination principle as it has been defended by Republican political theory (Pettit 2001, 2009). Or, if one ascribes to a rich account of empowerment that stresses the relevance of ‘power’ and hence strongly incorporates relational aspects (e.g. Drydyk 2013; Koggel 2013), then one may add a principle related to enhancing people’s empowerment, or prioritising the empowerment of the worst-off, as an additional normative principle to be added in module C4. Again, there are several elements belonging to module C4 that could be added to a capability theory. 2.9 The modular view of the capability account: a summary In the previous sections, we have looked at the different elements of the modular account of the capability approach, consisting of the core A-module, the compulsory B-modules with optional content, and the contingent C-modules. For an easily accessible overview, the different elements of the modular view of the capability approach are summarised in table 2.5. 74 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Table 2.5 The modular view of the capability approach The A-module: the non-optional core A1: Functionings and capabilities as core concepts A2: Functionings and capabilities are value-neutral categories A3: Conversion factors A4: The distinction between means and ends A5: Functionings and/or capabilities form the evaluative space A6: Other dimensions of ultimate value A7: Value pluralism A8: Valuing each person as an end The B-modules: non-optional modules with optional content B1: The purpose of the capability theory B2: The selection of dimensions B3: An account of human diversity B4: An account of agency B5: An account of structural constraints B6: The choice between functionings, capabilities, or both B7: Meta-theoretical commitments The C-modules: contingent modules C1: Additional ontological and explanatory theories C2: Weighing dimensions C3: Methods for empirical analysis C4: Additional normative principles and concerns What, exactly, is the status of this characterisation of the capability approach? Is this list of modules and the core properties exhaustive, and is this a proposal to change the current definitions on offer in the literature? The answers have been given throughout the sections so far, but now that we have gone through the different modules and know their content, it is worthwhile to repeat and summarize this in a very explicit manner. The modular view is an attempt at understanding the plurality of capability theories on offer in the literature, doing justice to this plurality, yet at the same time avoiding the idea that ‘anything goes’. By distinguishing between three types of modules — the A-module, 75 2. Core Ideas and the Framework the content of which one must adopt, the B-modules, which are nonoptional but have optional content, and the C-modules, which are contingent — we can get a better grasp of the peculiar nature of the capability approach: not exactly a precise theory, but also not something that can be anything one likes it to be. I hope that this way of looking at the anatomy of the capability approach will help us to understand what the approach is, but also provide more guidance to those who want to use the general capability approach as a guiding theoretical framework to work on particular theoretical or empirical issues and problems. The content of the A-module, the B-modules and C-modules is, as with everything in scholarship, a proposal that can be modified to accommodate new insights. If someone has convincing arguments why one element or module should be deleted, modified, or added, then that should be done. Given what we know from the history of scholarship, it is rather unlikely that no further modifications will be proposed in the future. 2.10 Hybrid theories In the previous sections, we have seen which modules are core in a capability theory, which ones need to be addressed but have optional content, and which ones may or may not be necessary to add to a particular capability theory. One question that this modular view raises is what we should think of a theory or an application that uses the addition of normative principles that are in contradiction with a property of the A-module. For example, suppose one would want to add the normative principle that institutions and personal behaviour should honour the traditions of one’s local community. There may be aspects of those traditions that are in tension with the principle of treating each person as an end, for example, because women are not given the same moral status in those traditions as men. What should we then say? Would such a theory no longer be a capability theory, even if the bulk of the theory is trying to think about the quality of life and desirable institutions in terms of the enhancement of functionings and capabilities? I propose that we introduce the notion of a hybrid theory — theories or applications that use the notions of ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ 76 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice yet do not endorse all propositions in the A-module. Let me stress that categorizing these theories as ‘hybrid’ entails no value judgement, whether positive or negative; rather, it is only a matter of clarifying the possibilities of having capability theories but in addition also hybrid theories which use part of the A-module yet also insert elements from other ethical frameworks that go against some propositions in the A-module. Thus, appreciating the possibility of hybrid views enlarges the diversity of theories that are possible. Can we give an example of such a hybrid theory? Perhaps surprisingly, an example may be Amartya Sen’s theorising about justice. According to the interpretation by Antoinette Baujard and Muriel Gilardone (2017), Sen’s (2006, 2009c) recent work on justice does not endorse functionings and/or capabilities as the metric of justice, but should rather be seen as a procedural or democratic account of justice, in which the idea of having functionings and capabilities as the evaluative space is merely a suggestion, which should be put to the public who eventually, in a process of public reasoning, have to decide what justice is about. If that interpretation is correct, then Sen is unwilling to commit to proposition A5 (‘functionings and capabilities form the evaluative space’) when theorising about justice, since that is something to be decided by a process of public reasoning.39 Clearly, when Sen theorises about justice, he has certain meta-theoretical commitments (module B7) that make it inconsistent for him to endorse A5, namely the meta-theoretical commitment that the nature of justice will be decided by a democratic process. Whether that is a plausible meta-theoretical position, has been subject of debate in the capability literature (e.g. Claassen 2011; Byskov 2017) but need not concern us here. The point that is relevant for us is that Sen’s theorizing about justice could be seen as a public reasoningcapability theory of justice. 39 Note that for other capability applications or capability theories, such as making quality of life assessment studies, Sen has no problem endorsing proposition A5. Moreover, one could also ask whether regarding his earlier publications on justice it would be implausible to interpret Sen’s writings as an endorsement of A5. In my view (and pace Baujard and Gilardone’s interpretation), Sen has made several statements in earlier work that could be seen as an endorsement of all propositions of module A for the case of theorizing about justice (e.g. Sen 1980, 1990a, 2000). 77 2. Core Ideas and the Framework Other potential candidates for hybrid theories are the theories that we discussed in section 2.8.2, in which functionings and capabilities play an important role, yet in the theory or measurement construction those functionings and capabilities turn out not to be of ultimate value, but rather to be instrumental for some further end that is normatively prior to the functionings and capabilities themselves. There is, in those cases, a master-value that determines how important (if at all) those capabilities are: capabilities that we could value, but which do not contribute to the master-value, will then not be given any ultimate value. As we discussed there, it is unclear whether those theories that endorse a master-value violate module A7 (value pluralism) or not. If we conclude they do, then the best way to understand these views is to regard them as hybrid theories too. 2.11 The relevance and implications of the modular view Understanding the capability approach as having a modular structure leads to a number of insights. Let me highlight three important ones: countering the risk of inflation, whereby we have no criteria for deciding when a theory is or is not a capability theory; appreciating the diversity of capability theories that are possible; and getting a better sense of how Sen’s and Nussbaum’s writings relate to each other. First, the modular view can help us to contain the risk of inflation: too many things being labelled as belonging to the ‘capability approach’, whereas they do not meet the essential characteristics of the A-module. The modular view of the capability approach which I presented gives us a description that includes all the work in the capability approach that should legitimately be included. There are, of course, other descriptions of the capability approach available in the literature. Yet to my mind most of these descriptions (including my own previous attempts at describing the approach) were insufficiently detailed and illuminating. If a description is too vague, we run the risk of inflation. For example, one could aim to work on multi-dimensional poverty analysis and highlight the fact that we should be interested in the 84 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice various parts, are not present.41 In addition, the choices we make from our capability set at one point in time, will be determinants of our resources and our capability set in the future. Another important limitation of this visualisation is that it gives us only the resources, capabilities, functionings and satisfaction of one person, but, as was mentioned before, capability sets are interdependent; hence choices made from one person’s capability set will lead to changes in another person’s capability set. 2.13 The narrow and broad uses of the capability approach We have now reached the end of the discussion of the modular view of the capability approach. Yet before closing this chapter, let us pause to use this modular view to clarify something that has been noted by several capability scholars, namely that the capability approach has been used and can be used in narrower or more limited ways on the one hand, and broader or richer ways on the other (e.g. Alkire, Qizilbash and Comim 2008, 4–5; Crocker and Robeyns 2009; Qizilbash 2012).42 The distinction has been slightly differently presented by different authors, but the general gist of their analyses has been that the capability approach can either be seen as offering something limited, or else much more ambitious and wide-reaching: […] several interpretations of the scope of the capability approach are used in the wider literature […]. These can be charted between two poles: one narrow and broad, with the broad subsuming the narrow. […] The narrow interpretation sees the approach primarily as identifying 41 In reality, almost everything is related to almost everything else in one way or another, but putting all those arrows on a visualisation would make it completely uninformative. After all, the task of scholarship is to abstract away from distracting details to see more clearly. 42 Readers who have never come across that distinction between the narrow and broad use of the capability approach may simply ignore this section and move on, since the anatomy of the capability approach that has been presented in this book covers the same terrain. In essence, this section is written for those who came across this terminology in the literature, and wonder how it relates to what has been said so far in this book. 85 2. Core Ideas and the Framework capability and functionings as the primary informational space for certain exercises. The broad interpretation views the capability approach as providing a more extensive and demanding evaluative framework, for example by introducing human rights or plural principles beyond the expansion of capabilities — principles which embody other values of concerns such as equity, sustainability or responsibility. (Alkire, Qizilbash and Comim 2008, 4–5) In the narrow way, the capability approach tells us what information we should look at if we are to judge how well someone’s life is going or has gone; this kind of information is needed in any account of wellbeing or human development, or for any kind of interpersonal comparisons. Since the capability approach contends that the relevant kind of information concerns human functionings and capabilities, the approach provides part of what is needed for interpersonal comparisons of advantage. The modular view presented in this chapter can help to make sense of this observation that there is both a narrower and a wider use of the capability approach. In the narrow use of the capability approach, the focus is often strictly on the evaluation of individual functioning levels or on both functionings and capabilities. If we look at the narrow use of the capability approach through the lens of the modular understanding of the approach, we can see that the narrow view chooses interpersonal comparisons as the purpose of the capability theory (module B1); and that it will have to make a selection of dimensions (module B2) and make a choice between functionings or capabilities (module B6); its choice for human diversity (module B3) will be reflected in the choices it makes in B2, but also in which groups (if any) it will compare. Its meta-theoretical commitments (B7) are likely related to limiting research to those things that can be measured. The narrow use of the capability approach will most likely not have much to say about agency (B4) and structural constraints (B5) but adopt the implicit theories of agency and structural constraints that are used in the empirical literatures on interpersonal comparisons. Finally, the narrower view must decide on how to weigh the dimensions (module C2) and which methods for empirical analysis (module C3) to make. In its broad uses, the capability approach not only evaluates the lives of individuals (as in the narrow use), but also includes other 86 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice considerations in its evaluations, which are ‘borrowed’ from other approaches or theories. For example, the broader use of the capability approach often pays attention to other normative considerations and other values than only wellbeing, such as efficiency, agency, or procedural fairness. The broad view would, in most cases, have a more ambitious purpose for its use of the capability approach, such as societal evaluation or policy design. It would also have (either implicit or explicit) richer theories of human diversity, agency and structural constraints, and — most importantly — add several additional ontological and explanatory theories (module C1) and additional normative principles (module C4). The narrow view does not include modules C1 and C4, and this can make a huge difference to the kind of capability theory that emerges. An example of the broad view is David Crocker’s (2008) book on development ethics, in which he has extended the capability approach with accounts of agency, democratic deliberation and participation into a more detailed account of development ethics. Yet Crocker acknowledges that not all versions of the capability approach embrace agency so explicitly. The capability approach proper need not endorse a strong account of agency, but there are several scholars who have developed particular capability theories and applications in which agency plays a central role (e.g. Claassen and Düwell 2013; Claassen 2016; Trommlerová, Klasen and Leßmann 2015). Why is this difference between the narrow and the broad uses of the capability approach relevant and important? There are several important reasons. First, to assess a critique of the capability approach, we need to know whether the critique addresses the capability approach in its narrow use, or rather a specific version of its broad use. Second, we need to be clear that many of the additional normative commitments in the broad use of the capability approach are not essential to the capability approach: rather, they are optional choices made in modules B and, especially, module C1 (additional ontological and explanatory theories) and module C4 (additional normative principles and concerns). This insight will also be important when we address the question, in section 4.9, of whether we can simply talk about ‘the capability approach’ and ‘the human development paradigm’ as the same thing. 87 2. Core Ideas and the Framework 2.14 Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to give a comprehensive explanation of the capability approach: what is it trying to do, what are the many ways in which it has been used, what are the properties that all capability theories share, and what is the structure that we can detect in the construction of capability theories and applications? In order to get a helicopter view, I have deliberately put aside a number of additional distinctions and details. They will be the focus of the next chapter, whereas critiques and areas of contestation and debate will be discussed in chapter 4. 3. Clarifications 3.1 Introduction This chapter aims to deepen our understanding of the capability approach, by analysing and clarifying a range of questions that a student of the capability approach may have. My aim has been to include the most frequently asked questions raised by students of the capability approach, as well as a few cases which, in my view, currently lead to confusion in the literature. The questions and issues which are much more a matter of debate or contestation have been collected in chapter 4. Admittedly, the distinction between questions that require clarification on the one hand, and issues of debate on the other, is not a neat one. But that should not bother us: nothing much hangs on whether a topic is included in chapter 3 or rather in chapter 4; what matters is that students of the capability approach are able to find answers to the questions they have. In this chapter, the following topics are clarified and analysed: How do the terminologies used by Sen and Nussbaum differ, and which additional terminological refinements have been proposed in the literature? (Section 3.2) Can ‘capabilities’ properly be described as freedom, and if so, which types of freedom are capabilities? And is it always a good idea to speak of capabilities in terms of freedom? (Section 3.3) Which considerations should play a role in making the relevant choices in module B6 — the choice between functionings or capabilities (or both) — for one’s capability theory? (Section 3.4) How exactly does the capability approach account for human diversity, and © 2017 Ingrid Robeyns, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0130.03 90 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice why is human diversity given so much importance in the capability literature? (Section 3.5) What does the notion ‘collective capability’ refer to? (Section 3.6) Which notion of wellbeing does the capability approach give us? (Section 3.7) How does the capability approach differ from the happiness approach, and what are the reasons that capability scholars do not adopt the happiness approach? (Section 3.8) To what extent — and how — can the capability approach deal with adaptive preferences? (Section 3.9) Can a capability theory also be an explanatory theory, or is that not possible? (Section 3.10) Can the capability approach be used to study all normative questions, or is it not a suitable framework for some normative questions? (Section 3.11) The capability approach is often positioned as an alternative for resourcist theories — but what exactly is the role of resources in the capability approach? (Section 3.12) Finally, we consider how the capability approach relates to two established literatures: theories of justice and theories of human rights. Which choices in module B and module C are needed in order to construct a capability theory of justice? (Section 3.13) And how do capabilities and human rights relate to each other? (Section 3.14) 3.2 Refining the notions of ‘capability’ and ‘functioning’ While at a very introductory level, the terms ‘functionings’ and ‘capability’ seem to be easy and straightforward, the terminology used in the literature is, alas, not always clear. There has been quite considerable confusion in the use of the terminology, although — if one takes a meta-disciplinary helicopter view — it is possible to discern that particular uses of certain terms are more dominant than others. The confusion has several sources. First, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have used the same terminology somewhat differently to each other, and since most capability scholars are more influenced either by Sen or by Nussbaum, its use in the wider literature is not standardised. Moreover, both Sen and Nussbaum have changed their use over time, without always making this explicit. Thirdly, there are differences in terminological choices that can be traced back to established differences in different disciplines, which are having their effect on the different disciplinary streams in the capability literature. 91 3. Clarifications There are at least four terminological issues that need to be noted: (1) ‘capability’ understood as a single opportunity versus ‘capability’ understood as an opportunity set; (2) Nussbaum’s more complex terminology; (3) the quite different meanings given in the literature to the term ‘basic capabilities’; and (4) additional refinements — both some that have been proposed in the literature, as well as a proposal that I will put on the table, namely to take the robustness of a capability into account. Let’s look at these four issues in turn. 3.2.1 Capability as an opportunity versus capability as an opportunity set Let us first look at Sen’s original terminology. The major constituents of the capability approach are functionings and capabilities. Functionings are the ‘beings and doings’ of a person, whereas a person’s capability is “the various combinations of functionings that a person can achieve. Capability is thus a set of combinations of functionings, reflecting the person’s freedom to lead one type of life or another” (Sen 1992a, 40). According to Sen, a person has only one capability (or capability set), which consists of a combination of possible, reachable functionings. A person’s functionings and her capability are closely related but distinct, as the following quote illustrates: A functioning is an achievement, whereas a capability is the ability to achieve. Functionings are, in a sense, more directly related to living conditions, since they are different aspects of living conditions. Capabilities, in contrast, are notions of freedom, in the positive sense: what real opportunities you have regarding the life you may lead. (Sen 1987, 36) Sen thus used the term ‘a capability’ for what we could also call ‘a capability set’. The advantage of each person corresponds to one capability (hence ‘a person’s overall freedom to do the things they want to do and be the person they want to be’). In the original terminology, each person had one capability, and the use of the word ‘capabilities’ therefore had to refer to the capabilities of various persons. In Sen’s original terminology, a person’s capability consisted of a range of potential functionings, out of which a particular combination of functionings could be chosen. Functionings could therefore be either 92 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice potential or achieved. This kind of language is most familiar to social choice scholars and scholars in formal welfare economics, where the focus of much of the analysis is on the opportunity set. However, many other scholars working on the capability paradigm, including Martha Nussbaum, have labelled these potential functionings ‘capabilities’, and only use the term ‘functioning’ for an outcome. In that terminology, the capability set consists of a number of capabilities, in the same way as a person’s overall freedom is made up of a number of more specific freedoms. One does not find this usage of ‘capabilities’ (meaning the separate elements of one person’s capability set) in Sen’s earlier writings, and in his later writings he (perhaps reluctantly) uses the word ‘capability’ in both senses interchangeably. What, then, is the terminology that is now predominantly used? As was explained in chapter 2, a functioning is a state of one’s being (such as being healthy or ill), or something one is doing (such as going on a trip or raising children). The real opportunity to accomplish such a functioning, is the corresponding capability. Hence if my sister goes on a trip and invites me along, but I decide to stay at home because I want to do something else, then I have the capability to go on a trip, but I chose not to have the corresponding outcome — the functioning. Each functioning corresponds exactly to one capability. This plural use of capabilities is widespread in the contemporary literature on the capability approach — with the exception of those working in social choice theory, formal welfare economics and related fields. The terminology as used by the broader group of scholars working on the capability approach seems to be more straightforward and less technical, but when reading Sen’s (earlier) work it is important to know that the term ‘capability’ started with a different definition.1 3.2.2 Nussbaum’s terminology In Women and Human Development, her first book-length work on her capabilities theory, Martha Nussbaum used the following terminology, which she still uses in her recent book on the capability approach (Nussbaum 2011, 20–25). Human capabilities are “what people are 1 For a seminal analysis of the differences between Nussbaum’s and Sen’s conceptual and terminological apparatus, see the twin papers by David A. Crocker (1992, 1995). 93 3. Clarifications actually able to do and to be” (Nussbaum 2000, 5). From those human capabilities, Nussbaum identifies a list of ten “central capabilities” which have the status of rights: they “may not be infringed upon to pursue other types of social advantage” (Nussbaum 2000, 14). According to Nussbaum’s minimal account of social justice, these central capabilities have to be protected up to a certain threshold level. Nussbaum helpfully distinguishes between three further notions to unpack the concept of ‘human capabilities’: basic capabilities, internal capabilities, and combined capabilities (Nussbaum 2000, 84–85). The term basic capabilities refers to “the innate equipment of individuals that is necessary for developing the more advanced capabilities”, such as the capability of speech and language, which is present in a new-born but needs to be fostered before it can develop into a true capability. Internal capabilities are “the matured conditions of readiness” — the internal aspect of the capability. If I have the skill and meet the physical preconditions of walking, then I may or may not be able to go for a walk — depending, for example, on whether as a woman I am legally allowed to leave the house without a male relative, or whether there is not currently a hurricane posing a real danger if I were to leave my house. If those suitable external conditions are in place, we can speak of combined capabilities. Finally, a functioning is an “active realisation of one or more capabilities. […] Functionings are beings and doings that are the outgrowths or realizations of capabilities” (Nussbaum 2011, 25). Hence, in Nussbaum’s terminology, a functioning stands in relation to a capability as an outcome stands in relation to an opportunity. While the substantive distinctions to which Nussbaum’s terminology refers are very helpful, the specific words chosen may be not ideal. There are two problems. First, for many capability scholars, the reference to the term ‘capability’ refers to the real opportunity to do something or be the person one wants to be; ‘internal capabilities’ do not fit that category. They are, starting from that perspective, simply not a capability, but rather necessary elements of a capability, or a precondition for a capability. It would have been better to call ‘internal capabilities’ simply ‘internal characteristics’ or else ‘skills, talents, character traits and abilities’. Such terminology would also make the link with various other behavioural and social disciplines much easier. 100 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Let us start from the clearest concept in Berlin — his notion of negative freedom — which Berlin (1969, 122) defines as follows: “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity”. The opposite of having negative freedom is being coerced — the deliberate interference of other persons in an area of my life in which I could, without the interference, act freely. Negative freedom thus corresponds to freedom as non-interference, and Berlin speaks approvingly of this kind of freedom: “[…] non-interference, which is the opposite of coercion, is good as such, although it is not the only good. This is the ‘negative’ conception of liberty in its classical form” (1969, 128). On positive freedom, there is much less clarity in Berlin’s work. Berlin first introduces positive freedom as the freedom to be one’s own master: I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be a somebody, not nobody, a doer — deciding, not being decided for; self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. (Berlin 1969, 131) Berlin argues that the metaphor of self-mastery historically developed into the idea that a person has two selves, a dominant self which is identified with reason and a ‘higher nature’, and a ‘heteronomous self’ which follows desires and passions and needs to be disciplined. Berlin continues that the first self, the ‘real self’, may become seen as wider than the individual, as a social whole of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective, or ‘organic’ single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members’ achieves its own, and therefore their ‘higher freedom’. (Berlin 1969, 132) Put differently, men are “coerced in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or 101 3. Clarifications ignorant or corrupt” (132–133). Berlin acknowledges that one could, in principle, develop the same justification of tyranny starting from the definition of negative freedom, but continues to argue that this is easier with the positive conception of freedom. The reason is that the idea of positive freedom as self-mastery entails a distinction between my ‘true’ self and an ‘untrue self’. It is therefore possible that someone else other than you knows better what your true self is, which opens up a space for another person to coerce you in the name of your ‘true self’. Berlin believes that this has historically been the case with tyrannical regimes that propagated an ideology entailing a notion of positive freedom as self-mastery, whereby everything can be justified in the name of some true or higher self that needs to master other impulses and desires. It is not difficult to see that positive freedom in Berlin’s sense is not the kind of freedom that capabilities represent, especially not when understood against the historically tyrannical shape that this ideal (according to Berlin) took. Capabilities are not about people’s internal attitudes towards what they should do with their lives. At the political level, the capability approach would advocate that we should organise our political life in such a way as to expand people’s capabilities, whereby the capability approach will judge that two persons had the same initial equal freedom if both of them had the same initial set of valuable options from which to choose. The capability approach, therefore, is not strongly perfectionist and teleological, as is the positive freedom doctrine in Berlin’s sense. In sum, capabilities are very different from Berlin’s notion of positive freedom, and Berlin’s understanding of positive freedom is not the best way to capture the kinds of freedom that capabilities are. In later work, Sen acknowledged the potential for confusion that his equation of capabilities with positive freedom and his references to Berlin’s work had made, and provided a clearer description of his own understanding of positive freedom. In his Arrow lectures, Sen (2002a, 586) wrote: positive freedom has also been variously defined, varying on one side from the general freedom to achieve in general, to the particular aspect, on the other side, of freedom to achieve insofar as it relates to influences working within oneself (a use that is close to Berlin’s conceptualization of positive freedom). In my own attempts in this field, I have found it more useful to see ‘positive freedom’ as the person’s ability to do the things 102 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice in question taking everything into account (including external restraints as well as internal limitations). In this interpretation, a violation of negative freedom must also be — unless compensated by some other factor — a violation of positive freedom, but not vice versa. This way of seeing positive freedom is not the one preferred by Isaiah Berlin. This quote also draws attention to another drawback of defining capabilities in terms of positive freedom. Violations of negative freedoms will, according to Sen, always lead to violations of positive freedoms; yet for Berlin this need not be the case. In a totalitarian state which espouses a doctrine of positive freedom, in which the state will help the citizens to ‘liberate their true selves’, a violation of a range of negative freedoms, such as the freedom of expression or of the freedom to hold property, will not violate positive freedom; on the contrary, within the parameters of that doctrine, violations of such negative freedoms may even enhance the state-aspired positive freedom. So where does all this terminological exegesis lead us? It has often been remarked that there are many available definitions of negative and positive freedom. Berlin’s conceptualisations are canonical, but his definition of positive freedom is very different from Sen’s. Moreover, as Charles Taylor (1979, 175) rightly pointed out, the debate on negative and positive freedoms has been prone to polemical attacks that caricature the views of both sides. One therefore wonders what is to be gained by describing capabilities in terms of positive freedoms — at least, if one is aware of the philosophical background to this term. Perhaps it may be wiser to look further for an alternative conceptualisation that is less prone to creating misunderstandings? 3.3.2 Capabilities as opportunity or option freedoms? Luckily, in other parts of Amartya Sen’s writings we can find the answer to the question of what kind of freedoms capabilities are (if any at all). Although Sen’s first descriptions of capabilities were couched exclusively in terms of positive freedoms, he soon offered an alternative description in terms of opportunities.5 In his 1984 Dewey Lectures, Sen 5 In fact, even this is not entirely correct, since in his earlier work and especially in his work written for economists, Sen did not speak of ‘capabilities’, but rather of ‘capability sets’ and thus also of ‘opportunity sets’ (see section 3.2.1). 103 3. Clarifications (1985c, 201) defended a conceptualisation of wellbeing freedom in terms of capabilities, and defined wellbeing freedom as: whether one person did have the opportunity of achieving the functioning vector that another actually achieved. This involves comparisons of actual opportunities that different persons have. Similarly, in Inequality Reexamined, Sen (1992a, 31) writes: A person’s position in a social arrangement can be judged in two different perspectives, viz. (1) the actual achievement, and (2) the freedom to achieve. Achievement is concerned with what we manage to accomplish, and freedom with the real opportunity that we have to accomplish what we value. Given Sen’s descriptions of the freedoms that the capability approach is concerned with in terms of opportunities, it seems a natural suggestion to investigate whether the concept of ‘opportunity freedom’ better captures the nature of capabilities. Charles Taylor, in his discussion of Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive freedom, has argued that beneath the distinction between positive and negative freedom lies another set of distinctions, namely between an exercise concept of freedom and an opportunity concept of freedom. The exercise concept of freedom refers to an agent being free “only to the extent that one has effectively determined oneself and the shape of one’s life”, whereas according to the opportunity concept of freedom “being free is a matter of what we can do, of what is open to us to do, whether or not we do anything to exercise these options” (Taylor 1979, 177). According to Taylor, theories of negative freedom can be grounded on either an exercise or an opportunity concept, but theories of positive freedom can never be grounded merely on an opportunity concept. Taylor’s goal is arguing in favour of the exercise concept of freedom, and shows that the crude view of negative freedom (which, he argues, Berlin is defending) is untenable. Taylor (1979, 177) describes the opportunity concept of freedom thus: “being free is a matter of what we can do, of what it is open to us to do, whether or not we do anything to exercise these options. […] Freedom consists just in there being no obstacle. It is a sufficient condition of one’s being free that nothing stand in the way”. 104 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Is Taylor’s opportunity concept of freedom the kind of freedom we are searching for in our attempt to understand the nature of capabilities? His concept comes close, but it is narrower than the conception of freedom contained in the idea of capabilities. For Taylor, only external obstacles count in the definition of negative freedom (Taylor 1979, 176, 193; Kukathas 2007, 688). He holds that the acknowledgement of internal obstacles to action, including the action to choose between different opportunities, merges an element of the exercise concept of freedom into the opportunity concept. The notion of opportunity in Taylor’s concept of opportunity freedom thus resembles a formal notion of opportunity more closely than a substantive notion. Here’s an example to illustrate the difference between Taylor’s opportunity concept of freedom and the notion of ‘capabilities’. If, in a patriarchal community, men have all the power, and in a verbally aggressive manner they teach girls and remind women that their place is inside the house, then surely these women do not have the same opportunity freedom to find employment in the nearest city where women from more liberal communities are holding jobs. In formal terms, the women from both communities may be able to work outside the home since there are jobs available to women in the city, they are able-bodied and are able to commute to the city. Yet the women from the patriarchal community would face much bigger costs and would need to gather much more courage, and resist the subtle working of social norms, before they could effectively access this formal opportunity. Put in capability terms, we would say that the first group of women has a much smaller capability to work outside the home than the women living in less patriarchal communities. If the costs and burdens borne by the women from strongly patriarchal communities are excessive, we could even conclude that the capability to work in the city is virtually nonexistent. Luckily, more recent debates in political philosophy have further developed this discussion, in a way that is helpful in answering the question of how capabilities should be understood. Philip Pettit (2003) has argued that the philosophical debate on social freedom could benefit from being clear on the distinction between option-freedom and agency-freedom. While option-freedom is a property of options, 105 3. Clarifications agency-freedom is a property of agents. Agency-freedom relates to the long tradition in philosophy of seeing the slave as the prime example of someone who is not free: he is subjugated to the will of others. Agencyfreedom focusses on the question of how a person relates to their fellows, and is a matter of social standing or status, not of the options that they enjoy (Pettit 2003, 394–95). Options are the alternatives that an agent is in a position to realize. Pettit argues that option freedom is a function of two aspects: the character of access to options, and the character of options themselves. First, option freedom is a function of the character of the agent’s access to the options. Some philosophers would hold that the physical possibility of carrying out an option is sufficient for access, and thus would conclude that the agent has option freedom. Alternatively, one could defend the position that access to an option does not only depend on the physical possibility of carrying out the option, but that non-physical barriers are relevant too. Pettit distinguishes two possibilities: either an agent is objectively more burdened than another agent when trying to access an option, whether by difficulty or by penalty, or an agent is subjectively burdened in the sense that he believes that access to an option is not possible. The second aspect of option freedom is the character of the options. Here a wide range of views exist, such as the number of options that are accessible, their diversity, and whether they are objectively significant or subjectively significant (Pettit 2003, 389–92). Capabilities are precisely this kind of option freedom. What counts in the capability approach is indeed the access that a person has to a wide range of valuable alternative options. In sum, capabilities can be understood as opportunity or option freedoms, but are broader than Taylor’s rather narrow opportunity concept of freedom. We can therefore conclude that it is conceptually sound to understand capabilities as freedoms of this sort.6 6 It doesn’t follow, of course, that capability theories would not be able to pay attention to agency freedom. They do — for example by including relational capabilities in the selection of relevant dimensions, or by having some ideal of agency freedom as an additional moral principle included in module C4. 106 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice 3.3.3 Are capabilities best understood as freedoms? The detailed analysis in the previous section doesn’t settle all questions, though. It may well be the case that it is coherent to see capabilities as freedoms, but that there is another notion, such as human rights, basic needs, or something similar, that much better captures what capabilities are. The answer to that question has to be contextual in the following sense. The capability approach is a deeply interdisciplinary approach, yet scholars from different disciplines will have different associations with certain terms. Philosophers may well have very different associations with the word ‘freedom’ than, say, anthropologists or development sociologists. Similar remarks can be made when the capability approach is being applied for policy and political purposes, since the term ‘freedom’ has in some countries a particular historical connotation, or is being claimed by extreme right or extreme left political parties, in the sense that if they were to come to power, they would use that power to drastically curtail the capabilities of (some sections of) the population. However, one should also not forget that the word ‘capabilities’ is non-existent in many languages, and may itself also lead to mistaken connotations, for example with skills or capacities in its French translation (capacité). When developing a particular capability theory or capability application, should we frame the capability approach in terms of freedoms? My suggestion would be to answer this question in a pragmatic fashion. If the context in which the capability approach is applied makes it likely that the use of the term freedom will lead to the application being misunderstood, then I would suggest that one defines, describes and illustrates the word ‘capabilities’ and introduces that term. Yet for moral philosophers and political theorists who are eager to further develop the capability approach into a coherent political theory, a clear understanding of capabilities as option freedoms may pave the way for work that lies ahead. Pettit’s analysis of option freedoms, and the established literature to which he is referring in his analysis, give the capability scholar a neat overview of the choices that need to be made if one wants to turn the underspecified capability approach into a well-specified moral or political capability theory. For the political 107 3. Clarifications philosopher, there is therefore less reason to be worried about being misunderstood when referring to capabilities as option freedoms, or as opportunity freedoms. 3.4 Functionings or capabilities? We now move to examine the issue that is central to module B6: should we, when developing a capability analysis or capability theory, focus on functionings, capabilities, or a mixture of both? After all, this question is not settled. It is one of the core features of the capability approach that it uses ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ as core notions (property A1, as discussed in 2.6.1) and that every capability analysis endorses the claim that functionings and/or capabilities form the evaluative space (property A5, as discussed in 2.6.5). But this still leaves the question unanswered whether we should focus on functionings, or on capabilities or on a combination of functionings and capabilities. Perhaps we have good reasons sometimes to focus on functionings, and sometimes on capabilities, for example for different types of applications, or for different groups of people? Luckily, this question is not new to the capability literature, and there is by now a lively debate with many different types of arguments about whether the appropriate wellbeing metric should be capabilities or functionings, hence opportunities or achievements. What reasons or considerations have been argued to be relevant for this choice?7 The first consideration concerns anti-paternalism. It is a normative consideration: by focusing on capabilities rather than functionings, we do not force people into a particular account of good lives but instead aim at a range of possible ways of life from which each person can choose. Thus, it is the liberal nature of the capability approach, or an anti-paternalist commitment, that motivates a principled choice of capabilities rather than functionings. Obviously, the strength of this argument depends on how bad one takes paternalism to be. There may be good reasons to believe that some paternalism is unavoidable, or even desired (Nussbaum 2000, 51–56; Robeyns 2016b). Moreover, some 7 General discussions surveying different reasons to choose for functionings, capabilities or both, can also be found in Robeyns and Van der Veen (2007, 45–99, 76–78), Hick and Burchardt (2016, 79–82) and Robeyns (2016b). 108 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice scholars have argued that some element of paternalism in the capability approach may well be unavoidable. One reason is that the protection of the capacity to choose from one’s capability set requires certain functionings, such as mental health and education, to be promoted as achievements, rather than merely as freedoms (Gandjour 2008). Another reason is that the protection of certain specific capabilities requires either previously certain functionings-levels, or else requires certain levels of achievement of other capabilities, or requires that enough other people have functionings achievements within those capabilities (e.g. Robeyns and Van der Veen 2007; Claassen 2014; Robeyns 2016b). Rutger Claassen has identified five different types of mechanisms in which capability protection leads to the promotion of functionings, and has concluded that “any capability theory will have to confront the issue of paternalism” (Claassen 2014, 72). As this literature shows, there are many reasons why one can reasonably decide sometimes to promote functionings, rather than capabilities. Here, I will only give one example, namely limits to our capacities to make informed choices in a voluntary, autonomous way. Let us start with an uncontested case: infants and the severely cognitively disabled. The concept of functioning has particular relevance for our relations to those human beings who are not yet able to choose (infants), who will never be able to make complex choices (severely mentally disabled individuals), or who have lost this ability through advanced dementia or serious brain damage. Whether or not these persons can decide to be well nourished and healthy, it is generally held that we (through families, governments, or other institutions) have the moral obligation to promote or protect their nutritional and healthy functioning. All capability theorists agree that in these cases, we should focus on functionings rather than capabilities. The implicit underlying assumption in the claim that capabilities have normative priority over functionings is that we assume the presence of a sufficient level of agency in the individuals who will be given the power to make their own choices from their capability sets. If we have strong reason to believe that such agency cannot be attributed to a person, we should not let the person herself decide on which options to choose; however, we should find ways of compensating for that lack of agency — either by having a steward make the choices for her or by guiding her in the 109 3. Clarifications choice-making process. Thus, we will shift our normative concern from capabilities to functionings for those who are incapable of deciding for themselves. In empirical research, this implies, for example, that it is fine to study the quality of life of small children by focussing on a range of functionings (e.g. Phipps 2002). But the paternalism claim is not limited to the case of infants and the severely cognitively disabled: one could also apply this argument — at least to some extent and in some areas — to all adults. Adults, too, often make systematically irrational or mistaken choices. We are often not able to choose what is best for us simply because of our psychological makeup; many of our choices are the result of the impulsive, unreflective, habit-driven part of our brain rather than the deliberative and reflective part. There is mounting empirical evidence of our systematic failures in choice-making, that we are influenced by a large number of arbitrary factors in making choices and that we often harm our own interests in non-deliberate and non-intentional ways (e.g. Ariely 2010; Kahneman 2011). It is entirely consistent for a capability theory to argue that we have strong reasons to protect people against their own systematic irrationalities, just as it is consistent for the capability approach to argue that there are stronger reasons why we should allow people to make the errors that follow from their own systematic irrationalities: both positions follow from choices made in the B-modules. Summing up, we have here a first normative consideration that can help us to decide whether some (limited or fuller) focus on functionings rather than capabilities is acceptable, namely the question of whether there are mechanisms that justify paternalism. A second normative consideration in the choice between capabilities and functionings stems from the importance given to personal responsibility in contemporary political philosophy. If one believes that the moral aim should be to establish equality of opportunity, then it follows that one should, at least as an ideal, favour equality of capability over equality of functionings. If equality of capability becomes the ideal, then each person should have the same real opportunity (capability), but once that is in place, each individual should be held responsible for his or her own choices. It is important to stress, however, that philosophers and social scientists working on issues of social justice do not at all agree on whether equality of opportunity (capabilities) 116 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice that political self-determination (of an indigenous group) should be considered to be a collective capability which should be a central aim for development. What is shared in those cases, and what makes the idea of ‘collective capability’ plausible, is that a group or collective is needed to engage in collective action in order to reach the capability that the members of that group find valuable. Sen (2002b) points out that we should be careful not to confuse this with a capability that he calls “socially dependent individual capability” — a person’s capability, which that person enjoys, but for which the person is dependent on others to have that capability realised. Perhaps we should not use the term ‘individual capability’ but rather ‘personal capability’, since for many defenders of ‘collective capabilities’ the word ‘individual’ evokes pejorative images of persons living by themselves on an island. There are no such human creatures; we all live interdependently, and none of us could grow up without prolonged care from others, or, as adults, have a decent chance of surviving and living a minimally adequate life. Human beings are, just as other mammals, animals who live in groups. Although philosophers are used to working with terms outside their everyday use, and most philosophers (especially those with an analytical background) will not have these pejorative connotations when they hear the term ‘individual capabilities’, I will proceed with the term ‘personal capabilities’ in order to facilitate the discussion in this section. Now, if we are very strict in our terminological distinctions, then collective capabilities are also personal capabilities, since it is individual persons who enjoy the capabilities that are thus secured. Still, there are two justifications to proceed with the term ‘collective capability’ — one fundamental one, and one additional one which is especially weighty from a practical point of view. The fundamental reason to keep and use the term ‘collective capability’ is that we may want to make a distinction between capabilities that are only realisable with the help of others, versus capabilities that require a group or collective to act in order to secure a capability for the members of that group. An example of the former would be learning a foreign language. It is impossible to do that without the help of others; one needs a teacher, or at the very least books and audio-tapes or internet lessons that help one with self-study. Still, that doesn’t suffice 117 3. Clarifications to say that learning a language is a collective capability. There is no group involved, and no collective action of that group is necessary in order to achieve the functioning. A different case is acquiring the capability to vote in elections for groups that are not yet given suffrage. Fighting for that capability is not possible on one’s own. One needs collective action — e.g. the first wave women’s movement, or the civil rights movement in the US, or the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa — to act collectively so that the group is granted the capability, and all persons who belong to that group can enjoy the newly won freedom. The second reason to accept the notion of ‘collective capability’ is because it is already present in the practice of certain justice movements, whose demands fit very well with the capability approach, for example because they embody claims of diversity or because they fight for a notion of the good life or of justice that goes beyond a narrow materialist or economistic view of what is valuable. Examples include the disability movement, the women’s movement and indigenous struggles. So the idea of a collective capability can be understood and can be justified. Nevertheless, two warnings are in order, which may be needed to avoid conceptual confusion as well as an overuse or inflation of the notion. The first comment is that all that has been said so far does not permit one to conclude that one has personal (individual) capabilities and collective capabilities as two mutually exclusive categories. Rather, collective capabilities are a subset of personal capabilities, namely those personal capabilities that require for their realisation action by a group or a collectivity. Secondly, we should be very careful to be clear to keep our concepts distinct and correct when developing a capability theory. The modular account of the capability approach has ample conceptual and theoretical space to account for collective processes, the social embedding of persons, the influence of social structures on our choices and opportunities, a proper acknowledgement of social processes of preference formation as well as the crucial role of social institutions and norms in shaping a person’s capability set. But if we want to account for a social process, we shouldn’t just jump to the claim that we have now found a collective capability. Rather, we should use the quite complex and multi-layered framework that was presented in figure 2.1, and be clear when something is a social structure that is shaping our capabilities, rather than a capability itself. Means to ends (capabilities) 118 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice and the ‘capability determinants’ (the social structures, social norms, institutions, etc.) can all be part of our evaluation — we just need to keep in mind which parts of what we evaluate are the means, which are the ends and why we evaluate a certain dimension. In the case of the evaluation of the means, one important reason could be to see how those means have changed over time, as well as whether there is any scope to improve the contribution that those particular means can make to the increase of capability sets. 3.7 Which notion of wellbeing is used in the capability approach? The capability approach is closely related to notions of wellbeing and the quality of life. Sometimes it is assumed that the capability approach is a theory of wellbeing, which cannot be quite right since the capability approach can be used for many purposes, such as the construction of a theory of justice, poverty measurement or policy evaluation. Yet on the other hand, with its proposition that interpersonal comparisons be made in terms of functionings and/or capabilities, the capability approach is clearly also involved in offering us an account of wellbeing (Sen 1984c, 1985c, 2009a; Alkire 2016; Qizilbash 2013). But what, exactly, is the nature of the account of wellbeing in the capability approach? I will argue in this chapter that the more precise formulation is that the capability approach entails several slightly different accounts of wellbeing, which can be used for different purposes. Different capability theories have different purposes (module B1) and different meta-theoretical commitments (module B7), and the choices made in those modules will require different accounts of wellbeing for such capability theories. When one looks at the accounts of wellbeing in the various disciplines in which the notion of ‘wellbeing’ plays a central role, one quickly notices that there are a range of quite different accounts proposed in different paradigms or disciplines, and that there is very limited discussion between those fields (Gasper 2010). In particular, there is surprisingly little interaction between the very large philosophical literature on wellbeing (Crisp 2013; Fletcher 2015) and the (theoretical and empirical) literature in psychology and economics, or the uses of the term wellbeing in particular fields, such as development studies 119 3. Clarifications or medical care. There are a few scholars who have tried to grasp this discrepancy, as well as explain why the philosophical and theoretical literatures, as well as the debates in different disciplines, are so little connected (e.g. Alexandrova 2013; Rodogno 2015b, 2015a). This is the background against which we must try to understand the place of the capability approach in thinking about wellbeing, and try to understand the accounts of wellbeing used in capability theories. I therefore believe that it is helpful first to try to grasp that scholarly context in somewhat more detail (section 3.7.1). Then we will briefly look at the standard typology of wellbeing theories (section 3.7.2), before analysing the question of which account (or rather, accounts) of wellbeing are entailed in the capability approach (section 3.7.3). Before we start, one further clarification may be helpful. Recall that the capability approach includes a notion of achieved wellbeing (focussing on functionings) as well as a notion of wellbeing freedom, represented by one’s capability set (Sen 1985c, 1993a). The distinction between achieved wellbeing and wellbeing freedom is virtually absent from the wellbeing literature. In contemporary philosophy, most philosophical accounts focus on how well life is going for a person, hence on achieved wellbeing. But clearly, for policy purposes, we will often focus on wellbeing freedom, since other values, such as respect for personal autonomy or even human dignity, may prevent us from having a specific wellbeing outcome as a legitimate policy goal. When in the capability approach the term ‘wellbeing freedom’ is used, it refers to what philosophers elsewhere would call ‘opportunities for wellbeing’. This notion is especially relevant in moral theories where we try to balance a concern for wellbeing with a concern for individual freedom to choose: the term ‘wellbeing freedom’ tries to bring together and integrate those two values. 3.7.1 The aim and context of accounts of wellbeing Philosophical discussions of wellbeing typically start out from a rather general definition of wellbeing, stating that wellbeing is about how well the life of a person is going for that person. The addition ‘for that person’ is important, since it means that in the philosophical literature wellbeing is generally conceived as what we could call a personal value, or a firstperson value, rather than an institutional value — a value that we have to 120 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice consider when we think about how to organise our collective life. While this demarcates ‘wellbeing’ from other public values such as ‘justice’ or ‘efficiency’, this is still a very general notion that can be elaborated in many different ways. Moreover, as was already mentioned, if we look at the debates in contemporary philosophy of wellbeing, we notice that they hardly relate at all to the empirical discussions in policy studies and the social sciences (with the exception of the relatively recent boom in subjective wellbeing analysis, which will be discussed in section 3.8). Anna Alexandrova (2013) argues that the diversity in scholarship on wellbeing can be explained by the fact that the meaning of the use of the term ‘wellbeing’ differs depending on the context in which it is used. If the word ‘wellbeing’ is used by a medical doctor, or a policy maker, or a sociologist, or an adolescent reflecting on her options for her future life, they all use the term ‘wellbeing’ for different purposes and in a different context. I would like to add that, in particular, the aim or the purpose of our use of the term ‘wellbeing’ is crucial. That is, the term ‘wellbeing’ is never used in a vacuum; each use of that term plays a role in either explanatory or else normative projects. Normative projects always have a purpose, that is, something to judge, evaluate or recommend, which is precisely the choice that has to be made in module B1 in the account of the capability approach presented in chapter 2. Depending on whether we use the term ‘wellbeing’ for policy making, or for purely descriptive work, or for deciding what we owe to each other as fellow citizens, the term wellbeing will play a different function. Most work on wellbeing in contemporary analytical philosophy is concerned with answering the question “What would be the best for someone, or would be most in this person’s interests, or would make this person’s life go, for him, as well as possible?” (Parfit 1984, 493). This is especially the case for the literature since the publication of Derek Parfit’s typology of theories of wellbeing. While Parfit’s typology is arguably crude, it has been very influential, and still serves an important function as an influential attempt that a philosopher has made to classify accounts of wellbeing. In the next section, we will consider how (if at all) the capability approach fits into Parfit’s typology. But it is important to note that this highly abstract, very detailed and analytical strand in philosophy is only to a very limited degree concerned with (a) empirical 121 3. Clarifications applicability and measurement or (b) practical consequences, in the sense of action-guidance such as the establishment of normatively sound policy making or the question of which social arrangements we should want. The dominant contemporary philosophical literature on wellbeing is concerned with philosophical investigation in the sense of finding truths, and typically focussed on the entire lives of people from their own, first-person, perspective. That literature is much less concerned with wellbeing as an institutional value, with asking which account of wellbeing would be best when deciding what institutions we should implement — a question that can only be answered after taking feasibility considerations into account, or considering what would be best from the point of view of ethically sound policy making. However, as Alexandrova (2013, 311) rightly points out, “the context of an all-things-considered evaluation of life as a whole privileged by philosophers is just that: one of the many contexts in which wellbeing is in question”. Since most uses of the term ‘wellbeing’ in other debates, e.g. in applied philosophy or other disciplines, are concerned with overall evaluations of states of affairs and/or policy making, it shouldn’t surprise us that there is very little cross-fertilisation between those philosophical debates and the policy oriented and empirical literatures in other disciplines. This will have an influence on how we will, in the next section, answer the question how the capability approach fits into the standard typology of theories of wellbeing used in philosophy. 3.7.2 The standard taxonomy of philosophical wellbeing accounts In Appendix I of his influential book Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984, 493) suggests that we should make a distinction between three types of philosophical wellbeing theories. On Hedonistic Theories, what would be best for someone is what would make his life happiest. On Desire-Fulfilment Theories, what would be best for someone is what, throughout this life, would best fulfil his desires. On Objective List Theories, certain things are good or bad for us, whether or not we want to have the good things, or to avoid the bad things. In interdisciplinary conversations, hedonistic theories are today better known under the label ‘happiness theories’. Interpreted from 122 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice the perspective of the capability approach, hedonistic theories (or the happiness approach) entail that the only functioning that matters is happiness. The capability approach stresses what people can do and be (module A1) and ‘happiness’ or one’s hedonic state at best refers to one aspect of one’s being, not the various aspects of what we can do. The capability approach and the happiness approach do share some common characteristics, such as the fact that both focus on what they take to be of ultimate value. Yet the two approaches have very different ideas of what that ‘ultimate value’ should be, with the happiness approach defending an exclusive choice for a mental state versus the capability approach defending the focus on a plurality of aspects of our lives. It is therefore not plausible to see the happiness approach, or hedonism, as a specific case of the capability approach. However, more can be said about the precise relation between the capability approach and hedonistic or happiness approaches, which will be done in section 3.8. How about the desire-fulfilment theories, or the objective list theories? Can the notion of wellbeing embedded in the capability approach plausibly be understood as either of those? Let us first very briefly describe the two types of theories, and then ask how the capability approach fits in. Desire-fulfilment theories of wellbeing claim, essentially, that wellbeing is the extent to which our desires are satisfied. These desires could be our current, unquestioned desires. In philosophy, that is a view that cannot count on many defenders, since it is very easy to think of examples of current desires that will harm us in the near future, or else desires for something that is, arguably, not good for us, such as a desire for excessive amounts of food or alcohol. Philosophers have therefore proposed more sophisticated views of desires, called ‘informed desires’ (e.g. Sumner 1996). Those are desires that meet additional conditions, and different proposals have been made for what those conditions should be. Examples of such additional constraints include not being ignorant of facts, but also not being deceived, or not suffering from mental adaptation — which ranges from having adapted one’s aspirations to one’s dire circumstances, to having adapted one’s desires to one’s extremely affluent circumstances, to a more general ‘preference adaptation’ which applies to all of us in societies with social norms and the widespread use of advertisements. 123 3. Clarifications For a philosophical theory of wellbeing, which merely asks the metaphysical question what is wellbeing for the person who is living that life, and which has no consequences for the choice of social arrangements or policy making, the informed desire theory has a very important attraction: it gives the authority to decide what would make life better to the person whose wellbeing we are investigating. We also see this account of wellbeing being helpfully put to work in various other contexts. For example, if the daughter of a family-owned business has no interest at all in continuing that business, and argues that her strongest desire in life is to become a medical doctor, then her parents may, regretfully, decide that it is indeed better for her to study medicine, since that is what she really wants. They may perhaps urge her to talk to a friend who is a medical doctor to get a better understanding of what that profession entails (that is, to ‘test’ whether her preferences are properly informed). Yet in such a context, the desire-fulfilment theory of wellbeing seems apt and appropriate. The problems with the informed desire-fulfilment theory of wellbeing are especially relevant in other contexts where an account of wellbeing is needed for policy making or social change. The most significant is that our desires are moulded, not fully informed, and subject to social norms and other forms of societal pressures and expectations. For example, critics of capitalism argue that advertisement by profit-seeking companies form our preferences, and make us want things we would be better off without. There are many subtle forms of manipulation possible. Students of marketing learn that the products put at eye-height are more often taken by customers shopping in a supermarket. At the macro-level, the culture of late-modern capitalism tells us to find happiness in material success and in trying to achieve higher status in the dominant social order. We are socialised into these patterns, often not even aware of their existence. But why would those desires give us the highest level of wellbeing? Another interesting case is the standards of beauty that women are expected to meet, which will make them more attractive and ultimately happier. Dominant norms of beauty put a huge pressure on women (and increasingly also on men), leading to anxieties, low self-esteem, and even unhealthy conditions and illnesses such as anorexia (Lavaque-Manty 2001). What if we could 124 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice ‘reset’ our cultural and social norms, which would lead to less pressure, stress and fewer anxieties? Some alternative views of living, such as those advanced by deep ecology thinkers (e.g. Naess 1973, 1984), are based on the view that with a different set of desires, and a different appreciation of certain experiences and values, we would be able to live not only in an ecologically sustainable way, but also have higher levels of wellbeing. In sum, the desire-fulfilment theory is interesting and arguably plausible at the individual level, and also at the general level as a theoretical approach to wellbeing, which can make ample use of counterfactual and hypothetical thinking and conditions. But it is much trickier to think about wellbeing from a macro or third-person perspective in the world as it is, in which we don’t have information on how each person’s preferences have been formed and influenced. How does the objective list theory fare? Objective list theories are accounts of wellbeing that list items that make our lives better, independent of our own view on this. The claim of objective list theories is that there is an irreducible plurality of issues that make up wellbeing; wellbeing is plural and cannot be reduced to a single thing. Secondly, those items are objectively good for us, whether or not we attach any value to (or desire) those items. Hence items such as being healthy, or having friends, or feeling well, are all good for us, whether we personally value them or not. What are some of the main strengths and weaknesses of the objective list theories? Objective list theories are generally criticised for not respecting people’s views about their own lives, and hence taking away the authority to decide the quality of those lives from the agents leading them: in other words, for being paternalistic. Who is to decide that, say, social relationships are good for us? Now, this seems a very valid critique if we use an objective list theory for purely descriptive and firstperson truth-seeking purposes, as the vast literature in philosophy does. But if one uses accounts of wellbeing for policy or political purposes, the public nature of the dimensions of wellbeing is rather important. This relates to what political philosophers have called ‘the publicity criterion’: if wellbeing is used for purposes of institutional design or policy making, those principles used need to be capable of being known by all to be satisfied in society (Rawls 2009; Anderson 2010, 85). 125 3. Clarifications Indeed, this directly relates to an advantage of objective list theories: many of the items that have been proposed by such theories have been translated into specific indicators such as health or social policy, or else overall assessments have been made that can be used for an entire population. The long-standing literature on social indicators can be situated in this tradition (Boelhouwer and Stoop 1999; Boelhouwer 2002; Hagerty et al. 2001). 3.7.3 The accounts of wellbeing in the capability approach So how does the capability approach fit in this standard taxonomy? The capability approach is often categorised as being an objective list theory, since functionings and capabilities are plural and the selection of dimensions gives us a list of items which are judged to be valuable for persons. However, in my view there is not merely one wellbeing account in the capability approach, but several wellbeing accounts. So why is there not one, but several accounts of wellbeing in the capability literature? As was mentioned in the introduction to this section, the reason is that there are a variety of capability theories in the general capability literature, and those theories need different accounts of wellbeing. If a capability theory is used for a first-person perspective, for example by an adolescent contemplating what to do with her life, she may ask herself what she really wants: to study hard and work hard and become a medical doctor? Or does she have a stronger desire to build a family and search for a job that makes it possible to spend enough time with her children? Does she want to devote her life to fighting for a good cause? In this personal deliberation, the account of wellbeing she then uses can be seen as a desire-fulfilment account in which the desires all refer to functionings. In the design of institutions, there is also often implicitly a desirefulfilment account, by trying to create valuable options (capabilities) for citizens, but by not forcing them into those outcomes (functionings). But policy making can’t be done by trying to enlarge a non-specific general account of freedom to realise one’s desires: what would that look like? In policy making, we often assume that what we owe to each other 132 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice status should preferably remain immobile, according to utilitarianism. Clearly this is a policy conclusion that goes against the principle that people should receive equal opportunities, even if the effect of one person’s upward social mobility is not compensated by the effect of another person’s downward social mobility. How serious are these problems of mental adaptation for the subjective approach? In part, the response to this question depends on our normative judgements about the counter-intuitive and sometimes perverse implications of a policy that single-mindedly aims to promote maximal average utility. It also depends, however, on the empirical question of how strong these mental adaptation processes are in reality. According to Veenhoven, overall life satisfaction is primarily determined by the affective component, and therefore it is much less vulnerable to the effects of mental adaptation than satisfaction in particular domains, which he judges to be much more vulnerable to adaptation. However, the work of Kahneman and Krueger (2006, 17–18) shows that mental adaptation processes are clearly present even when predominantly affective measures of overall happiness experiences are adopted. There are additional concerns related to the subjective wellbeing findings in particular domains, such as income or education. Recall the literature reporting on the findings that subjective wellbeing is also strongly influenced by social comparisons with reference groups. In particular, the wellbeing effect of income, but also of education, is affected by the levels reached by members of the reference groups to which individuals compare their own situation. As a consequence, increases in income, or additional educational credentials, contribute less to satisfaction in these domains, the more income or educational progress is achieved within the reference groups. Apparently, these resources have a stronger positional component than other resources do, in particular leisure time, where the comparison effect appears to have a much weaker impact on wellbeing obtained from an additional unit of free time. In conclusion, there seems to be little consensus in the subjective wellbeing literature on the question of whether, and to what extent, phenomena of mental adaptation and reference groups cause problems for the measurement of overall life satisfaction. However, all researchers do acknowledge that satisfaction in some domains is susceptible to 133 3. Clarifications these phenomena, and this may result in the counter-intuitive policy implications we mentioned earlier. 3.8.4 Comparing groups The second worry about the happiness or SWB approach concerns the effect of group differences, which will be a problem if we need an account of wellbeing to compare wellbeing levels between groups. The subjective wellbeing approach focuses on the affective and cognitive responses of people to their lives overall, or in particular domains. If groups differ on average in their responses to a situation, then this may cause problems for policies, if those differences correlate with the objective circumstances that one would intuitively judge as important. There are two symmetric possibilities: (1) groups who are in the same objective situation have different levels of life satisfaction, or (2) groups with the same level of life satisfaction are in different situations, whereby it is clear that one situation is worse than the other independently of subjective wellbeing. Research has indeed shown that the average level of life satisfaction between demographic groups differs systematically. In other words, if we control for the relevant factors, then some groups are significantly less satisfied with their lives than others. For example, recent Australian research (Cummins et al. 2003) shows that women report a higher level of overall life satisfaction than men, after taking a number of control-variables into account.15 The researchers cannot pinpoint the exact causes of this finding, but they do not exclude the possibility that women are ‘constitutionally’ more satisfied than men. This may have a biological explanation, but it may also be the consequence of processes of adaptation that men and women experience differently over their lifetimes. If the aim of the account of wellbeing is to inform public policy, then the question is how government should deal with these findings. From a utilitarian perspective, it would be efficient to develop a policy that is advantageous to men. For example, if due to unemployment men experience a larger drop in happiness than women, as reported by Frey 15 A similar strong and significant gender effect has been found by Eriksson, Rice and Goodin (2007). 134 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice and Stutzer (2002, 419), then a policy that gives men priority on the labour market will minimise the average wellbeing damage in terms of happiness. But the fact that one demographic group (women, the worst off, the elderly, and so forth) are made less unhappy due to a certain event than other groups can cause perverse policy implications if life satisfaction is declared to be the guideline for policies. Fundamental political principles such as non-discrimination and equality of opportunities for all citizens are thereby put into jeopardy. This would also be true in the symmetric case where the average level of life satisfaction of discriminated or marginalised groups does not differ significantly from the average level of a group that is not faced with these disadvantages. I do not want to claim here that the subjective wellbeing approach will always lead to such injustices. But I do think that a central focus on subjective wellbeing will make policies less sensitive to signalling and combating these injustices. Hence Burchardt (2005, 94) is right in pointing out that “satisfaction — the best proxy we have for the concept of utility — is unsuitable for assessing current wellbeing, justice or equality”. 3.8.5 Macro analysis A third worry concerns the applicability of the subjective wellbeing approach at the national or regional levels of policy making. One may agree that the happiness approach can be very helpful when it can offer persons with low affect (negative moods and feelings) concrete strategies to change that, such as engaging in mindfulness training and practice. Yet what about policy making? Are the happiness indicators sufficiently refined and sensitive for policy at lower levels of aggregation than the level of a country? In their discussion of the criteria that an index of the quality of life should meet, Hagerty and his co-authors (2001, 2) include the criterion that the index must help policy makers to develop and evaluate policies at all levels of aggregation. Thus, the index should not only be useful for the national government, but also for governments in cities, communities, and regions. As Robert van der Veen and I argued in earlier work, overall life satisfaction does not satisfactorily meet this criterion (Robeyns and Van der Veen 2007); it is too crude for these purposes. It is even less suitable for the evaluation of specific policy 135 3. Clarifications interventions (Cummins et al. 2003). The effect of one policy measure such as improved child care facilities will be reflected hardly or not at all in reported overall life satisfaction, even if such policies have significant effects on the real opportunities of parents to organise their lives as they think best — hence on their capabilities. Overall ‘happy life expectancy’ is, by contrast, well-suited for comparing the effects of fundamental political and economic institutions on subjective wellbeing. This emerges clearly from the work of Veenhoven (1996), which concentrates on studies whereby the unit of analysis is the country. In other words, Veenhoven mainly uses happy life expectancy as an indicator for macroanalysis. The variables that emerge as the determinants of happy life expectancy are therefore typically system variables such as the degree of political freedom, or the presence of rule of law. But the quality of life in a micro-situation (say, living in a particular community or neighbourhood) is also influenced by many other variables. 3.8.6 The place of happiness in the capability approach The previous sections argued that happiness can’t be taken to represent a person’s wellbeing for many purposes, including policy purposes. Yet it would also be deeply counter-intuitive to say that happiness doesn’t matter at all. It may be the right concept of wellbeing for other aims. How, then, can happiness be given a proper place within the capability approach? The first possibility is to see happiness, or some more specific capabilities that are closely related to the affective component of subjective wellbeing, as one important dimension to be selected. In fact, Amartya Sen has for many years argued that we could take ‘feeling happy’ as one of the functionings to be selected. For example, Sen (2008, 26) wrote: happiness, however, is extremely important, since being happy is a momentous achievement in itself. Happiness cannot be the only thing that we have reason to value, nor the only metric for measuring other things that we value, but on its own, happiness is an important human functioning. The capability to be happy is, similarly, a major aspect of the freedom that we have good reason to treasure. The perspective of happiness illuminates one critically important element of human living. 136 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Indicators of happiness are already included, for example, by incorporating dimensions of mental health into capability applications. Certain specific functionings, which make up an overall ‘mental health’ functioning, already contain such affective items: whether, over the last week, the respondent has felt down or worthless, for example, or whether one is free from worry. Second, we can try to capture the cognitive aspect of happiness, that is, a person’s satisfaction with her capability set, or with particular options from that set. We can then compare that person’s level of satisfaction with her capabilities, which should allow us to compare the objective situation with a person’s satisfaction with that situation. For example, the absence of criminality is a valuable functioning.16 But there is a long-standing finding in criminology that there are discrepancies between the objective incidence of being safe versus the subjective feeling of being in danger of becoming a victim of crime. For example, even if the incidence and impact of criminality goes down, it can still be the case that the population is more worried about crime than before and feels less safe. The discrepancy between objective outcomes and subjective perception is instructive here; it may imply, for example, that the government should communicate more effectively about its success in reducing crime, so as to make the subjective perception more in line with the objective reality, or it should work directly on factors that impact on the subjective experience of safety feelings. Third, capability scholars would, of course, hope that an enlarging of people’s functionings and capabilities would, as a further effect, increase their feelings of happiness and satisfaction, and serve as a (sometimes rough) indicator of people’s satisfaction with their functionings and capabilities (Sen 2008, 26–27). Not all functionings will lead to people becoming happier, yet their lives may still be better: more flourishing, or more meaningful, or with a higher quality of life, or with a greater degree of freedom that could be realised. An interesting example is the case of writing a PhD dissertation. Very few PhD students would say that this is what makes them happy in the sense outlined above. So why, then, do so many graduates want to earn a doctoral degree, and give some of the best years of their lives to what often becomes a stressful time? It is hard to understand this, if one doesn’t take into account the meaning it 16 Perhaps criminals would disagree. 137 3. Clarifications brings to their lives. The capability approach can capture this — taking on a difficult and challenging project such as writing a PhD dissertation can plausibly be conceptualised as a general functioning (consisting of a set of more specific functionings) that we may want to include in our capability analyses, including in our capabilitarian theories of wellbeing for public policies. I would thus defend the position that various roles for happiness are potentially possible within capability theories, and that it depends on the exact purpose and scope of the capability theory or application, as well as the aim that wellbeing plays in that capability theory, what the best role (if any) for both the affective and cognitive aspects of happiness would be. 3.9 The capability approach and adaptive preferences As we saw in the previous section, a widely-voiced reason offered for rejecting the happiness approach as an account of wellbeing is the phenomenon of adaptive preferences, which has been widely discussed in the literature (e.g. Elster 1983; Sen 1985c, 3, 1992a; Nussbaum 2000; Teschl and Comim 2005; Burchardt 2009; Khader 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013; Conradie and Robeyns 2013). Phenomena of mental adaption are a problem if we take happiness or desire-satisfaction to be our account of wellbeing. Yet we also concluded in section 3.7.3 that the capability approach sometimes boils down to a desire-fulfilment account of wellbeing. Hence we need to ask: how do processes of adaptation affect the desire-fulfilment view of wellbeing, and what are the implications for the capability approach? In the most general terms, preferences formation or adaptation is the phenomenon whereby the subjective assessment of one’s wellbeing is out of line with the objective situation. Two persons who find themselves in the same objective situation will have a very different subjective assessment, because one is happy with small amounts of ‘objective goods’, whereas the other is much more demanding. In the capability literature, the general concern is with deprived persons who, over time, adapt to their objectively poor circumstances, and report a level of subjective wellbeing which is higher than the objective circumstances warrant. 138 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The idea of adaptation can take different forms. Jon Elster (1983) referred to one particular type of adaptation, in which being unable to fulfil a preference or realise an aspiration leads one to reject that preference or aspiration. This phenomenon is known as ‘sour grapes’: the fox who cannot pick the grapes, because they are hanging too high for him, starts telling himself that they are sour anyway, and no longer desires to eat them. On Elster’s account, adaptation occurs at a non-conscious level, as a reaction to the painful process of cognitive dissonance that a person who can’t fulfil her unreachable desires or aspirations feels. Elster’s notion of adaptive preferences only refers to a process, and makes no reference to an objective notion of wellbeing. These psychological aspects of adaptation are echoed in Sen’s reference to this phenomenon, when he writes that “considerations of ‘feasibility’ and of ‘practical possibility’ enter into what we dare to desire and what we are pained not to get” (Sen 1985a, 15). Adaptive preferences are a reason for Sen to reject a focus on mental metrics, such as utility or happiness, as the metric of wellbeing. After all, someone who is in an objectively dire situation may have adapted to that situation and learnt to be pleased with little. As Sen (1985c, 21) puts it, “A person who is ill-fed, undernourished, unsheltered and ill can still be high up in the scale of happiness or desire-fulfilment if he or she has learned to have ‘realistic’ desires and to take pleasure in small mercies”. Serene Khader (2011) has argued that not all cases that we tend to consider as cases of adaptive preferences fit Elster’s conceptualisation. Khader believes that an account of adaptive preferences must make reference to an objective notion of flourishing, even if that notion remains vague and only focusses on basic flourishing (since there is more intercultural agreement on what basic flourishing entails). She develops the following definition: An adaptive preference is a preference that (1) is inconsistent with a person’s basic flourishing, (2) was formed under conditions nonconducive to her basic flourishing, and (3) that we do not think a person would have formed under conditions conductive to basic flourishing. (Khader 2011, 51) A similarly perfectionist, but much less systematically developed account of adaptive preferences can be found in Martha Nussbaum’s 139 3. Clarifications work. She understands adaptive preferences as the preferences of people who do not want to have items of her list of capabilities, whereby these preferences are deformed due to injustices, oppression, ignorance and unreflective habit (Nussbaum 2000, 114). What questions do adaptive preferences raise for the capability approach? At the very minimum, they raise the following questions: first, why would adaptive preferences pose a problem for capability theories? Second, do we have any evidence about the prevalence of adaptive preferences? And third, how can capability scholars deal with adaptive preferences in their capability theories and applications? Let us start with the first of these questions: why would adaptive preferences pose a problem for capability theories? There are at least two reasons. The first lies in module B2, the selection of dimensions. If that selection is done in a participatory or democratic way, then it may be vulnerable to adaptive preferences. A group that is systematically socialised to have low aspirations and ambitions will perhaps not put certain capabilities on its list, thereby telling themselves that they are unachievable, whereas objectively speaking they are achievable, albeit perhaps only after some social changes have taken place. The second reason is that a person with adaptive preferences may objectively have access to a certain capability, but may believe that either this capability is not available to her, or else that she should not choose it, and hence she may pick from her capabilities set a suboptimal combination of functionings. If we then assume that this person (or group) has nonadaptive preferences, then we will wrongly interpret the choice not to exercise certain capabilities as a matter of personal agency, which a capability theory that focusses on capabilities rather than functionings, should respect. The capability approach by default regards adults as agents rather than patients, but this may be problematic in the case of adaptive preferences. So we can conclude that adaptive preferences can pose a problem for capability theories in which the choice of dimensions is made democratic, or in which we focus on capabilities rather than functionings. But a critic may raise the question: do we have any evidence about the prevalence of adaptive preferences? Is this not a theoretical problem invented by philosophers who like complex puzzles, or by western scholars who pity the lives of poor people in the Global South? 140 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice There are at least two answers to be given to this question. The first is that there are indeed good reasons to be very careful with the conclusions we draw when studying adaptive preferences, especially in a context with which one is not familiar. Serene Khader (2011, 55–60) provides a nuanced and convincing discussion of the various mistakes that can be made when we try to identify whether a person or group of persons living under unjust conditions expresses adaptive preferences. There are at least three ‘occupational hazards’ that those trying to identify adaptive preferences may make: we run the risk of psychologizing structural constraints, of misidentifying possible tradeoffs between various dimensions of wellbeing that a person makes, or we may be unable to recognise forms of flourishing in very different culture or class settings. All this shows that thinking about adaptive preferences needs to be done with great attention to contextual details and in a very careful manner; it is not an analysis that can easily be done by applying a rigid formula. Scholars should therefore be very cautious before concluding that someone or a group shows adaptive preferences, and carefully investigate alternative interpretations of what they observe, since otherwise they run the risk of seeing adaptive preferences where there are none. Having said this, it is clear from the literature that adaptive preferences are a genuine phenomenon. For example, Serene Khader (2011) discusses real cases of groups of women who had adaptive preferences. Tania Burchardt analysed the 1970 British Cohort Study and found that “among those able to formulate agency goals, the aspirations expressed are conditioned by their socio-economic background and experience” (Burchardt 2009, 13). She also found evidence that adaptation may play a role in the selection of functionings from one’s capability set, since among the sixteen-year-olds who have the capability to continue fulltime education, the choice whether or not to do so is highly influenced by past deprivation and experiences of inequality. Burchardt rightly concludes that if the influence on people’s choices is so systematically related to previous experiences of disadvantage, that this is a case of injustice. Hence the need, for capability theorists and not just for those endorsing the happiness approach or the desire-fulfilment theory of wellbeing, to take processes of adapted preferences and adapted aspirations seriously. On the other hand, as David Clark (2009, 32) argued in the context of development studies, adaptive preferences may 141 3. Clarifications not be as widespread as some capability theorists make it out to be: “the available evidence only provides limited support for the adaptation argument and is not always easy to interpret”. Given the “occupational hazards” that those trying to identify adaptive preferences face (Khader 2011, 55–60), it is important not to ‘see’ adaptive preferences where there are none. In conclusion, the capability scholar will have to balance the tricky tasks of neither ignoring processes of adaption, nor making the adaptation problem bigger than it really is. This brings us to the last question: can the capability approach deal with these issues? Given that capability theories and applications can be very diverse, we will need different methods to handle the issue of adaptive preferences for different capability theories and applications. In the context of action-research, small-scale projects and grassroots strategies, what is required above all is deliberation and interaction with people of whom one may be worried that their preferences may show signs of adaption, as exemplified by Ina Conradie in her project with women in a South African township (Conradie 2013; Conradie and Robeyns 2013). Khader (2011) has developed ‘a deliberative perfectionist approach to adaptive preference intervention’, in which a practitioner who suspects that a group of people has adaptive preferences will first attempt to understand how the suspected preferences affect their basic flourishing. This must be done via deliberative processes — a strategy that we also see in Conradie’s research. If the practitioner has good reasons to suspect that some of the preferences are adapted, she can involve those with the alleged adaptive preference in a discussion and together search for a strategy for change. Note that there is an interesting parallel here with the grassroots-based development model that has been proposed by Solava Ibrahim (2017), in which ‘a conscientization process’ is an integral part of the development process. In this process, a person reflects critically on her life, develops aspirations for better living conditions, and makes a plan of action to bring about the desired change (Ibrahim 2017, 206). While, as Ibrahim rightly notes, adaptive preferences and aspirations may provide a challenge for this conscientization process, they are also very likely to be challenged and hence changed via such a process. What about capability applications that involve the empirical analysis of large-scale datasets? How can adaptation be dealt with in those applications? Here, the capability approach needs to use insights from 244 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice Sen, Amartya. 2008. ‘The Economics of Happiness and Capability’. 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See also children work 14 Carruthers, David 115 caste 24, 65, 113, 142 Chiappero-Martinetti, Enrica 191 children 6, 8, 12, 13, 24, 33, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 52, 58, 92, 109, 111, 125, 135, 157, 159, 160, 161, 180, 181, 189, 213 choice 117, 190, 191, 192 theory of 82, 109, 112, 189, 190 Claassen, Rutger 28, 64, 71, 95, 108, 196 Clark, Andrew 127 Clark, David A. 140 class 63, 113, 142 collective action 117 communitarianism 59, 197 communities 15 Conradie, Ina 141, 180, 183 consequentialism 144 conventionalism 149 conversion factors 45, 49, 72, 81, 113, 188 and public policies 47 three types 46 cost-benefit analysis 26 Crocker, David A. 86 Decancq, Koen 70, 71, 205 deep ecology 124 De Herdt, Tom 64 democracy 27, 173 Deneulin, Séverine 42, 183, 184, 198 Derobert, Laurent 68 De-Shalit, Avner 9, 15, 97, 212 desires 101, 178 informed 122 Devaux, Monique 182, 183 development 16, 17, 96, 199 development ethics 9, 17, 86 development projects 9, 141, 174, 180 Diener, Ed 127 disabilities 108, 130, 145, 176, 187 disability studies 17, 115 disadvantage 9, 15, 31, 212 disciplines differences between 35, 55, 62, 90, 106, 116 lack of communication 118 miscommunication 28 discrimination 134, 166, 205 Drèze, Jean 12, 13, 28, 33, 50, 146 Drydyk, Jay 157 Dworkin, Ronald 151, 152, 154, 155, 156 ecological sustainability 9, 17, 31, 56 economic growth 10, 50, 54, 146, 214 economics mainstream 18, 66, 203 normative versus positive 28 education 8, 9, 12, 14, 33, 41, 55, 108, 126, 140, 180 efficiency 31, 37, 56, 86 Elster, Jon 138 employment 52, 159 Equality and Human Rights Commission (UK) 168 ethics 143, 149, 179 applied 44 evaluation 10, 26, 52, 56, 57 evaluative space 51, 53, 66 Feldman, Shelley 158 feminism 115, 192 Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada 127 firms 9, 123 253 Index Fleurbaey, Marc 154 flourishing 136, 138, 140, 141, 180, 181, 193, 214 Foster, James 16 freedom 10, 27, 31 exercise concept of 103 opportunity concept of 103 option-freedom versus agencyfreedom 105 overall versus specific 126 positive versus negative 99, 101 Frey, Bruno S. 127, 133 friendship 48, 49, 65, 124 functionings 38 ambigious value 43 as a proxy for capabilities 112 definition 39, 90 negative value 41 refined 97 relation to capability 93 secure 97 value-laden definition 43, 44 value neutrality 41, 42, 45 GDP 11, 14, 69, 214 Gellert, Paul 158 gender 63, 66, 113, 114, 142, 161 division of paid and unpaid work 14, 68, 191 inequality 14, 113 norms 65, 104, 123, 159 Gilabert, Pablo 162 Gilardone, Muriel 76 Gill, Kaveri 65 government 15, 27, 110, 179, 182 groups 10, 69, 114, 116, 152, 182, 186, 188 Hagerty, Michael R. 134 happiness 26, 71, 135, 137 determinants of 127 happiness approach 9, 48, 56, 122, 126 and adaptive preferences 130 and group differences 133 and income changes 131 and mental adaptation 130 ontological objection to 129 health 8, 9, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 146 infectious diseases 111 mental 15, 65, 72, 98, 108, 136 public 17, 100 social determinants of 27, 142 Hick, Rod 73, 112 Holland, Breena 170 homophobia 82 housing 15, 126 human beings assumptions about 15, 185 embodied 58 human capital 33, 180, 181 Human Development and Capability Association 198 human development paradigm 16, 86, 176, 197 Human Development Reports 16, 176, 197, 199 human diversity 46, 63, 85, 86, 89, 113, 114, 115, 176, 188, 189, 209, 214 Human diversity 114 human nature 56, 68, 116, 214 assumptions about 63 human rights 62, 106, 160 Ibrahim, Solava 115, 141, 180, 183, 215 identity 68 immigrants 160 income 12, 114, 147, 193 income-based approach 8, 14, 159 indigenous world views 59 individualism ethical 58, 184 explanatory 185 methodological 184 normative 57, 184, 197 normative, use of the term 59 ontological 58, 184