The Proposition Briefing Note create distortions. This is because policies are blind to common sense adjustments. For example, if a program The Terms Capability and Functionings: aims to maximize individual income, it Definition & Justification may force indigenous people, Contrast with subsistence farmers, or stay-at-home
Utility mothers to take paying jobs because The Proposition otherwise they appear to have no The key idea of the capability approach income. The capability approach Capability vs is that social arrangements should aim argues that focusing on freedom is a Functionings to expand people’s capabilities – their more accurate way to build what freedom to promote or achieve valuable people really value. Focusing on beings and doings. An essential test of Contrast with freedom introduces fewer distortions. progress, development, or poverty Utility reduction, is whether people have The Terms greater freedoms. 1 The central terms in the capability Contrast with approach are: Resources Other approaches suggest instead that Functionings development or social arrangements Capabilities should maximize income, commodities A Bicycle Agency or people’s happiness (‘utility’). Agency is discussed in a separate
briefing. Which What do these concepts mean? Aren’t Capabilities? income, happiness, commodities, and Functionings are the valuable freedom all important – and if so, why activities and states that make up does it matter which we seek to Terms: people’s well-being – such as a healthy Capability and maximise? This briefing tries to answer body, being safe, being calm, having a Freedom those questions. warm friendship, an educated mind, a
good job. Functionings are related to Income, happiness, and commodities goods and income but they focus on are obviously important. The problem what a person is able to do or be as a is that if policies aim only to increase result. When people’s basic need for one of these, they may unintentionally food (a commodity) is met, they enjoy the functioning of being well-nourished. 1 In Inequality Re-examined, Amartya Sen writes: Because functionings are aspects of A person’s capability to achieve human fulfillment, some functionings functionings that he or she has reason to value provides a general approach to the evaluation of social arrangements, and this yields a particular way of viewing the assessment of equality and inequality. 1992:5
may be very basic (being nourished, Capabilities vs Functionings Key Terms: literate, clothed) and others might be Why focus on capabilities rather than quite complex (being able to play a functionings? This question is Functionings: virtuoso drum solo). Functionings can especially acute if we are considering ‘the various things a person may relate to different dimensions of well- how to reduce absolute poverty that value doing or being, from survival to relationships to blights so many lives? Do poor people being’2 self-direction. really want to have the freedom to avoid extreme discomfort and deprivation? Achieved Capabilities are “the alternative Don’t they simply want to avoid Functionings: the particular combinations of functionings that are extreme discomfort and deprivation? beings or doings a feasible for [an agent] to achieve.” Put person enjoys at a differently, they “the substantive The problem with functionings is that given point in freedoms he or she enjoys to lead the they could be expanded by force, by time. Achieved kind of life he or she has reason to coercion, or domination. Human functionings are 4 important because value.” flourishing involves the ability to shape they can sometimes one’s future. We want to live as more be measured. In other words, capability is a kind of than slaves – however well-fed or opportunity freedom – the freedom to nourished. Capability: the various pursue various functionings – that are combinations of actually possible for people, and that Also, some deprivation can be chosen functionings they have reason to value. Some in order to enjoy another kind of (beings and functionings and freedoms more than fulfilment. A person who is fasting is doings) that the others of course (it matters more to me in a state of undernutrition, which may person can seem very similar to a person who is achieve. that I am physically safe than that I can Capability is, thus, choose between rival brands of starving. But in the one case, the a set of vectors of toothpaste). fasting person could eat and chooses functionings, not to; whereas the starving person reflecting the The freedom has to be real – not would eat if she could. person’s freedom to lead one type hypothetical. And freedoms are wider of life or than civil or political liberties. As TH Contrast with Utility another...to Green wrote, “We do not mean merely Much conventional economics is based choose from freedom from restraint or compulsion on a utilitarian approach. It assumes that possible livings.”3 … when we speak of freedom as the most desirable action is the one that increases people’s psychological Agency: the something to be so highly prized, we ability to pursue mean a positive power or capacity of doing happiness or desire-fulfillment the most. goals that one or enjoying something worth doing or values and has enjoying.”5 That sounds good as everyone wants to reason to value. be happy. Yet our mental utility states (for example) may not track in any predictable fashion the things we really 4 2 1999a:75 1999:87 value. Sen often gives the example of how 3 1992:40 5Green 1881:370 – ital Sen’s the perennially pleasure at small improvements to their deprived become situation is disproportionate to the reconciled with benefit judged from another their perspective. If we only measure utility, circumstances there are important questions and and appreciative distinctions which we will miss. of small mercies, thus their desires Contrast with Resources are muted and Another approach to economic policy is to try their psychic focus on income or resources.
A problem with this is that measuring resources is different from measuring functionings. The same amount of rice (or other goods), will be converted into radically different levels of physical vigor for a child, in the case of a disabled teenager, as against an agricultural worker, or an elderly person.
We are really interested in what persons are actually able to do or be – that is, in their functionings – not in how many pounds of rice rice they consume.
Another problem, outlined earlier, is that there are things people value other than increased resources. The process of maximizing resources may have social costs (changes in culture and lifestyle) which people have good reason to reject. In the words of the 1990 Human Development Report:
The basic objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. This may appear to be a simple truth. But it is
often has no sense of balance), then having a forgotten bicycle would not create this in the functioning of mobility. But in our immediate case, the access to the bicycle (resource) concern coupled with the person’s own with the characteristics (balance, legs, etc), accumulat creates the capability for the person to ion of move around town when she or he commoditi wishes. Furthermore, let us suppose es and that the person enjoys having this financial capability to leap upon a bicycle and wealth.6 pedal over to a friend’s house for dinner – thus having this capability A Bicycle contributes to their happiness or utility. A bicycle provides a Resource → Functioning → Capability → Utility Bicycle mobility to cycle pleasure good example of how these The bicycle example illustrates how the different various concepts are all related to one concepts relate. another when they coincide nicely. The A person may question is which we focus on. Which, own or be able if we look in on it again and again, will to use a bicycle be distorted least often? The capability (a resource). approach argues that utility can be By riding the distorted by personality or adaptive bicycle, the person moves around town and, let us presume, values this mobility (a functioning). If the person is unable to ride the bicycle (because, perhaps, she
6 Human Development Report 1990 p 9 preferences; Sen argues that there cannot be a capabilities for any given situation (for functionings ‘canonical’ list; the set of focal example, what to include in a survey). can be enjoyed functionings or capabilities that people in a prison or value will have to be set and re-set Her steps might be summarized as: stifled again and again, depending on the 1. First draw up the ideal list – then environment, a purpose of the exercise. figure out what is practically possible. bicycle can be 2. Make the list resonate with the useless if you An example of this would be the context or debate to which it refers, for example in how specific its cannot Human Development Index (HDI). Its elements are. balance, so authors wanted a very crude index, but 3. Shorten the list to reduce all overlaps capability one that was a better indicator of well- but make sure it still includes all represents the being and capability than GNP per capabilities that are important in the most accurate capita, and could be built from data that exercise. space in which was available for most countries. The 4. Explicitly explain and defend the to investigate resulting HDI includes income, selected capabilities. 5. Describe how the list of capabilities and advance literacy and schooling, and life was generated – by what diverse kinds expectancy – not because these are methodology? of human well- supremely important, but because they being. give a better indication of well-being A number of others have sought to than income alone. identify the appropriate capability sets Which through participatory exercises at the Capabilities? Martha Nussbaum has proposed ten local or international level. If we are to central human capabilities that should promote provide the basis for “constitutional capabilities, principles that should be respected and rather than implemented by the governments of all income or nations.”7 Like the Universal utility, we need Declaration of Human Rights – which to know which is perhaps the most famous of lists – to promote. this approach could draw attention Authors within the legal framework to things applying the people value. capabilities approach have But more often than not, capabilities offered a range will have to be selected by a of ways to community, by a team, or by a select relevant researcher. Ingrid Robeyns (2003) has and important proposed a procedural approach – a capabilities. five-step process for selecting relevant
7 2000a:5
Terms: Capability and Freedom Crocker, David A. 1992. “Functioning and Capability: The Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s As many know, the capability approach Development Ethic.” Political Theory. 20:4. 584- along with other approaches in social 612. and political thought use the word Crocker, David A. 1995. “Functioning and Capability: The freedom. For example, Amartya Sen Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Development Ethic, Part 2.” In Martha uses the term ‘opportunity freedom’ Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover, Eds. Women, to refer to a concept very similar to a Culture and Development: A Study of Human capability set. Similarly, he uses the term Capabilities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 153-199. ‘process freedom’ to refer to Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000a. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge something very much like
Development can be seen, it is argued here, as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.9 Sabina Alkire Further Reading:
8 “Freedom is valuable for at least two distinct reasons. First, more freedom gives us more opportunity to achieve those things that we value, and have reason to value. This aspect of freedom is concerned primarily with our ability to achieve, rather than with the process through which that achievement comes about. Second, the process through which things happen may also be of fundamental importance in assessing freedom. For example, it may be thought, reasonable enough, that the procedure of free decision by the person himself (no matter how successful the person is in getting what he would like to achieve) is an important requirement of freedom. There is, thus, an important distinction between the ‘opportunity aspect’ and the ‘process aspect’ of freedom. 585 9 1999 opening sentence.