The Briefing Note one of these, they may unintentionally Proposition create distortions. This is because policies

are blind to common sense adjustments. The Terms Capability and For example, if a program aims to Functionings: maximize individual , it may force indigenous people, subsistence farmers, or Contrast with Definition & stay-at-home mothers to take paying jobs Justification because otherwise they appear to have no income. The capability approach argues Capability vs The Proposition that focusing on is a more Functionings The key idea of the capability approach accurate way to build what people really is that social arrangements should aim . Focusing on freedom introduces Contrast with to expand people’s capabilities – their fewer distortions. Utility freedom to promote or achieve valuable beings and doings. An essential test of The Terms progress, development, or The central terms in the capability Contrast with reduction, is whether people have approach are: 1 greater . Functionings Capabilities A Bicycle Other approaches suggest instead that Agency development or social arrangements

Which should maximize income, commodities Functionings are the valuable activities Capabilities? or people’s (‘utility’). and states that make up people’s well- being – such as a healthy body, being safe, What do these concepts mean? Aren’t being calm, having a warm friendship, an Terms: income, happiness, commodities, and educated mind, a good job. Functionings Capability and Freedom freedom all important – and if so, why are related to goods and income but they does it matter which we seek to describe what a person is able to do or be maximise? This briefing tries to answer as a result. When people’s basic for those questions. food (a commodity) is met, they enjoy the functioning of being well-nourished. Income, happiness, and commodities are obviously important. The problem Because functionings are aspects of is that if policies aim only to increase human fulfillment, some functionings may be very basic (being nourished, literate, 1 In Inequality Re-examined, writes: clothed) and others might be quite A person’s capability to achieve complex (being able to play a virtuoso functionings that he or she has reason to drum solo). Functionings can relate 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

different dimensions of well-being, toothpaste. But activities or states that Key Terms: from survival to relationships to self- people do not value or have reason to direction to arts and culture. value could not be called capabilities. Functionings: ‘the various things a person may value Capabilities are “the alternative Capabilities vs Functionings doing or being’2 combinations of functionings that are Why focus on capabilities rather than feasible for [a person] to achieve.” Put functionings? This question is especially Achieved differently, they are “the substantive acute if we are considering how to reduce Functionings: the freedoms he or she enjoys to lead the absolute poverty that blights so many particular beings or kind of life he or she has reason to lives? Do poor people really want to have doings a person 4 enjoys at a given value.” the freedom to avoid extreme discomfort point in time. and deprivation? Don’t they simply want Achieved Capabilities are a kind of opportunity to avoid extreme discomfort and functionings are freedom. Just like a person with much deprivation? important because they can sometimes be in her pocket can buy many measured. different things, a person with many There are several ways to answer this capabilities could enjoy many different question. Many of them refer to the Capability: the activities, pursue different life paths. ‘distortions’ that could arise if we focus various For this reason the capability set has only on functionings or . combinations of functionings (beings been compared to a budget set. and doings) that the One problem is that if we only tried to person can achieve. So capabilities describe the real actual eradicate deprivation, we could do so by Capability is, thus, a possibilities open to a person. As TH force, by coercion, or domination, or set of vectors of Green wrote, “We do not mean merely colonialism. People and groups, rich or functionings, reflecting the freedom from restraint or compulsion poor, across time have valued their person’s freedom to … when we speak of freedom as freedom to shape their future not only lead one type of life something to be so highly prized, we politically but also socially and or another...to mean a positive power or capacity of doing economically. choose from 3 or enjoying something worth doing or possible livings.” 5 enjoying.” Also, some deprivation can be chosen in Agency: the ability order to enjoy another kind of fulfilment. to pursue goals that As both the definition of functionings A person who is fasting is in a state of one values and has and Green’s quote implies, capabilities undernutrition, which may seem very reason to value. include only possibilities that people similar to a person who is starving. But in really value. Having some options the one case, the fasting person could eat matter more than others of course – it and chooses not to; whereas the starving is usually more valuable that a young person would eat if she could. man is physically safe than that he can choose between rival brands of

2 1999a:75 4 1999:87 3 1992:40 5Green 1881:370 – ital Sen’s

(for example) may not track in any Agency: Agency refers to a person’s predictable fashion the things we really ability to pursue and realize goals that value. A poor devout widow may become he or she values and has reason to serenely reconciled with her circumstances. value. An agent is “someone who acts Her desires are modest, and small ($100) and brings about change.”6 The improvements to her situation bring opposite of a person with agency is tremendous joy. Indeed her happiness is far someone who is forced, oppressed, or greater than a rich person is likely experience passive. by an income rise of $1000. If we only measure utility or happiness, there are The agency aspect is important “in important questions and distinctions which assessing what a person can do in line we will miss. with his or her conception of the good.”7 Agency expands the horizons Contrast with Resources of concern beyond a person’s own well- Another approach to is to try being, to include concerns such as focus on income or resources. saving the spotted owl or helping others. In this perspective, people are A problem with this is that measuring viewed to be active, creative, and able resources is different from measuring to act on behalf of their aspirations. functionings. The same amount of rice (or other goods), will be converted into Agency is related to other approaches radically different levels of physical vigor that stress self-determination, authentic self- for a child, in the case of a disabled direction, autonomy and so on. The teenager, as against an agricultural worker, concern for agency means that or an elderly person. participation, public debate, democratic practice, and are to be We are really interested in what persons are fostered alongside well-being. actually able to do or be – that is, in their functionings – not in how many pounds of rice Contrast with Utility they consume. Much conventional is based on a utilitarian approach. It assumes that the Another problem, outlined earlier, is that most desirable action is the one that there are things people value other than increases people’s psychological happiness increased resources. The process of or desire-fulfillment the most. maximizing resources may have social costs (changes in culture and ) That sounds good as everyone wants to which people have good reason to reject. be happy. Yet our mental utility states In the words of the 1990 :

6 Sen 1999b: 19 7 1985: 206

The basic objective of another when they coincide nicely. The development is to create an question is which concept we focus on. enabling environment for people Which, if we look in on it again and again, to enjoy long, healthy and will be distorted least often? The creative lives. This may appear capability approach argues that utility can to be a simple truth. But it is be distorted by personality or adaptive often forgotten in the immediate preferences; functionings can be enjoyed concern with the accumulation of in a prison or stifled environment, a commodities and financial bicycle can be useless if you cannot wealth.8 balance, so capability represents the most accurate space in which to investigate and A Bicycle advance diverse kinds of human well- A bicycle provides a good example of being. how these different concepts relate. A person may own or be able to use a Which Capabilities? bicycle (a ). By riding the If social or economic arrangements aim to bicycle, the person moves around town promote capabilities, rather than income and, let us presume, values this mobility or utility, which capabilities should they (a functioning). If the person is unable promote? Authors applying the to ride the bicycle (because, perhaps, capabilities approach have offered a range she has no sense of balance), then of ways to select relevant and important having a bicycle would not create this capabilities. functioning of mobility. But in our case, the access to the bicycle (resource) Sen argues that there cannot be a coupled with the person’s own ‘canonical’ list; the set of focal characteristics (balance etc), creates the functionings or capabilities that people capability for the person to move value will have to be set and re-set around town when she or he again and again, depending on the wishes. Furthermore, let us suppose purpose of the exercise. that the person enjoys having this capability to leap upon a bicycle and An example of this would be the Human pedal over to a friend’s house for lunch Development Index (HDI). Its authors – thus having this capability contributes wanted a very crude index, but one that to their happiness or utility. was a better indicator of well-being and capability than GNP per capita, and could Resource → Functioning → Capability → Utility be built using data that were available for Bicycle mobility to cycle most countries in the world. The resulting The bicycle example illustrates how the HDI includes income, and various concepts are all related to one schooling, and – not because these alone are important, but

8 Human Development Report 1990 p 9 because they give a better indication of ‘process freedom’ to refer to something well-being than income alone. that includes agency, understood at the individual and collective level. has proposed ten central human capabilities that should Taken together, process and opportunity provide the basis for “constitutional freedom (or capability and agency) are the principles that should be respected and ‘real freedoms’ that development and implemented by the governments of all other social processes should aim to nations.”9 Like the Universal expand. Declaration of Human – which is perhaps the most famous of lists – Development can be seen, it is these ten capabilities could draw argued here, as a process of attention within the legal framework to expanding the real freedoms that things people value. people enjoy.10 But more often than not, capabilities Last updated 1 September 2005 will have to be selected by a community, by a team, or by a researcher. The key questions to keep Further Reading: in mind when selecting capabilities are: Crocker, David A. 1992. “Functioning and Capability: The • which capabilities do the people Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Development Ethic.” Political Theory. 20:4. 584-612. who will enjoy them value (and Crocker, David A. 1995. “Functioning and Capability: The attach a high priority to). Often Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Development this must be explored directly. Ethic, Part 2.” In Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan • which capabilities are relevant Glover, Eds. Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 153- to the policy, project, or 199. institution; which may be Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000a. Women and Human Development: The affected directly or indirectly. Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robeyns, Ingrid. 2003. “Sen's capability approach and gender inequality: selecting relevant capabilities.” Feminist Terms: Capability and Economics 9 (2/3): 61-92. Freedom Robeyns, Ingrid. 2005. “The Capability Approach: A As many know, the capability approach Theoretical Survey.” Journal of Human Development, along with other approaches in social 6(1) 93-114. and political thought use the word Sen, Amartya K. 1999. Development As Freedom. New York: freedom. For example, Amartya Sen Knopf Press uses the term ‘opportunity freedom’ to refer to a concept very similar to a capability set. Similarly, he uses the term

9 2000a:5 10 1999 opening sentence.