Creating Capabilities


Creating Capabilities is a nonfiction book by philosopher Martha Nussbaum published in 2011, which outlines a unique theory regarding the Capability approach or the Human development approach. Nussbaum draws on theories of other notable advocates of the Capability approach like Amartya Sen, but makes specific distinctions. One distinct idea she proposes is to choose a list of capabilities based on some aspects of John Rawls' concept of "central human capabilities." These ten capabilities encompass everything Nussbaum considers essential to living a life that one values. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen are considered to be the main scholars of this approach, but have distinctions in their approach to capabilities. Sen disagrees with Nussbaum's list of values on the grounds that it does not fully encompass the range of capabilities one would consider to live a fulfilling life, which inherently differs by person.
Nussbaum's book combines ideas from the Capability approach, development economics, and distributive justice to substantiate a qualitative theory on capabilities. She criticizes existing economic indicators like GDP as failing to fully account for quality of life and assurance of basic needs, instead rewarding countries with large growth distributed highly unequally across the population. The book also aims to serve as an introduction to the Capability approach more generally, accessible to students and newcomers to the material because of the current lack of general knowledge about this approach. Finally, Nussbaum compares her approach with other popular approaches to human development and economic welfare, including Utilitarianism, Rawlsian Justice, and Welfarism in order to argue why the Capability approach should be prioritized with development economics policymakers.

Context

has a background in philosophy, having earned a doctorate in Classical philology from Harvard University in 1975. With ethics and foundational principles in mind, she first challenged notions of what it means to live the "good life" in her book The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. She then extended this thought process in 1999 with a series of essays to advocate a basic version of the capability approach specific to women.
Scholars view the Capability approach as being founded by Sen and Nussbaum after they were unsatisfied with other measures of quality of life and human development. This criticism eventually evolved into a comprehensive political philosophy framework to evaluate public policy.
Sen began discussion of the capabilities approach through multiple articles published in the late 1900s. Most notably, his essay "Equality of What" moved the focus from access to resources to analysing how effectively people can use those resources for their well-being.
The Quality of Life, co-authored by Nussbaum and Sen, advanced the literature to propose the first outline of Capability approach in its entirety. The collection of articles emphasizes the importance of quality of life as an economic indicator and the insufficiency of current methods to measure it. Sen and Nussbaum offer a preliminary definition of capabilities as the "various alternative combinations of functionings, any one of which the person can choose to have...the freedom that a person has to lead one kind of life or another." In addition, they highlight the importance of critically analysing the tools we use to measure and assess quality of life, and the relevance of this discussion to the greater policy-making community.
Nussbaum started approaching her version of the Capability approach through drawing from philosophers Aristotle, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill. One of her first major contributions to the Capability approach literature came in 2000 in the form of Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, where her proposed model of feminism and partial theory of justice intersects with her idea of human capabilities: "what people are actually capable of doing or becoming in the real world."
Nussbaum went on to substantiate her research in capabilities. However, she viewed the discourse on the Capabilities approach as restrictive, "expounded primarily in dense articles and books for specialists." She aims to fill the gap in general understanding of the approach, and argue for the power of the Capabilities approach to enable policy-makers to create meaningful change in human lives in ''Creating Capabilities.''

Main Ideas

Ten central capabilities

A tenet of Nussbaum's approach is her definition of the central human capabilities, which she first laid out in 2000. These include:
  1. Life: ability to live to the end of one's live in a natural manner.
  2. Bodily health: good physical and reproductive health, as well as access to satisfactory nutrition and shelter.
  3. Bodily integrity: the ability to travel from place to place without restriction and without fear of violent assault ; ability to choose in situations involving reproduction and sexual activities.
  4. Senses, imagination, and thought: ability to use one's sense to "imagine, think, and reason" in a "truly human" way. Being adequately informed by education, literacy, basic mathematical and scientific knowledge; ability to apply imagination and thought to one's own interests, safeguarded by freedom of expression and freedom of religion.
  5. Emotions: the capability to attach oneself to external people and things; to "love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence," to want relationships, be grateful for them, and experience different sentiments including sadness and anger; being able to feel emotions without constant fear and anxiety.
  6. Practical reason: the ability to distinguish good from bad, and "engage in critical reflection" about one's life.
  7. Affiliation: being capable of a variety of social interaction including living with others, feeling concern for others, the ability to be empathetic; being able to feel self-respect and dignity and ability to be treated with dignity by others.
  8. Other species: the ability to live in harmony and context with nature and one's external environment.
  9. Play: the capability of laughter and joy through recreational activities, although not limited to them.
  10. Control over one's environment: being able to affect political institutions through political choice, including political participation, free speech, and political organization; having the power to possess property and hold equal property rights as others with differing identities; having equal opportunities to find work, being free from "unwarranted search and seizure."
Nussbaum further justifies these capabilities in her book, citing examples like the empirical work of Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit that supported her capabilities being the "most salient" in analyzed areas.

Description

Nussbaum begins Creating Capabilities by describing the disconnect between leaders of countries, that focus on economic growth, and citizens, who value achieving a meaningful life. Contrary to public belief, there is not a causal relationship between GDP and quality of life. She uses the example of Vasanti, a Gujarati woman who suffered multiple personal and economic misfortunes under a state primarily focused on economic growth. She was able to regain her financial independence and achieve greater success in education, activism, and pursuing a meaningful life because of SEWA, an NGO. Nussbaum analyzes this situation through a humanist perspective, emphasizing the role of gender discrimination, gender discrimination in education, nutritional deficiency, unequal property and inheritance laws, religion-based discrimination, domestic violence, the caste system, and political inequities all affecting Vasanti's outcomes; ultimately, GDP per capita and foreign investment do not directly affect these people in the absence of redistributive policies.
Nussbaum then starts defining the capabilities approach as a theory that asks the question "what is each person able to do and be," shifting focus from aggregate measures of well-being to a focus on individual freedom and opportunity. Capabilities consist of "substantial freedoms", opportunities to "choose and to act", also known as combined capabilities; they represent the substantive freedom "to achieve alternative functioning combinations". She also makes a distinction between the "Human Development" and "Capabilities Approach", as she is "concerned with the capabilities of nonhuman animals as well as human beings." This approach is inherently pluralist because capabilities are different based on the individual, and cannot be fully captured through quantifiers. Nussbaum also defines capability failures as "entrenched social injustice and inequality" that is the result of "discrimination or marginalization". Nussbaum views the Capabilities approach as having two purposes, the first of which she ascribes to: to construct "a theory of basic social justice," adding notions of "human dignity, the threshold, political liberalism" to create a more philosophical argument. However, her approach does not include methods to analyze quality of life in a society overall. The second purpose, one she purports that Sen advocates, emphasizes quality of life as a way to compare development in different countries.
Subsequently, Nussbaum outlines Sen and collaborators' Capability approach in detail. She then delves into further depth on the theory of social justice she advocates through the Capacities approach, and specific questions in the capability literature that are most pertinent to her field, including cultural diversity, universality, global poverty and injustice, the history of the capabilities approach, inequality, disabilities, aging, care, education, animal rights, environmental rights, and constitutionality.