Customer Reviews

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Creating Capabilities is a significant achievement. Nussbaum has managed to accomplish four major tasks with her book, any of which would have made this a good book: write an accessible version of the Capabilities Approach; clearly differentiate her view from Amartya Sen's, who stands as the standard bearer of the approach; address some common criticisms of the Capabilities Approach that have arisen over the past decade; and to synthesize a large portion of her work over the past 15 or so years into a coherent whole.

The territory she covers is very familiar to those who know the Capabilities Approach. Capabilities are "substantive freedoms" - "a set of (usually interrelated) opportunities to choose and act" in one's life. They involve a choice between a set of activities for one's life, which are also known as functionings. So functionings are the active usage of one of your capabilities (e.g. voting (functioning) to participate effectively in political decisions (capability)). She also maintains the view that there are ten Central Capabilities, all of which must be grounded in a commonsense understanding of what a just society must have: human dignity.

One new feature of Nussbaum's approach is to split capabilities into two types: internal and combined. Internal capabilities are the general characteristics of a person (physical/mental/emotional) that are developed through interaction with external features of society. Combined capabilities are the "totality of opportunities [one] has for choice and action in [one's] specific political, social, and economic situation," which are the result of nurtured internal capabilities. As such, the two types of capabilities are interrelated, and cannot be separated within a society.

Another addition to the approach lays out specific principles which support the aim of a basic minimum or threshold of capabilities: Nussbaum utilizes the Stoic notion of the equal worth of all humans, as well as the Aristotelian notion of human vulnerability, the latter of which requires that governments provide citizens with the option to lead a dignified life via the freedom of choice. These two notions are crucial to her inclusion of the disabled, as well as efforts to include non-human animals in her sufficientarian theory of justice. Competing theories of justice struggle to include both of the aforementioned groups, since the simple fact that all sentient beings are vulnerable to some degree, which does include animals as well, means that no theory can capture what the average human or most humans require to have sufficient capabilities.

As far as Nussbaum's specific version of the approach goes, it's clear that she was making a clear break between her capabilities view and Sen's. Her view provides a means for determining whether a society's conditions are unjust. She contrasts this with Sen's view, which gives us an evaluative framework concerning quality-of-life, but does not seek to fully adjudicate what is just. In this sense, Sen's view has more in common with contemporary welfarist views on justice, and less in common with the development of the Capabilities Approach over the last decade.

If there's one problem I do have with the book, it's that I don't know that her version of the Capabilities Approach will convince many egalitarians to adopt it. For all the objections Nussbaum does try to address, it's not clear how she would address inequalities in society after the threshold of Central Capabilities has been met. That is, is an injustice committed if some citizens, say, live significantly longer than others, or are able to move freely with less of a threat of violence than others, simply because the affluent can afford to do so? So long as all other citizens live a normal life, and face a sufficiently small threat to move freely, Nussbaum seems committed to saying that this is acceptable.

But one might argue that simply having the income to purchase such benefits doesn't demonstrate that the inequalities between the two sets of citizens are just. For specific goods like one's respect within the community, a citizen's basic education, or health, it isn't clear why the Capabilities Approach should allow any segment of citizens to face significantly more vulnerability or a set of drastically reduced capabilities, simply because of wealth. She could counter by saying she has only set out conditions for what is minimally just, but this wouldn't address why some injustices should be allowed, and some (below the threshold) wouldn't be.

All in all, I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in a theory of justice that is accessible and innovative, particularly one that sets a threshold for a just society that isn't based on finding the right distribution of wealth or opportunities. I'd also recommend it for anyone unfamiliar with the Capabilities Approach who's curious, or anyone who needs a refresher.

In Creating Capabilities, Martha Nusbaum provides a lucid overview of her version of capabilities theory, which is a theory of justice built on the idea that a society is just if it enables individuals to achieve their potential as human beings. Capabilities theory stresses both the importance of enabling people to develop inner, personal abilities and their living in a society that permits them to use their abilities. In a sense it integrates concepts of liberty and of equality and of postive and negative liberty, concepts that are often viewed as in tension with each other. Prof. Nusbaum also comments on the similarities and differences between her view of capabilities and that of Amartya Sen.

Capabilities theory is an important alternative to traditional and contemporary theories of justice, including John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness. This book makes the theory accessible to non-philosophers and could become important in discussions of what the nature of a just society and a just world should and can be in the 21st century.

I bought this book because I had a class on capability approach. As an international student, I think this book is much easier to read than her previous Women and Human Development, so I recommend this book for students who want to learn capabilities approach. The book also provides answers for some criticisms to her previous book.

This is an important book at a critical time in world history. It has always been the duty of advanced and educated peoples to improve the backward parts of the world. To help bring civilization to those who cry out for it. The advanced world puts much effort into improving the lives of peoples in the backward parts of the world. But the author rightly points out that in concentrating so much on measures like employment and economic growth, we have often been neglectful of other matters to be dealt with in the advancement of these countries.

The first brilliant insight is that we far too often focus on the masses rather than on people of worth. In any society, a great number of people will naturally find roles in society that fit their skills. The need in developing countries is not to help the masses who are already in appropriate roles, but to ensure that the exceptional among the disadvantaged have opportunties for advancement to the top of the countries. Rather than be concerned about how many people are employed or how many people have material posessions, we need to be concerned with the advancement of the best people at the bottom of society who have the potential to make a difference in their countries.

The key is no longer assume that the whole society can advance, but to ask if the soceity affords the best people at the bottom opportunties to advance themselves. Its obvious of course that life is a struggle. Its equally obvious that not everyone is born with the ability to rise to the top. Therefore we must cease to assume that we can help everyone to advance and rather focus our efforts (and money) on assuring that that the best have a path to advancement available to them. Taking into account as well of course historic patterns of discrimination and inequality that require the remedy of opening up greater opportunities.

This book offers a new way to measure the prosperity of a society. Rather than pushing consumerist materialism or attempting to advance the unfit beyond their abilities, Nussbaum recognizes that the only real way to development is allowing the advancement of the best people in society and that inequality of outcomes is far less important than inequality in access to the means for the best to advance themselves. There is nothing charitable about trying to advance all factory workers to be professionals. The charity is in recognizing those who are superior among the factory workers and teaching them to be professionals.

The book brings a much needed realism to international development. It is also green in that it rejects the idea of mass social improvement (unsustainable consumerism) in favor of social improvement of the fittest (which is sustainable). I give this book my highest recommendation.

The author of this book is a self-confessed religionist and supernaturalist, as she disclosed recently on the BBC Radio 4 programme about her work. In Western culture, her views are therefore ex hypothesi tainted, if not absurd.
The context of any philosophical discussion which takes place in, or originating from, the United States has to take account of the fact that citizens there however intellectually endowed - and this author is very bright and lucid - are compromised by the insidious weight of the cultural atmosphere of a repressive christo-fascist theocracy. Americans often claim online that they have not only a free but a great society, whereas, inter alia, it is impossible to achieve high office there unless one is a supernaturalist anti-rationalist. And just try being an atheist soldier!

Addendum added in response to the remarks by Kevin Croslie-Knight:

Kevin, thank you very much for your interesting comment. Of course my remarks are meant to be provocative and do not have the rigour - if I may be allowed to say as much - of my own published academic work.
Having said that, there are certain points that one may legitimitely infer from a self-declared supernaturalist: a) they are, ex hypothesi, and to a very significant extent [the exact extent being elusive] anti-intellectual, by virtue of embracing doctrines and beliefs which, insofar as they are rationally functioning beings, they must know to be nonsensical. This also automatically involves hypocrisy and dishonesty, even if you accept Christians' definition of their irrational faith as a mere 'putting into abeyance' (pace Merton et al) of rational thought processes;
b) the Voltairian position - a rejection of religion whilst accepting the concept of a God - is not the case with Nussbaum. She is a member of a religious community. This means giving - to more or less extent, in different individual cases - implied approval, especially where there are financial donations from that individual - to what we Europeans (Mitt Romney is right; we do argue this) call Christo-fascist, or Judaeo-fascist viewpoints. The fanatical religious hatemongering of US believers - behaviour which most European countries have brought within the ambit of the criminal law as hate crime - linked as it is by sociologists to rapes, homophobia et at, is dependent on, and sustained by, the respect and cultural prestige bestowed on religion by its self-proclaimed adherents, such as Nussbaum.
What is the likelihood of such a wholly tainted person being able to write an academic work without those values affecting her work - even if it is not immediately apparent on the surface? Iwould be interested to hear from other contributors.