Sugden's critique of the capability approach

Utilitas

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 25-51

  Qizilbash, Mozaffar ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79952898880     PISSN: 09538208     EISSN: 17416183     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0953820810000439     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Robert Sugden, 'What We Desire, What We Have Reason to Desire, Whatever We Might Desire: Mill and Sen on the Value of Opportunity', Utilitas 18 (2006), pp. 33-51;
2. and 'Capability, Happiness and Opportunity', Capabilities and Happiness, ed. Luigino Bruni, Flavio Comim and Maurizio Pugno (Oxford, 2008), pp. 299-322.
3. Amartya K. Sen, 'Reason, Freedom and Well-Being', Utilitas 18 (2006), pp. 80-96.
4. The claim that Sen's position is paternalistic is commonly made by some economists (amongst others), and is intended as a criticism. See Ken Binmore, Natural Justice (Oxford, 2005), p. 122
5. and Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (London, 2005), p. 121.
6. Sen's discussion of Layard is in his The Idea of Justice (London, 2009), pp. 274-5.
7. See also SéverineDeneulin, 'Perfectionism, Paternalism and Liberalism in Sen and Nussbaum's Capability Approach', Review of Political Economy 14 (2002), pp. 497-518, esp. 516.
8. Amartya K. Sen, 'Equality of What?', Tanner Lectures in Human Values, ed. S. McMurrin (Cambridge, 1980)
9. and reprinted in Amartya K. Sen, Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford, 1982).
10. See Amartya K. Sen, Resources, Values and Development (Oxford, 1984);
11. Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985);
12. and 'Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: the Dewey Lectures 1984', Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985), pp. 169-221;
13. Inequality Re-examined (Oxford, 1992);
14. Development as Freedom (Oxford, 1999);
15. Amartya K. Sen, 'Capability and Well-Being', The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya K. Sen (Oxford, 1993), p. 31.
16. See Sen, 'Capability and Well-Being', pp. 31-6.
17. In the Tanner Lecture the relevant claim was about equality of basic capability, while in Inequality Re-examined and later work the object to be equalized is seen more broadly as capability, and so the claim is a close relative to related work on equality of opportunity for welfare or access to advantage. See Richard J. Arneson, 'Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare', Philosophical Studies 56 (1989), pp. 77-93
18. and G. A. Cohen, 'On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice', Ethics 99 (1989), pp. 906-44.
19. Amartya K. Sen, 'Human Rights and Capabilities', Journal of Human Development 6 (2005), pp. 151-66, esp. 153.
20. See, for example, Amartya K. Sen, Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), pp. 585-6.
21. Rationality and Freedom, pp. 585-6.
22. See, for example, Sen, Resources, Values and Development, pp. 310-16.
23. where he cites T. H. Green's notion. Berlin's conception is outlined in Isaiah Berlin, 'Two Concepts of Liberty', Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, 1969), pp. 118-72.
24. Mozaffar Qizilbash, 'Social Choice and Individual Capabilities', Politics, Philosophy and Economics 6 (2007), pp. 169-92, esp. 170.
25. The metrics of primary goods and resources are associated in this context with John Rawls's account of justice in his A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1972)
26. and Ronald Dworkin's defence of 'equality of resources' in 'Equality of Resources' What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources', Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981), pp. 283-345;
27. and The Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA, 2000).
28. For an overview of this growing literature see Sabina Alkire, Mozaffar Qizilbash and Flavio Comim, 'Introduction', The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications, ed. Flavio Comim, Mozaffar Qizilbash and Sabina Alkire (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 1-25.
29. See 'Capability and Well-Being', pp. 46-9.
30. See 'Social Choice and Individual Capabilities' for a discussion.
31. See Amartya K. Sen, 'Dialogue Capabilities, Lists and Public Reason: Continuing the Conversation', Feminist Economics 10 (2004), pp. 77-80, esp. 78.
32. 'Human Rights and Capabilities', pp. 159-60.
33. See Alkire, Qizilbash and Comim, 'Introduction', p. 5.
34. For a different rendering of this distinction see Sabina Alkire, 'Using the Capability Approach: Prospective and Evaluative Analyses', The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications, p. 29.
35. For an example see S. R. Osmani, 'The Sen System of Social Evaluation', Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen. Volume 1.
36. Ethics, Welfare and Measurement, ed. K. Basu and R. Kanbur (Oxford, 2009), pp. 15-34.
37. See Martha C. Nussbaum, 'Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Vol. 6 (1988), pp. 145-84;
38. 'Aristotelian Social Democracy', Liberalism and the Good, ed. B. Douglass, G. Mara and H. Richardson (London, 1990), pp. 203-52
39. 'Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defence of Aristotelian Essentialism', Political Theory 20 (1992), pp. 202-46;
40. 'Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundation of Ethics', World, Mind and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of BernardWilliams, ed. J. E. J. Altham and R.Harrison (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 86-131;
41. 'Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings', Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford, 1995), pp. 61-104;
42. 'The Good as Discipline, the Good as Freedom', Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life, Justice and Global Stewardship, ed. David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (Lanham, MD, 1998), pp. 312-41;
43. Sex and Social Justice (Oxford, 1999);
44. Women and Human Development (Cambridge, 2000);
45. and Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA, 2006).
46. See also, amongst others, Sabina Alkire, Valuing Freedoms: Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction (Oxford, 2002).
47. I say 'apparently' because Sen does not himself hold one of these views, but this is not relevant for the argument of this article. See 'Reason, Freedom and Well-Being', pp. 90-1.
48. 'What We Desire', p. 34.
49. See, amongst other contributions, Robert Sugden, 'Welfare, Resources and Capabilities: A Review of Inequality Re-examined by Amartya Sen', Journal of Economic Literature 36 (1993), pp. 1947-62
50. and 'Liberty, Preference and Choice', Economics and Philosophy 1 (1985), pp. 213-29.
51. There are too many connected papers to list here, but some related contributions are: Robert Sugden, 'Opportunity as a Space for Individuality: Its Value, and the Impossibility of Measuring It', Ethics 113 (2001), pp. 783-809;
52. 'Opportunity as Mutual Advantage', Paper Presented at the Conference on Identity, Community and Justice, University of York, May 2007.
53. and published with revision in Economics and Philosophy 26 (2010), pp. 47-68 (the reference to this paper later in the text is to the conference version);
54. and with Joshua Teng 'Is Happiness a Matter for Governments? A Comparison of the Utilitarianisms of Richard Layard and John Stuart Mill', Paper Presented at the Conference on 'Policies for Happiness', Siena, 14-16 June 2007.
55. See Sugden, 'Welfare, Resources and Capabilities'.
56. See 'Capability and Human Rights'.
57. Nussbaum does talk about 'capability theory' at times. See, for example, Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, p. 104.
58. Sugden used this example at a conference on 'Identity, Community and Justice' at the University of York in May 2007.
59. See, for example, his 'Rights and Agency', Philosophy and Public Affairs 11.1 (1982), pp. 3-39
60. and 'Rights and Capabilities', in Amartya K. Sen, Resources, Values and Development (Oxford, 1984), pp. 307-24.
61. 'Capability, Happiness and Opportunity', p. 305.
62. Gerald Dworkin 'Paternalism', Morality and the Law, ed. Richard A. Wasserstrom (Belmont, 1971), pp. 118-20.
63. See her 'Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution', pp. 175-6.
64. Notably in 'Aristotelian Social Democracy', 'Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defence of Aristotelian Essentialism' and 'Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings'.
65. Martha C. Nussbaum, 'Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice', Feminist Economics 9 (2003), pp. 40-50.
66. See, amongst many others, James P. Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986);
67. John Harsanyi, 'Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior', Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya K. Sen and Bernard A. O. Williams (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 39-62.
68. See 'Reason, Freedom andWell-Being', pp. 88-9
69. where Sen cites Mozaffar Qizilbash, 'Capability, Happiness and Adaptation in Sen and J. S. Mill', Utilitas 18 (2006), pp. 20-32 inter alia.
70. and Sen's response in The Idea of Justice, pp. 273-6.
71. 'Opportunity as Mutual Advantage', p. 25 n. 3.
72. See Frontiers of Justice, p. 79.
73. Nussbaum is here responding to Richard Arneson, 'Perfectionsism and Politics', Ethics 111 (2000), pp. 37-63.
74. Interestingly Arneson there also discusses Mill's strategy for - as he sees it - making perfectionism compatible with anti-paternalism and the general claim that perfectionism must lead to illiberal restrictions. See 'Perfectionism and Politics', pp. 45 and 63.
75. Sugden, 'WhatWe Desire', p. 44
76. citing Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, p. 82.
77. Séverine Deneulin argues that application of Sen's approach will in practice be paternalistic because it will effectively involve use of a list, and also will typically focus on functionings. On this see 'Perfectionism, Paternalism and Liberalism', pp. 500-2 and 510-12b
78. Susan Okin's 'Poverty, Well-Being and Gender:WhatCounts, WhoseHeard?', Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (2003), pp. 280-316.
79. Nussbaum responds in her 'On Hearing Women's Voices: A Reply to Susan Okin', Philosophy and Public Affairs 32 (2004), pp. 193-205.
80. See also David A. Clark Visions of Development (Cheltenham, 2001).
81. See: 'The Good as Discipline, as Freedom', pp. 324 and 326.
82. The capability approach has actually been applied using the views of those Nussbaum associates with 'illiberal neo-Aristotelianism', notably John Finnis, Germaine Grisez and Robert P. George. In her Valuing Freedoms (p. 58) Sabina Alkire argues that Nussbaum's claims here do not actually apply to the work of Finnis and his co-authors.