What are capabilities according to Amartya Sen?
Capability refers to the set of valuable functionings that a person has effective access to. Thus, a person’s capability represents the effective freedom of an individual to choose between different functioning combinations – between different kinds of life – that she has reason to value.
What is capability well-being?
The capability approach purports that freedom to achieve well-being is a matter of what people are able to do and to be, and thus the kind of life they are effectively able to lead.
What is Nussbaum’s capabilities approach?
Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is centered around the notion of individual human dignity. Given Nussbaum’s contention that the goal of the capabilities approach is to produce capabilities for each and every person, the capabilities below belong to individual persons, rather than to groups.
What is Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to human rights?
The Role of Capabilities (=Substantial Freedoms) At the heart of Nussbaum’s liberal theory of justice and human rights is (her version of) Amartya Sen’s concept of substantial freedoms or capabilities. Sen developed this notion as a way of addressing questions of justice and human development.
What did Amartya Sen mean by development as freedom?
Development is the process of expanding human freedom. It is “the enhancement of freedoms that allow people to lead lives that they have reason to live”.
What is development according to Amartya?
How does Amartya Sen define poverty?
Amartya Sen (1983), on the other hand, emphasized that poverty is not just relative, but also absolute. He defined poverty as a failure to achieve certain minimum capabilities and, according to him, the lack of capabilities is absolute.
How does Nussbaum describe the good life?
For Nussbaum, those capacities include the capacity to live a life of normal length, to have good health, to have bodily integrity, to use one’s mind in ways “protected by guarantees of freedom of expression,” to have emotional attachments, and to meaningfully participate in political decision making, among many others …
What does Nussbaum have to say about a list of capabilities?
Nussbaum devotes much care to the composition of this list; in brief, it includes: Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length. Being able to have good health, adequate nutrition, adequate shelter, opportunities for sexual satisfaction and choice in reproduction, and mobility.
What is the philosophy of Amartya Sen?
His work on social choice theory is seminal, and his writings on poverty, famine, and development, as well his contributions to moral and political philosophy, are important and influential. Sen’s views about the nature and primacy of liberty also make him a major contemporary liberal thinker.
What does Amartya Sen place at the Centre of development?
The center of Sen’s vision is what he calls a ‘capability approach’, where the basic concern of human development is ‘our capability to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value’, rather than the usual concentration on rising GDP, technical progress, or industrialization (Sen, 1999:285).
What is Amartya Sen’s capability theory?
Amartya Sen’s capability theory approach is a theoretical framework that involves two core normative claims. First, the assumption that freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance. And second, that freedom to achieve well-being must be understood in terms of people with capabilities.
What are the criticisms of Amartya Sen’s human well-being?
Thorough analysis of Sen’s account, including a critique of its excessive abstraction. Ananta Kumar Giri. 2000. “Rethinking Human Well-being: A Dialogue with Amartya Sen.” Journal of International Development 12 (7): 1003-1018. Critique of Sen’s neglect of personal development. Charles Gore. 1997.
What is the capability approach to well-being?
The Capability Approach attempts to address various concerns that Sen had about contemporary approaches to the evaluation of well-being, namely: (1) Individuals can differ greatly in their abilities to convert the same resources into valuable functionings (‘beings’ and ‘doings’).
What are the best books about Amartya Sen?
Ananta Kumar Giri. 2000. “Rethinking Human Well-being: A Dialogue with Amartya Sen.” Journal of International Development 12 (7): 1003-1018. Critique of Sen’s neglect of personal development. Charles Gore. 1997. “Irreducibly Social Goods and the Informational Basis of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach.”