CREATING CAPABILITIES The Human Development Approach Martha C. Nussbaum Tue BeLKNap Press oF HARVARD UNIVERSITY Press Cambridge, Massachusets,and London, EnglandCopyright © 2011 by Martha C, Nussbaum Printed inthe United Seates of America ‘Libnary of Congres Cataloging in Publication Data ‘Nussbaurm, Martha Craven, 1947~ Creating capabltes:the human Alevelopment approach /Martha C, Nussbaum, pom. Includes bibliographical references (p, __) and index, ISBN 978-0-574-05054-9 (alk. paper) [Social justice. 2. Economic development. 3.Women's rights. 1. Title. HMG7LNSS8. 2001 303s'7i—~dex ——aeroo44sg To all the members of the Human Development and Capability AssociationPY aney ConTENTS Preface ‘A Woman Seeking Justice ‘The Central Capabilities Necessary CounterTheory Fundamental Entitlements Cultural Diversity ‘The Narion and Global Justice . Philosophical Influences . Capabilities and Contemporary Issues Conclusion Postscript Appendix A: Heckman on Capabilities Appendix B: Sen on Well-Being and Agency Chapter Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index 46 sor 13 23 143 185 188 193 197 203 au 231 233,PREFACE For a long time, economists, policy-makers, and bureaucrats who work on the problems of the world’s poorer nations told people a story that distorted human experience. Their dominant models as- serted that the quality of life in a nation was improving when, and only when, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was increas- ing. This crude measure gave high marks to countries that con- tained alarming inequalities, countries in which a large proportion of people were not enjoying the fruits of a nation’s overall economic improvement. Because countries respond to public rankings that affect their international reputation, the crude approach encour- aged them to work for economic growth alone, without attending to the living standard of their poorer inhabitants, and without ad- dressing issues such as health and education, which typically do not improve with economic growth, ‘This model persists. Although it is most firmly entrenched in standard analyses of the achievements of “developing countries”— asin the practice of development economics and in agencies associ- ated with development, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMP) and the World Bank—it is also widely used to think about richer nations and what it means for them to “develop” or to im-prove their quality of life. (All countries are “developing countries,” although thae phrase is sometimes used to refer to poorer countries: every nation has a lot of room for improvement in delivering an ad- ‘equate quality of life to all its people.) Since these nations also con- tain large inequalities, che approach generates similar distortions in them. Today there is a new theoretical paradigm in che development and policy world. Known as the “Human Development” approach, and also as the “Capability Approach” or “Capabilities Approach,” it begins with a very simple question: What are people actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? This question, though simple, is also complex, since the quality of a hu- man life involves multiple elements whose relationship to one an- ‘other needs close study. Indeed, one of the appealing features of the new approach is its complexity: it appears well equipped to respond to the complexities of human life and human striving. Afeer all, che question it poses is one that people ask themselves often in their daily lives, This new paradigm has had increasing impact on international agencies discussing welfare, from the World Bank to the United Na- tions Development Programme (UNDP). Through the influence of the Human Development Reports published each year since 1990 by the United Nations Human Development Report Office, it also now affects most contemporary nations, which have been inspired to produce theie own capability-based studies of the well-being of dif- ferent regions and groups in theit own societies. Few nations today do not regularly produce such a report. (Even the United Seates joined the group in 2008.) There are also regional reports, such as the Arab Human Development Report. In addition, the Human Devel- opment and Capability Association (HDCA), with membership of PREFACE approximately 700 drawn from 80 countries, promotes high-quality reseatch across a broad range of topics where the human develop- ment and capability approaches have made and can make signifi- cant contributions. Most recently, the paradigm has had a major influence on the Sarkozy Commission Report on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. ‘The increasingly influential Capabilities Approach has been ex- pounded primarily in dense articles and books for specialists. Re- peatedly, general readers and instructors in undergraduate courses have lamented the lack of a more accessible book on the topic. This book aims to fil chat gap, making the key elements of the approach clear and helping people assess ic against its rivals. Above all, it at~ tempts to situate che approach in che narrative context of human lives, showing how it makes a difference to what policy-makers no- tice in chese lives and, hence, to the ability of policy to construct meaningful interventions that show respect for and empower real people, rather than simply reflecting the biases of intellectual elites. Improving people’s quality of life requires wise policy choices and dedicated action on the part of many individuals. It may seem un- necessaty, then, to write a theoretical book on the topic, however immersed in narrative detail. Theories, however, are a large part of our world, framing the way issues are seen, shaping perceptions of salience, and thus slanting debate toward certain policies rather than others, Wise activists have all too little influence in the corri- dors of power. Because the dominant theories that have historically guided policy choice in this area are deeply mistaken, as I shall ar- gue, they have steered development policy toward choices that are ‘wrong from the point of view of widely shared human values (such as respect for equality and respect for dignity). We need a counter theory to challenge these entrenched but misguided theories, if wePREFAce wane to move policy choice in the right direction. Such a counter theory should articulate the world of development in new ways, showing us a different picture of what our priorities should be. The Capabilities Approach is the counter-theory we need, in an era of urgent human problems and unjustifiable human inequalities. CREATING CapasiLITIESrT A WoMAN SEEKING JUSTICE A\tlover the world people are struggling for lives thae are worthy of theit human dignity, Leaders of countries often fo- cus on national economic growth alone, but their people, mean- while, are striving for something different: meaningful lives for themselves, Increased GDP has not always made a difference to the quality of people's lives, and reports of national prosperity are not likely to console those whose existence is matked by inequality and deprivation, Such people need theoretical approaches that can aid their struggles, or atleast provoke public debate by drawing atten- tion to them; chey do not need approaches that keep these struggles hidden or muffle discussion and criticism, As the late Mahbub ul Hag, the Pakistani economist who inaugurated the Human Devel- opment Reports of the United Nations Development Programme, wrote in the first of chose reports, in 1990: “The real wealth of a na- tion is ies people. And che purpose of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy, and creative lives. This simple bue powerful eruth is too often forgotten in the pursuit of material and financial wealth.” According to Hag, devel- opment economics needs a new theoretical approach if itis to re- spond to people's most urgent problems.Consider Vasanti, a small woman in her early thirties who lives in Ahmedabad, a large city in the state of Gujarat, in northwestern India. Vasanti’s husband was a gambler and an alcoholic. He used the household money to get drunk, When that money was gone, he {got a vasectomy to take advantage of the cash incentive that Guja- rat’s government offered to encourage sterilization. So Vasanti had no children to help her, a huge liability, given the fact that a child- Jess woman is more vulnerable to domestic violence. Eventually, as her husband became more abusive, she left him and returned to her own family. Poor parents (or siblings, if the parents have died) are often un- willing to take back a child who has been married, especially a fe- male child who took a dowry wich her. Accepting the child back into the home means another mouth to feed and a new set of anxieties. In Vasanti’s case, a divorce would prove costly because her husband was unwilling to grant one, It was her good fortune, then, that her family was willing to help her. Many women in her position end up oon the street, with no alternative but sex work. Vasanti’s father, who used to make Singer sewing machine parts, had died, buc her broth- ers were running an auto parts business in what was once his shop. Using one of his old machines, and living in the shop itself, Va- santi earned a small income making eyeholes for the hooks on sati tops. Meanwhile, her brothers gave her a loan to get another ma- chine, one that rolls the edges of the sari. She took the money, but she didn’c like being dependent on her siblings—chey were married and had children, and their support could end at any time. Vasanti then discovered the Self-Employed Women’s Organi- zation (SEWA), a pathbreaking nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Ahmedabad that works with poor women. Founded by A WOMAN SEEKING JUSTICE the internationally acclaimed activist Ela Bhatt, SEWA had by that time helped more than 50,000 members, with programs including ‘microcredit, education, health care, and a labor union. Unlike some other Indian states, Gujarat has followed a growth-oriented agenda without devoting many resources to the needs oF its poorest inhabi- tants. Government programs that might have helped Vasanti—legal aid, health care, credit, education—were not to be found. It was her ‘good luck that one of the best NGOs in India happened to be in her own backyard. With the help of SEWA, Vasanti got a bank loan of her own and paid back her brothers. (SEWA, which began as a humble credit union, now operates a bank in an impressive office building in downtown Ahmedabad. All the officers and employees of the bank are women, many of them former beneficiaries of SEWA's pro- grams, By the time I met her, several years later, she had paid back almost all the SEWA loan itself. She was also eligible to enroll in SEWA’s educational programs, where she was planning to learn to read and write and to acquire the skills necessary to promote greater social and economic independence and political participation. With the help of her friend Kokila, she was actively involved in combating domestic violence in her community. This friendship would have been very unlikely but for SEWA; Vasanti, though poor, is from the high Brahmin caste, and Kokila is from one of the lower castes. Though still all too evident in society in general, divisions along lines of caste and religion are anathema in the Indian women’s ‘movement, What theoretical approach could direct attention to the most sig- nificant features of Vasant’s situation, promote an adequate analy- sis of it, and make pertinent recommendations for action? SupposeCREATING CAPABILITIES for a moment that we were interested not in economic or political theory bur justin people: what would we notice and consider salient about Vasanti’s story? First we would probably notice how small Vasanti is, and we could initially cake this as evidence of poor nutrition in childhood. Poor families are often forced to feed all their children poorly, but we would want to ask about how her brothers fared. Evidence abounds that girls are less well nourished than boys and less often taken 0 the doctor in childhood when ill. Why? Because girls have fewer em- ploymene opportunities than boys and thus seem less important to the well-being of the entire family. The work they do in the home does nor bring in money, so it is easy to overlook its economic im- portance. Moreover, in northern and western India girls move away from the family when they marry, taking a dowry with them. They are thus more expensive than boys, and parents often wonder why they should spend their resources on girls who won't be around 60 support them in their old age. The mortality of second daughters in northern and western India is notoriously high. So Vasanti’s nucri- nal deficiency is a result not just of poverty but also of gender discrimination, Unequal laws of property and inheritance contribute to the pre- dicament of India’s daughters, and anyone thinking about Vasanti's life must consider the role they have played in her situation. The religion-based systems of personal law that have existed in India since Independence govern property and inheritance as well as fam- ily law. All the systems insticutionalize large inequalities for women. Until 1986, for example, Christian women inherited only one-fourth of what sons inherited, a custom that surely contributes to defining the worth of a daughter's life as less than that of a son's. Hindu women, too, have suffered inequalities under the Hindu property A WOMAN SEEKING JUSTICE code; they attained equal shares in agricultural land only in 2005, seven years after I met Vasanti, Hers is nota land-owning family, but an analysis of her predicament would naturally lead us to notice that closely related inequity. Thinking about such issues, we would be led to a study of the striking gender imbalance in India’s population Demographers es- timate chat where similar nucricion and health care are present, women live, on average, slightly longer than men—so we would ex- pect a ratio of something like 102 women to 100 men. Instead, the ‘mose recent Indian census shows 92 women to 100 men. These num- bers are averages. In the south, where property is transmitted through the maternal line, and where the husband moves into his bride's home rather than taking his bride away, women’s basic life expectancy corresponds to the demographers’ prediction: che stare of Kerala has a sex ratio of 102 women to 100 men. In some northern states, by contrast, the ratio is alarmingly out of kilter: 2 house-to- house survey in one area of rural Bihar came up with the astound- ing figure of 75 women to 100 men. It’s well known that these im- balances are augmented wherever information about the sex of the fecus is available. Amniocentesis clinics are ubiquitous through- out the nation, Because sex-selective abortion is such a widespread problem in India, itis illegal to seek information about the sex of the fecus, buc these laws are rarely enforced. Vasanti, then, has had a bie of good luck in being alive at all. Her family didn’t nourish her very well, but they did better than many poor families. When I met her she seemed to be in reasonable health, and she is fortunate to have a strong constitution, since health care is not easily accessible to the poor in Gujarat. The Indian Consti- tution makes health a state rather than a federal issue, so there is teat variation in the resources available co the poor state by state.Some Indian states, for example, Kerala, have effective health care systems, but most do not. Next, we are likely to notice the fact that a woman as intelligent and determined as Vasanti has had few employment options be- cause she never learned to read and write, We can put this down to a failure in the Gujarati education system, since education, like health, is a state matter, and literacy rates vary greatly from state to state, In Kerala, adolescent literacy for both boys and girls is close to 100 percent, whereas nationally 75.3 percent of men are literave com- pared with only 537 percent of women. The factors that produce this discrepancy are related to those that produce the sex gap in ba- sic life expectancy and health: women are thought to have fewer op- tions in employment and politics, so from the family’s perspective, it makes more sense to assign domestic labor to girls while sending boys to school. The prophecy is self-fulfilling, since illiteracy de- bars women from most employment and many political opportuni- ties. Moreover, the fact that 2 git! will soon leave her birth family and join another family through marriage gives her parents a lesser stake in her future. Kerala has addressed these problems better than Gujarat, though Kerala has a poor record of creating employment ‘opportunities for people once they are educated. Because education is such a crucial avenue of opportunity, the Indian Constitution was amended in 2002 to give both primary and secondary education the status of an enforceable fundamental right. Recognizing that poor parents often keep children out of school because they need theit labor to survive, the Supreme Court of India has ordered all schools to offer children a nutritious mid- day meal that contains at least 350 calories and 18 grams of pro- tein, thus giving poor parents an economic incentive that often out- ‘weighs the lost wages from their child's labor during school hours. A WOMAN SBEKING JusTICE Vasanti missed this change, which might have made her both liter- ate and physically bigger. Meanwhile, at the national level, the Constitution was amended in 1992 to assign women one-third of the seats in local panchayats, or village councils. This system, like the midday meal, provides incen- tives for patents to educate daughters as well as sons, since one day they may well represent the interests of the family in local govern- ‘ment. Again, this change came too late for Vasanti, in the sense that it didn'c influence her parents’ educational choices for the family. Now, however, Vasanti may utilize the adult education programs offered by SEWA to enhance het participation in both polities and employment. Because Vasanti has had no formal education, she is cut off from a fall understanding of her nation’s history and its political and economic structure. (She can get news ftom TV and from her friends, but she is still limited in her ability to access a more com- prehensive account oF to pursue issues that interest her) She is also tunable to enjoy poetry, novels, or the many works of the imagina- tion that would make her life richer and more fun. She is not, how- ever, cut off from music and dance, and SEWA makes valuable use of these media in educating women like Vasant. A key issue in Vasanti’s story is domestic violence. That complex story, in curn, involves social and governmental choices in many areas, Her husband’s alcoholism clearly fueled his violence. Several Indian states have adopted prohibition laws for this very reason. This hasn’t proved to be a very effective remedy: more helpful would have been educational progtams about alcohol and drugs and high- quality treatment and therapy, none of which were provided by state government to Gujarat’s poor population. By contrast, it was state action rather than inaction that explains her husband’s vasectomy:bribing poor people to have vasectomies is not a great means of population control for many reasons, not the least of which is that it robs women of choice. As for the violence itself, Vasanti received no help from the police, a consequence of weak law enforcement and bad police training. So her bodily integrity and health were constantly at risk, and her dignity was violated. When we think about domestic violence we have to chink about exit options and bargaining power in the marriage. When a woman can leave, she doesn’t have to endure being beaten. And when the husband knows she can leave because she has employment oppor tunities or control over property, she is at least somewhat less likely to be beaten. Important research by Bina Agarwal shows that land- ownership is the single most important factor explaining why some women in a region suffer domestic abuse and others don't. A woman who owns land is less likely to be victimized because she can leave the marriage, and when she leaves she will be taking some- thing of great value with her. Other sources of leverage against an abusive husband are employment, education, movable property, and savings. A compassionate birth family also offers exit options. Vasanti’s family was unusual in that they gave her the option to leave her husband with dignity, and even to take up employment. Nonetheless, the difficulty of getting a divorce—the legal system is slow and notoriously corrupt—made ic hard for her to stand Fully on her own. ‘The SEWA loan changed that picture. The organization gave Va- santi a source of support not tied to her status as a dependent; the money was hers to use even if she displeased her brothers. This in- dependence enhanced her self-respect and capacity for choice. ‘The toll that domestic violence takes on physical health is enor mous, but its effect on emotional health is equally devastating. A WOMAN SEEKING JUSTICE Women in Vasanti’s position usually suffer greatly from both fear and the inhibition of anger. They often lack any true pleasure in love and sexual expression. The conditions that made it possible for ‘Vasanti to leave her husband also improved her emotional health, as did her good relationship with her brothers. The SEWA loan opened still more doors to happiness: Vasanti clearly enjoys her friendship with Kokila and the experience of being respected and treated as an equal within a group of women. During her marriage, Vasanti was cut off from all relationships except the highly unequal one with her abusive husband. She did not have friends, she was unable to work, she did not participate in politics. This is the lor of many women in abusive relationships, but itis particularly common for women whose caste status makes it shamefial for them to seek employment outside the home. Upper caste women like Vasanti are often worse off chan lowercaste women, who can citculate Freely. Vasanti was even prevented from having children, which would have provided her with a source of love. SEWA made it possible for her to become active in politics and to form a whole group of friends who respect her as an equal. The fact that she came to the SEWA office to tell her story to a stranger was itself a sign of new openness and curiosity. She seemed ex- cited and proud to talk about her life. Nonetheless, the workplace options open to her asa Brahmin woman remain highly circum- sctibed, and her participation in politica life is still limited by her inability to read and write. Vasanti is active in one area of politics, as she and Kokila worl: to diminish domestic violence. We might ask, though, whether she knows her rights as a citizen, whether she is a voter, whether she knows anything about how to use the legal system. The panchayat system has done a great deal to enhance women’s political engage-CREATING CAPABILITIES ‘ment and knowledge, and India’s poor in general have an extremely high level of participation in elections, so she probably has at least some understanding of the political system. In the absence of liter acy and formal schooling, however, her ability to inform herself far ther is limited. Studies of the panchayats have shown that illiterace women have a hard time participating in public affairs and gaining respect. SEWA focuses on a very basic theme that runs through all these issues: the ability of women to control and plan their own lives. SEWA teaches women that they are not merely passive, not objects co be pushed around by others or mere pawns or servants of others: they can make choices, they can plan their futures. This is a heady new idea for women brought up to think of themselves as depen- dents wich no autonomy. In Vasanti’s case, choice and independence were, indeed, the main difference between the SEWA loan and the loan from her brothers. The pleasure in this newfound status as a decision-maker seemed to pervade her relationship with Kokila (a chosen friend, and pethaps her first chosen friend) as well as het dealings with the women’s group. What else might we notice? We don’t know much about Vasanti’s working hours or the structure of her day. Does she have any time for leisure? Can she ever just sit and think, or enjoy something beau- tifuul, or drink tea with her friends? She seems to take pleasure in dressing well. Her sariisa lovely color of bright blue; like most poor women in India, she does not allow poverty to restrict her aesthetic imagination. She can most likely enjoy play and leisure activity to some degree, not because her society has protected leisure time for all citizens, but because she has no children and no responsibilities for in-laws. The fip side of her sad story is that at least she is not stuck with the “double day” of a demanding job plus full respon- A WOMAN SEEKING JustiCE sibility for domestic labor and child and elder care, as are millions of women all over the world. In general, protecting leisure time for workers, especially female workers, is an important issue in creating a decent society, In thinking about play and fan, I wondered if Vasanti was inter- ested in meeting some nice men and perhaps marrying again, once her divorce was final. One of the most striking aspects of the Indian women’s movement has been the virtual absence of Western roman- tic notions. Women who have endured an unhappy marriage rarely express interest in seeking another spouse. They want to be able to live without a man, and they love the fact that one of SEWA’s cen- tral ideals is the Gandhian notion of self-sufficiency. The thought is that, just as India could not win self-respect and freedom with- out achieving self-sufficiency with regard to its colonial master, so ‘women cannot have self-respect and freedom without extricating themselves from dependence on their colonial masters, namely, men, Women view their ability co live without a man as a sign of self-tespect. We might wonder whether such women (who are often homophobic and thus unlikely to be involved in lesbian relation- ships) are deprived of one of life's great pleasures. Do they really choose to live as single women, or are they too emotionally trauma- tized ot exhausted by malnutrition to seek out a partner? When they talk of Western notions of romance and express a preference for solidarity with a group of women, however, we are reminded that one way of life (in this case, as part of a romantic couple, whether opposite ot same-sex) is not necessarily best for women ev- exywhere, Some of us, at least, might want to ask about Vasanti’s relation- ship to the environment around her. Is it polluted? Is it danger- ous? Does she have opportunities think about environmentalCREATING CAPABILITIES issues and to make choices for herself and others in that regard? Many women’s movements are ecologically oriented; SEWA is not. Nor does the state in which Vasant lives do much on such issues. Chances are, then, that Vasanti has no opportunity to be produc- tively involved in environmental thinking, and her health may right now be at risk from environmental degradation (air pollution, poor water, and so on). Often women who lead the most allegedly “natu- ral” lives are those most at risk, since cow dung, used for fuel in many poor countries, is one of the most damaging pollucants when it comes to respiratory health. “These are at least some of the aspects of Vasanti’s situation that a concerned onlooker or reader, knowledgeable about her social con- text, would consider. Most of these issues are recognized as salient by SEWA and those close to Vasanti. Many were important to Va- santi all along. As she learns more about her situation and what produces it, other issues of which she might not have been aware (for example, the role of the panchayat system, or children’s need for an adequate amount of protein) become importanc for her as well. The diverse aspects of Vasanti’s situation interact with one an- other in complex ways, as we can already see, but each one is also a distince issue that must be addressed in its own right if Vasanti is to live the life she deserves. A decent public policy can influence all as- pects of her experience. It makes sense for an approach to “develop- ment,” which means making things better, to focus on how Vasan- ti’s opportunities and freedoms to choose and act are affected by the variety of policies available for consideration, Unfortunately, the dominant theoretical approaches in develop- ‘ment economics, approaches used all over the world, are not allies of Vasanti’s struggle. They do not “read” her situation the way a lo- cal activist or a concerned observer might. Nor, indeed, do they read A WOMAN SEEKING JUSTICE it in away that would make sense to Vasanti, or even in a way that respects her as a dignified human being with entidlements equal to those of others. They equate doing well (for a state or a nation) with an increase in GDP per capita. In other words, Gujarat is pur suing the right policies if and only if its economy is growing, and it should be compared with other Indian states simply by looking at GDP per capita. What does that figure, however glorious, mean to Vasanti? It doesn’t reach her life, and it doesn’t solve her problems. Somewhere in Gujarat is increased wealth deriving from foreign investment, but she doesn’t have it. To her, hearing that GDP per capita has in- creased nicely is like being told chat somewhere in Gujarat there is a ‘beautiful painting, only she can't look at it, or a table set with deli- cious food, only she can’t have any. Increased wealth is a good thing in chat it might have allowed the government to adopt policies thar would have made a difference to Vasanti. That, however, has not happened, and we should not be surprised. In general, che benefits of increased wealth resulting from foreign investment go in the first instance to elites, and this is not simply because GDP is an average figure, neglecting distribution: as the Sarkozy Commission report shows, profits from foreign investment frequently do not even raise average household income. The benefits of this incteased wealth do not reach the poor, unless those local elites are committed to poli- cies of redistribution of wealth; and they particularly do not reach poor women, whose employment opportunities are so much worse than those of men. Nor, as research shows, does economic growth by itself deliver improvements in health and education, in the ab- sence of direct state action. So the things that matter to Vasanti don't figure in the standard approach, whose single focus makes no difference to her life. B‘The standard approach, then, does not direct our attention to the reasons for Vasanti’s inability to enjoy the fruits of her region's general prosperity. Indeed, it positively distracts attention from her problems by suggesting that the tight way to improve the quality of life in Gujarac is to shoot for economic growth, and that alone. In Hard Times, Chatles Dickens portrayed a classroom in which children were taught the standard approach. Circus gitl Sissy Jupe— who has only recently joined the class—is told ro imagine that the lasstoom is a nation, and in that nation there are “fifty millions of money.” Now, says the teacher, “Girl number twenty” (in keeping with the emphasis on aggregation, students have numbers rather than names), “isn’t this a prosperous nation, and a’n’t you in a thriving state?” Sissy bursts into tears and runs out of the room. She tells her friend Louisa that she could not answer the question, “unless T knew who had got the money and whether any of it was mine, Buc that had nothing to do wich it. Te was not in the figures atall” ‘What we seem to need is an approach that asks Sissy Jupe’s ques- tion, an approach that defines achievement in terms of the oppor tunities open to each person. Such an approach had better begin close to the ground, looking at life stories and the human mean- ing of policy changes for real people. Developing policies that are truly pertinent co a wide range of human situations means attend- ing to diverse factors that affect the quality of a human life—asking, in each area, “What are people (and what is each person) actually able to do and to be?” OF course any approach to development must employ devices of aggregation, but if aggregation is to deliver perti- nent information, we must begin by asking carefully which icems ought to be given prominence. The elements of Vasanti’s story have a very close relationship to 4 A WOMAN SEEKING JUSTICE the list of Central Capabilities chat will be presented shortly. So it may seem that the way I cell Vasand’s story is circular, and that I single our those features only because I already know what's on the list. However, we can’t look ata life or listen to a story without hav- ing some preliminary hunches about what is significant. That's the paradox of inquiry mentioned in Plato’s Meno: if you don’t have any idea what you're looking for, you won't ever find it. The paradox, however, need not prove disabling. What is important is that the seatch be not rigid but open to new learning, I have tried to learn a lot before framing the list, and stories like Vasaneis were key aspects of that learning experience (though not part of my justification of the list, as will be seen later). Nor is the list final: if ic eurns out to lack something that experience shows to be a crucial element of a life worthy of human dignity, ie can always be contested and remade. Working with many activists over the years, and noticing what their ‘experienced eyes notice as significant in the lives of women in their own societies, Thave tried to educate my judgment accordingly, and continue © do so. More recently, empirical work by Jonathan Wolff and Avner De- Shalit has confirmed that the capabilities on my list are the ones recognized as most salient in the immigrant communities in which they work (in Israel and Great Britain), Storytelling is never neutral; the narrator always directs attention to some features of the world rather than to others. We should, however, insist on genuiine curios- ity and cheoretical flexibility in the construction of an alternative approach, The Capabilities Approach set ont to be an alternative to the GDP approach that would incorporate these important virtues. ‘The Capabilities Approach has typically been elaborated in the context of international development policy, with a focus on poorer nations that are struggling to improve their quality of life. More re- 15cently, richer nations have compiled cheir own Human Develop- ment Reports, and their data have always been important in the Reports of the UN Haman Development Reports Office, Still, the approach is sometimes thought of as suited only to poorer coun tries. All nations, however, contain struggles for lives worthy of hu- ‘man dignity, and all contain struggles for equality and justice. Var santi’s story has some features that would be found less often in the United States because it has a higher rate of literacy than does In- dia, Inner-city schools in this country, however, often fail to deliver even functional literacy to their students, and at higher levels of ed- ‘ucation alarming inequalities in access remain. The experience of domestic violence is probably as common in the United States as ic is in India, studies show, and strategies to combat i are still insuf- ficient, despite increased public awareness of the problem and ef forts by legal activists. Inequalities in health care and nucrition are ubiquicous in the TInited States, and this failure is unconscionable, given our nation's great wealth, All nations, chen, are developing nations, in that they contain problems of human development and struggles for a fully adequate quality of life and for minimal justice. All ate currently failing at the aim of ensuring dignity and opportu nity for each person. For all, then, the Capabilities Approach sup- plies insight. 6 2 Tue CENTRAL CAPABILITIES ‘Thhe approach we ane investigating is sometimes called the Human Development Approach and sometimes the Capabil- ity or Capabilities Approach. Occasionally the terms are combined, as in Journal of Human Development and Capabilies, che current name of the former Journal of Human Development-a title reflecting its new status as the official journal of the HDCA. To some extent these titles are used as mere verbal variants, and many people make no distinction among them, Insofar as there are any significant ditfer- ences, “Human Development Approach” is associated, historically, with the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme and its annual Haman Development Re= ports. These reports use the notion of capabilities as a comparative measure rather than as a basis for normative political theory. Amartya Sen had a major intellectual role in framing them, but they do nor incorporate all aspects of his (pragmatic and result-oriented) theory; they simply aim to package comparative information in such a way as co reorient the development and policy debate, rather than to advance a systematic economic or political theory. “Capability Approach” and “Capabilities Approach” are the key terms in the poliical/economie program Sen proposes in works "7such as Inequality Reexamined and Development as Freedom, where the project is to commend the capability framework as the best space within which to make comparisons of life quality, and to show why it is superior to utilitarian and quasi-Rawisian approaches. 1 typi- cally use che plural, “Capabilities,” in order co emphasize that che most important elements of people's quality of life are plural and qualitatively distinct: health, bodily integrity, education, and other aspects oF individual lives cannot be reduced to a single metric with- out distortion, Sen, too, emphasizes this idea of plurality and nonre- ducibility, which isa key element of the approach. | prefer the term “Capabilities Approach,” at least in many con- texts, to che term “Human Development Approach,” because I am concerned with the capabilities of nonhuman animals as well as hu- ‘man beings. The approach provides a fine basis for a theory of jus- tice and entitlement for both nonhuman animals and humans, Sen shares this interest, although he has not made it a central focus of his work. ‘The Capabilities Approach can be provisionally defined as an ap- proach to comparative quality-of-life assessment and to theorizing about basic social justice. It holds that the key question to ask, when comparing societies and assessing them for their basic decency or justice, is, [What is each person able to do and to be?) In other words, the approach takes each person as an end, asking not just about the total or average well-being bue about the opportunities available to each person{icis focused on choice or freedom, holding that the cru- cial good societies should be promoting for cheir people is a set of opportunities, or substantial freedoms, which people then may or ‘may not exercise in action: the choice is cheirs. Ie thus commits it- self to respect for people’s powers of self-definitioss} The approach is resolutely pluralist about value: it holds that the capability achieve- 18 ments that are central for people are different in quality, not just in quantity; chat they cannot without distortion be reduced to a single numerical scale; and that a fundamental part of understanding and producing them is understanding the specific nature of each{ Fi- nally, the approach is concerned with entrenched social injustice and in- ‘equality, especially capability failures that are the result of discrimi- nation or marginalization. Ie ascribes an urgent task fo government and public policy—namely, to improve the quality of life forall people, as defined by theit capabilities ‘These are the essential elements of the approach. It has (at least) two versions, in part because it has been used for two different pur poses. My own version, which puts the approach to work in con- structing a theory of basic social justice, adds other notions in the process (chose of human dignity, the threshold, political liberalism), As a theory of fundamental political entitlements, my version of the approach also employs a specific list of the Central Capabilities, Com- pared with many familiar theories of welfare, my approach also sub- tracts: my capability-based theory of justice refrains from offering a comprehensive assessment of the quality of life in a society, even for comparative purposes, because the role of politcal liberalism in my theory requires me to prescind from offering any comprehen- sive account of value. Sen’s primary concern has been to identify capability as the most pertinent space of comparison for purposes of quality-of-life assessment, thus changing the direction of the de- velopment debate. His version of the approach does not propose a definite account of basic justice, although ic is a normative theory and does have a clear concern with issues of justice (focusing, for example, on instances of capability failure that result from gender or racial discrimination). In consequence, Sen does not employ a threshold or a specific lise of capabilities, although itis clear that he 9thinks some capabilities (for example, health and education) have a particular centrality. Nor does he make central theoretical use of the concept of human dignity, hough he certainly acknowledges its importance, At the same time, Sen does propose that the idea of ca- pabilities can be the basis for a comprehensive quality-of life assess- ‘ment in a nation, in chat sense departing from the deliberately lim- ited aims of my political liberalism. ‘These differences will occupy us further in Chapter 4. At this point, however, we may continue to treat the approach as a single, relatively unified approach to a set of questions about both quality of life and basic justice. The story of Vasanti and what is saliene in her situation could have been told by either Sen or me, and the same essential features would have been recognized—although Sen would not formalize them as a list or make assessments of minimal social justice, choosing instead to focus on quality-oF life issues, Enough has been said, I hope, to draw attention to the shared contours of the approach and its guiding concepts, as well as to some specific concepts of my own version that will also be defined in this chapter, even though they do not figure centrally in Sen’s theory. What are capabilities? They are the answers to the question, “What is this person able to do and to be?” In other words, they are what Sen calls “substantial freedoms,” a set of (usually interrelated) op- portunities to choose and to act. In one standard formulation by Sen, “a person’s ‘capability’ refers to the alternative combinations of functionings that ate feasible for her to achieve. Capability is thus a kind of freedom: the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations.” In other words, they are not just abili-) ties residing inside a person but also the freedoms or opportuni- ties created by a combination of personal abilities and the politi- cal, social, and economic environment, To make che complexity of THE CENTRAL CAPAB capabilities clear, I refer to these “substantial freedoms” as combined capabilites. Vasanti’s combined capabilities are the totality of the op- portunities she has for choice and action in her specific political, social, and economic situation. Of course the characteristics of a person (personality traits, intel- lectual and emotional capacities, states of bodily fitness and health, internalized learning, skills of perception and movement) ate highly relevant to his or her “combined capabilities,” but it is useful to dis- tinguish them from combined capabilities, of which they are but a part. I call these states of the person (not fixed, but fluid and dy- namic) internal capabilities. They are to be distinguished from innate equipment: they are trained or developed traits and abilities, devel- ‘oped, in mosscases, in interaction with the social, economic, famil- ial, and political environment. They include such traits as Vasanti’s learned political skill, ot her skill in sewing; her newfound self- confidence and her freedom from her eatlier fear. One job of a soci- ety chat wants to promote the most important human capabilities is to support the development of internal capabilities—through ed- tucation, resources to enhance physical and emotional health, sup- port for family care and love, a system of education, and much more. ‘Why is it important co distinguish internal capabilities from com- bined capabilities? The distinction corresponds to two overlapping but distinct tasks of the decent society. A society might do quite well at producing internal capabilities bue might cut off the avenues through which people actually have the opportunity to function in accordance with those capabilities. Many societies educate people so that they are capable of free speech on political matters—inter- nally—but then deny them free expression in practice through re- pression of speech. Many people who are internally free to exercise areligion do not have the opportunity to do so in the sense of com- bined capability, because religious free exercise is not protected by the government. Many people who are internally capable of partici- pating in politics are not able to choose to do so in the sense of combined capability: they may be immigrants without legal rights, or they may be excluded from participation in some other manner. Ivis also possible for a person to live in a political and social envi- ronment in which she could realize an internal capability (for ex- ample, criticizing the government) but lack the developed ability to think critically or speak publicly. ties are defined as internal capabilities plus the social/political/economic conditions in which functioning can actually be chosen, itis not possible conceptually to think of a society producing combined capabilities without producing inter- nal capabilities) We could, however, imagine a society that does well in creating contexts for choice in many areas but does not educate its citizens or nourish the development of their powers of mind. ‘Some states in India ate like this: open to those who want to partic- pate but terrible at delivering che basic health care and education that would enable them to do so, Here, terminologically, we would say that neither internal nor combined capabilities were present, bbut that the society had done at least some things right. (And of course in such a society many people do have combined capabilities, just not the poor or the marginalized.) Vasanti’s Gujarat has a high rate of political participation, like all Indian states: so it has done well in extending political capabilities to all. (Notice that here we infer the presence of the capability from the actual functioning: it seems hard to do otherwise empirically, bur conceptually we ought to remember that a person might be fully capable of voting and yet 2 THE CENTRAL CAPABILITIES choose not to vote) Gujarat has not done similarly well in promot- ing relaced internal capabilities, such as education, adequate infor mation, and confidence, for the poor, women, and religious mi- norities. ‘The distinction between internal and combined capabilities is not shatp, since one typically acquires an internal capability by some kkind of functioning, and one may lose it in the absence of the op- portunity to function. But the distinction is a useful heuristic in diagnosing the achievements and shortcomings of a society. Internal capabilities are not innate equipment. The idea of innate equipment does, however, play a role in the Human Development ‘Approach. After all, the term “human development” suggests the unfolding of powers that human beings bring into the world. His- torically, the approach is influenced by philosophical views that fo- cus on human flourishing or self-realization, from Aristotle to John ‘Stuart Mill in the West and Rabindranath Tagote in India, And the approach in many ways uses the intuitive idea of waste and starva- tion to indicate what is wrong with a society that thwarts the devel- opment of capabilities. Adam Smith wrote that deprivation of edu- cation made people “mutilated and deformed in a[n] . .. essential part of the character of human nature.” This captures an important intuitive idea behind the capabilities project. We therefore need a way to talk about these innate powers that are either nurcured or not nurtured, and for that we may use the term basic capabilites. We now know that the development of basic capabilities is not hard- wired in the DNA: maternal nutrition and prenatal experience play a role in their unfolding and shaping. In that sense, even after a child is born we are always dealing with very eatly internal capabili- ties, already environmentally conditioned, not with a pure poten- 3CREATING CAPABILITIES tial, Nonetheless, the category is a useful one, so long as we do not misunderstand it. Basic capabilities are che innace faculties of the person that make later development and training possible. ‘The concept of basic capabilities must be used with much cau- tion, since we can easily imagine a theory that would hold chat people's political and social entitlements should be proportional to their innate intelligence or skill. This approach makes no such claim, Indeed, it insists that the political goal for all human beings in a nation ought to be the same: all should ger above a certain threshold level of combined capability, in che sense not of coerced functioning but of substantial freedom to choose and act, ‘That is what it means to treat all people with equal respect. So the attitude toward people’s basic capabilities is not a meritocratic one~more innately skilled people get better treatment—bue, if anything, the opposite: those who need more help to get above the threshold get more help. In the case of people with cognitive disabilities, the goal should be for them to have the same capabilities as “normal” peo- ple, even though some of those opportunities may have to be exer- cised through a surrogate, and the surrogate may in some cases supply part of the internal capability if the person is unable to de- velop sufficient choice capability on her own, for example, by voting on that person’s behalf even if the person is unable to make a choice. ‘The one limitation is that the person has to be a child of human parents and capable of at least some sort of active striving: thus a person in a permanent vegetative condition or an anencephalic per- son would not be qualified for equal political entitlements under this theory. But the notion of basic capability is still appropriate in thinking about education: if a child has innate cognitive disabili- ties, special interventions are justified. On the other side of capability is functioning. A functioning is an 24 THE CENTRAL CAPABILITIES active realization of one or more capabilities. Functionings need not be especially active or, co use the term of one ctitic, “muscular” En- joying good health is a functioning, as is lying peacefully in the grass. Functionings are beings and doings that are the ourgrowths or realizations of capabilities. In contrasting capabilities with functionings, we should bear in mind that capability means opportunity to select. The notion of {freedoms to choose is thus built into che notion of capability. To use an example of Sen’s, a person who is starving and a person who is fast- ing have the same type of functioning where nutrition is concerned, but they do not have the same capability, because the person who fasts is able not to fast, and the starving person has no choice. Ina sense, capabilities are important because of the way in which they may lead to fanctionings. If people never functioned at all, in any way, it would seem odd to say that the society was a good ‘one because it had given them lots of capabilities. The capabilities ‘would be pointless and idle if they were never used and people slept all through life. In chat limited way, the notion of functioning gives ies have value in the notion of capability its end-point. But capabi and of themselves, as spheres of freedom and choice. To promove capabilities is to promote areas of freedom, and this is not the same as making people function in a certain way. Thus the Capabilities “Approach departs from a tradition in economics that measures the teal value of a set of options by the best use that can be made of them, Options are freedoms, and freedom has intrinsic value. Some political views deny this: they hold that the right ching for government to do is to make people lead healthy lives, do worth- while activities, exercise religion, and so on. We deny this: we say that capabilities, not functionings, are the appropriate political goals, because room is thereby left for the exercise of human free- a5CREATING CAPABILITIES dom. There is a huge moral difference between a policy that pro- ‘motes health and one that promotes health capabilities—the latcer, not the former, honors the person’s lifestyle choices. The preference for capabilities is connected to the issue of respect for a plurality of different religious and secular views of life, and thus to the idea of political liberalism (defined in Chapter 4). Children, of course, are different; requiting certain sorts of fuanc- tioning of them (as in compulsory education) is defensible as a nec- essary prelude to adult capability Some people who use the Capabilities Approach think that ina few specific areas government is entitled to promote functionings rather than just capabilities. Richard Arneson, for example, has de- fended paternalistic function-oriented policies in the area of health: government should use its power to make people take up healthy lifestyles. Sen and I do not agree with this position because of the high value we ascribe to,choice, There is one exception: government, Thold, should not give people an option to be treated with respect and nonhumiliation, Suppose, for example, that the U.S. govern- ‘ment gave every citizen a penny that they could then choose to pay back to “purchase” respectful treatment. But if the person chose to keep the penny, the government would humiliate them, This is unacceptable. Government must treat all people respectfully and should refuse to humiliate them, I make this exception because of the centrality of notions of dignity and respect in generating the entire capabilities list. Similarly, vircually all users of the approach would agree that slavery should be prohibited, even if favored by a majority, and even if by voluntary contract. Another area of reasonable disagreement involves the right to do things that would appeat to destroy some or all capabilities. Should people be permitted to sell their organs? To use hard drugs? To en- 26 THE CENTRAL CAPABILITIES ‘gage in a wide range of risky sports? Typically we make compromises in such areas, and these compromises do not always make sense: thus alcohol, an extremely destructive drug, remains legal while ‘marijuana is for the most part illegal. We regulate most sports for safety, but we do not have an organized public debate about which areas of freedom it makes sense to remove for safety’s sake. We can certainly agree that capability-destruction in children is a particu- larly grave matter and as such should be off-limits. In other cases, reasonable safery regulation seems plausible—unless debate reveals that the removal of an option (boxing without gloves, say) is really an infringement of freedom so grave as «© make people’s lives in- compatible with human dignity. Usually situations are not so grave, and thus in many such cases the approach has litte to say, allowing matters to be settled through the political process. This issue will be further illuminated if we turn to a related and. crucial question: Which capabilities are the most important? The approach makes this valuational question central rather than con- cealing it. This is one of its attractive features. Other approaches al- ways take some sort of stand on questions of value, but often with- out explicitness or argument. Sen and Thold that it is crucial co face this question head on, and co address it with pertinent normative arguments. Sen takes a stand on the valuational issue by emphasis, choice of examples, and implication, but he does not attempt anything like @ systematic answer, an issue to which we will return in Chapter 4. It is reasonable for him not to attempt a systematic answer, insofar as he is using the idea of capabilities merely co frame comparisons. In- sofar as he ig using it to construct a theory of democracy and of justice, itis less clear that his avoidance of commitments on sub: stance is wise. Any use of the idea of capabilities for the purposes of aCREATING CAPABILITIES normative law and public policy must ultimately take a stand on substance, saying that some capabilities are important and others less important, some good, and some (even) bad. Returning to the idea of basic capabilities will help us grasp this point. Human beings come into the world with the equipment for many “doings and beings” (to use a common phrase of Sen’s), and we have to ask ourselves which ones are worth developing into ‘mature capabilities. Adam Smith, thinking of children deprived of education, said that their human powers were “mutilated and de- formed.” Imagine, instead, a child whose capacity for crueley and the humiliation of others is starved and thwarted by familial and social development. We would not describe such a child as “muti- lated and deformed,” even if we granted that these capacities have their basis in innate human nature. Again, suppose we were told chat a particular child was never taught to be capable of whistling Yankee Doodle Dandy while standing on her head. We would not say that this child’s human powers had been “mutilated and deformed” because, even though the capability in question is nor—unlike the capacity for cruelty—bad, and even though it is probably grounded in human nature, it is just not very important, ‘The Capabilities Approach is not a theory of what human nature is, and it does not read norms off from innate human nature. In- stead, it is evaluative and ethical from the start: it asks, among the ‘many things that human beings might develop the capacity to do, which ones are the really valuable ones, which are the ones that a minimally just society will endeavor to nurture and support? An ac- count of human nacure tells us what resources and possibilities we have and what our difficulties may be. Ie does not tell us what to value. Nonhuman animals are less malleable than human animals, and they may not be able to learn to inhibit a harmful capacity without painful frustration, They are also hard to “read,” since their lives are not ours. Observing their actual capacities and having a good de- sctiptive theory of each species and its form of life will thus rightly play a larger role in creating a normative theory of animal capabili- ties than it does in the human case, Still, the normative exercise is crucial, difficult though it may be. How would we begin selecting the capabilities on which we want to focus? Much depends on our purpose. On the one hand, if our intention is simply comparative, all sorts of capabilities suggest in- teresting comparisons across nations and regions, and there is no reason to prescribe in advance: new problems may suggest new com- parisons. On the other hand, if our aim is to establish political prin- ciples that can provide the grounding for constitutional law and public policy in a nation aspiring to social justice (or to propose goals for the community of nations), selection is of the utmost im- portance, We cannot select, however, using only the notion of capa- bilities, The title “Capabilities Approach” should not be read as sug- gesting that the approach uses only a single concept and tries to squeeze everything out of it. Ac this point I invoke the notion of human dignity and of a life worthy of it—or, when we are considering other animal species, the dignity appropriate to che species in question. Dignity is an intui- tive notion thats by no means utterly clear. Ifit is used in isolation, as if it is completely self-evident, it can be used capriciously and in- consistently. Thus it would be mistaken to use it as if it were an in- tuitively self-evident and solid foundation for a theory that would then be built upon it. My approach does not do this: dignity is one element of the theory, but all of its notions are seen as intercon- nected, deriving illumination and clarity from one another. (This 29idea of a holistic and nonfoundational type of justification will be elaborated in Chapter 4.) In the case of dignity, che notion of respect is a particularly important relative, and che political principles themselves illuminate what we take human dignity (and its absence) to mean. But the basic idea is that some living conditions deliver to people a life that is worthy of the human dignity chat they possess, and others do not. In the latter circumstance, they retain dignity, bur itis like a promissory note whose claims have not been met. As Martin Lucher King, Jr, said of the promises inherent in national ideals: digniy can be like “a check that has come back marked ‘in- sufficient funds” Alchough dignity is a vague idea that needs to be given content by placing itin a network of related notions, ie does make a difference. ‘A focus on dignity is quite different, for example, from a focus on satisfaction. Think about debates concerning education for people with severe cognitive disabilities. It certainly seems possible that sat- isfaction, for many such people, could be produced without eduuca- tional development. The court cases that opened the public schools to such people used, at crucial junctures, the notion of dignity: we do nor treat a child with Down syndrome in a manner commensu- rate with that child’s dignity if we fail to develop the child’s powers of mind through suitable education. In a wide range of areas, more- ‘over, a focus on dignity will dictate policy choices that protect and support agency, rather than choices tharinfantilize people and treat them as passive recipients of benefit The claims of human dignity can be denied in many ways, but ‘we may reduce them all to two, corresponding to the notions of in- ternal capability and combined capability. Social, political, famil- ial, and economic conditions may prevent people from choosing to function in accordance with a developed internal capability: this 30 sort of thwarting is comparable to imprisonment, Bad conditions can, however, cut deeper, stunting the development of internal ca- pabilities or warping cheir development. In both cases, basic human dignity remains: the person is still worthy of equal respect. In the former case, however, dignity has been more deeply violated. Think of the difference between rape and simple robbery. Boch damage person; neither removes the person’s equal human dignity. Rape, however, can be said to violate a woman's dignity because it invades her internal life of thought and emotion, changing her relationship to herself. ‘The notion of dignity is closely relaced to the idea of active striv- ing. Itis thus a close relative of the notion of basic capability, some- thing inherent in the person that exerts a claim that it should be developed. But whereas there is room to argue about whether in- nate potential differs across people, human dignity, from the start, is equal in all who are agents in the first place (again, excluding those in a permanent vegetative state and those who are arenceplh- alic, thus without agency of any kind). All, chat is, deserve equal re- spect from laws and institutions. If people are considered as citi zens, the claims of all citizens are equal. Equality holds a primitive place in the theory at this point, although its role will be confirmed by its fit with che rest of the cheory. From the assumption of equal dignity, it does not follow that all the centrally important capabili- ties are to be equalized. Treating people as equals may not entail equalizing the living conditions of all. The question of what treat- ing people as equals requires must be faced ata later stage, with in- dependent arguments, In general, then, the Capabilities Approach, in my version, focuses on the protection of areas of freedom so central that their removal makes a life not worthy of human dignity. When a freedom is not arthat central, it will be left to the ordinary workings of the political process. Sometimes it is clear that a given capability is central in this way: the world has come to a consensus, for example, on the importance of primary and secondary education. It seems equally leas that the ability to whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy while standing on one’s head is not of central importance and does not deserve a special level of protection, Many cases may be unclear for a long time: for example, it was not understood for many centuries that a ‘woman’s right to refuse her husband intercourse was a crucial right of bodily integrity. What must happen here is that the debate must take place, and each must make arguments attempting to show that a given liberty is implicated in the idea of human dignity. This can- not be done by vague intuitive appeals to the idea of dignity all by itself it must be done by discussing the relationship of the putative entitlement to other existing entitlements, in a long and detailed process—showing, for example, the relationship of bodily integrity inside the home fo women’s full equality as citizens and workers, to their emotional and bodily health, and so forth, But there will be many unclear cases, What about the right to plural marriages? ‘The right to homeschooling? Because the approach does not derive value from people’s existing preferences (which may be distorted in various ways), the quality of the argument, not the number of sup- porters, is crucial, Butitis evident that the approach will leave many ‘matters as optional, to be settled by the political process. Considering the various areas of human life in which people move and act, this approach to social justice asks, What does a life worthy of human dignity require? At a bare minimum, an ample threshold level of ten Central Capabilities is requited. Given a widely shared understanding of the task of government (namely, that gov- 2 ernment has the job of making people able to pursue a dignified and minimally flourishing life), ie follows ehat a decent political or- der must secure to all citizens at least a threshold level of these ten Central Capabilities 1 Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not ‘worth living, 2. Bodily bealth Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter. | Bodily integrity, Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assaultand domes: ‘ic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction. 4. Senses, imagination, and thought. Being able to use the senses, to imag- ine, ehink, and reason—and to do these things in a “truly human” way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, in- cluding, bueby no means limited to, literacy and basic mathemati cal and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and ‘thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and. events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth, Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have plea- surable experiences and to avoid nonbeneficial pain, 5. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people out side ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, co grieve, to experience longing, sratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional develop- 31. CREATING CAPABILITIES ‘ment blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability ‘means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.) Practica reason, Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious obser- vance.) Affiliation. (A) Being able to live with and toward others, to recog- nize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in vari cous forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another: (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions thar constitute and noutish such forms of affiliation, and also pro: «ecting the freedom of assembly and political speech) (B) Having the social bases of selFrespect and nonhumiliation; being able to be treated as dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails provisions of nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin, Other species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. Play, Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities. Control over one's environment. (A) Political. Being able to participate «effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association. (B) Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right co seek employment on an equal basis with others; hhaving the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers. 34 Although this list pertains to human life, its general headings provide a reasonable basis for beginning to think more adequately about what we owe to nonhuman animals, a topic to be pursued in the final chapter. Capabilities belong first and foremost to individual persons, and only derivatively to groups. The approach espouses a principle of each person as an end. It stipulates that the goal is to produce capa- bilities for each and every person, and not to use some people as a means to the capabilities of others or of the whole. This focus on the person makes a huge difference for policy, since many nations have thought of the family, for example, as a homogeneous unit to be supported by policy, rather than examining and promoting the separate capabilities of each of its members, At times group-based policies (for example, affirmative action) may be effective, insteu- ‘ments in the creation of individual capabilities, but that is the only way they can be justified. This normative focus on the individual cannot be dislodged by pointing to the obvious tact that people at times identify themselves with larger collectivities, such as the eth- nic group, the state, or the nation, and take pride in the achieve- ments of that group. Many poor residents of Gujarat identify with that state's overall development achievements, even though they themselves don't gain much from them. The approach, however, considers each person worthy of equal respect and regard, even if people don't always take that view about themselves, The approach is not based on the satisfaction of existing preferences. ‘The irreducible heterogeneity of the Central Capabilities is ex- tremely imporcant. A nation cannot satisfy the need for one capabil- ity by giving people a large amount of another, or even by giving them some money. All are distinctive, and all need to be secured and protected in distinctive ways. If we consider a constitution that pro- 35CREATING CAPABILITIES tects capabilities as essential rights of all citizens, we can see how this works in practice: people have a claim against government if their constitution protects religious freedom and that freedom has been violated—even though they may be comfortable, well-fed, and secure with respect to every other capability that matters. The basic claim of my account of social justice is this: respect for human dignity requires that citizens be placed above an ample (specified) threshold of capability, in all en of those areas, (By men- tioning citizens, I do not wish to deny that resident aliens, legal and illegal, have a variety of entitlements: I simply begin with the core case.) The list is a proposal: it may be contested by arguing that one or more of the items is not so central and thus should be left co the ordinary political process rather than being given special protec- tion. Let’s suppose someone asks why play and leisure time should be given that sort of protection, I would begin by pointing ou chat tor many women all over the world, “the double day”—working at a job and then coming home to do all the domestic labor, includ- ing child care and elder cate, is a crushing burden, impeding ac- ‘ess to many of the other capabilities on the list: employment op- portunities, political participation, physical and emotional health, friendships of many kinds. What play and the free expansion of the imaginative capacities contribute to a human life is not merely instrumental but partly constitutive of a worthwhile human life. ‘That's the sort of case that needs to be made to put something on the list. Sometimes social conditions make it seem impossible to deliver a threshold amount ofall ten capabilities to everyone: two or more of them may be in competition, For example, poor parents in Vasanti’s state may feel that they need to keep their children out of school 36 in order to survive ar all, since they need the wages from the child's labor to eke out an existence. In such a case, the economist’s natu- ral question is, “How do we make trade-offs?” However, when capa- bilities have intrinsic value and importance (as do the ten on my lise), the situation produced when two of them collide is tragic: any course we select involves doing wrong to someone. ‘This situation of magic choice is not fully captured in standard cost-benefit analysis: the violation of an entitlement grounded in basic justice is not just a large cost; it is a cost of a distinctive sort, one thar in a fully just society no person has to beat, Sen has argued that such tragic situations show a defect in stan- dard economic approaches, which typically demand a complete or- dering over all states of affairs. In tragic cases, he insists, we cannot rank one alternative above the other, and thus any good ordering will remain incomplete. Here there is a nuance of difference between his critique and mine. [ would hold that not all eragic situations in- vvolve an inability to rank one state of affairs as better than another. We should distinguish between the presence of a tragic dilemma— any choice involves wrongdoing—and the impossibility of a rank- ing. Sometimes one choice may be clearly better than another in a tragic situation, even though all available choices involve a violation of some sort. (For the tragic hero Eteocles, in Aeschylus’ play Seven against Thebes, it was a horrible wrong to choose to kill his brother, even though the alternative, which involved the destruction of the entire city, was clearly worse.) Sen is probably right that the demand for a complete ordering is misguided, but he is mistaken if he holds that all tragic dilemmas are cases in which no overall ordering is possible. When we see a tragic choice—assuming that the threshold level of ‘each capability has been correctly set—we should think, “Thisis very 7bad, People are not being given a life worthy of cheir human dignity. How might we possibly work toward a facure in which the claims of all che capabilities can be fulfilled?” If the whole list has been wisely crafted and the thresholds set at a reasonable level, there usually will be some answer to that question. To return to India, the di- Jemma faced by poor parents was resolved by the state of Kerala, which pioneered a program of flexible school hours and also of fered a nutritious midday meal chat more than offset children’s lost wages. The program has virtually wiped out illiteracy in che stace. Seeing that it was possible for a relatively poor state ro solve the problem by ingenuity and effort, the Supreme Court of India has made the midday meal mandatory for all government schools in the nation. ‘Such tragic choices abound in richer countries as well. In the United States, for example, 2 poor single mother may frequently be forced to choose between high-quality care for her child and a decent living standard, since some welfare rules require her to ac- cepe full-time work even when no care of high quality is available to her. Many women in the United States are forced to forgo employ- ‘ment opportunities in order to care for children or elderly relations; policies of family and medical leave, together with public provision of child and elder care, might address such dilemmas. One tragic choice ubiquitous in the United States is that between leisure time and a decent living standard (cogether with related health care bene- fits). Ie is widely known that Americans work longer hours than people in most other wealthy nations, and it is understood that family relations suffer in consequence, but the full measure of this tragic situation has not yet been taken. The capabilities perspective helps us see what is amiss here. In other words, when we note a tragic conflict, we do nor simply 38 wring our hands: we ask what the best intervention point is to cre- ace a fucure in which this sort of choice does not confront people. We must also consider how to move people closer to the capability threshold right away, even if we can’t immediately get them above its thus, for example, equalizing access to primary education for all when we are not yet in a position to give everyone access to second- ary education. ‘The Central Capabilities support one another in many ways. Two, however, appear to play a distinctive architectonic role: they organize and pervade the others. These two are affiliation and practical reason. ‘They pervade the others in the sense that when the others are pres- ent in a form commensurate with human dignity, they are woven into them. If people are well-nourished but not empowered to exer- cise practical reason and planning with regard to their health and nutrition, the situation is not fully commensurate with human dig- nity: they are being caken care of the way we take care of infants Good policy in the area of each of the capabilities is policy that re- spects an individual's practical reason; this is just another way of alluding to the centrality of choice in the whole notion of capability as freedom. What is meant by saying that the capability of practical reason organizes all the others is more obvious: the opportunity to plan one’s own life is an opportunity to choose and order the fune- tionings corresponding to the various other capabilities, As for affiliation, the point is similar: it pervades the other ca- abilities in the sense that when they are made available in a way that respects human dignity, affiliation is part of them—the person is respected as a social being. Making employment options avail- able without considering workplace relationships would not be ad- equate; nor would forms of health care that neglect, for example, people's needs to protect zones of intimacy by provisions for per- 39