2.4: The many modes of capability analysis

If the capability approach is an open framework, then what are the ways in which it has been closed to form more specific and powerful analyses? Scholars use the capability approach for different types of analysis, with different goals, relying on different methodologies, with different corresponding roles for functionings and capabilities. Not all of these are capability theories; some are capability applications, both empirical as well as theoretical. We can observe that there is a rich diversity of ways in which the capability approach has been used. Table 2.1 gives an overview of these different usages, by listing the different types of capability analyses.

Normative theorising within the capability approach is often done by moral and political philosophers. The capability approach is then used as one element of a normative theory, such as a theory of justice or a theory of disadvantage. For example, Elizabeth Anderson (1999) has proposed the outlines of a theory of social justice (which she calls “democratic equality”) in which certain basic levels of capabilities that are needed to function as equal citizens should be guaranteed to all. Martha Nussbaum (2006b) has developed a minimal theory of social justice in which she defends a list of basic capabilities that everyone should be entitled to, as a matter of human dignity.

While most normative theorising within the capability approach has related to justice, other values have also been developed and analysed using the capability approach. Some theorists of freedom have developed accounts of freedom or rights using the capability approach (van Hees 2013). Another important value that has been studied from the perspective of the capability approach is ecological sustainability (e.g. Anand and Sen 1994, 2000; Robeyns and Van der Veen 2007; Lessmann and Rauschmayer 2013; Crabtree 2013; Sen 2013). Efficiency is a value about which very limited conceptual work is done, but which nevertheless is inescapably normative, and it can be theorised in many different ways (Le Grand 1990; Heath 2006). If we ask what efficiency is, we could answer by referring to Pareto optimality or x-efficiency, but we could also develop a notion of efficiency from a capability perspective (Sen 1993b). Such a notion would answer the question ‘efficiency of what?’ with ‘efficiency in the space of capabilities (or functionings, or a mixture)’.

Table 2.1 The main modes of capability analysis

Epistemic goal	Methodology/discipline	Role of functionings and capabilities	Examples
Normative theories (of particular values), e.g. theories of justice, human rights, wellbeing, sustainability, efficiency, etc.	Philosophy, in particular ethics and normative political philosophy.	The metric/currency in the interpersonal comparisons of advantage that are entailed in the value that is being analysed.	Sen 1993b; Anand and Sen 1994; Crabtree 2012, 2013; Lessmann and Rauschmayer 2013; Robeyns 2016c; Nussbaum 1992, 1997; Nussbaum 2000; Nussbaum 2006b; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007.
Normative applied analysis, including policy design.	Applied ethics (e.g. medical ethics, bio-ethics, economic ethics, development ethics etc.) and normative strands in the social sciences.	A metric of individual advantage that is part of the applied normative analysis.	Alkire 2002; Robeyns 2003; Canoy, Lerais and Schokkaert 2010; Holland 2014; Ibrahim 2017.
Welfare/quality of life measurement.	Quantitative empirical strands within various social sciences.	Social indicators.	Kynch and Sen 1983; Sen 1985a; Kuklys 2005; Alkire and Foster 2011; Alkire et al. 2015; Chiappero-Martinetti 2000.
Thick description/descriptive analysis.	Quantitative empirical strands within various social sciences.	Elements of a narrative.	Unterhalter 2003b; Conradie 2013.
Understanding the nature of certain ideas, practices, notions (other than the values in the normative theories).	Conceptual analysis.	Used as part of the conceptualisation of the idea or notion.	Sen 1993b; Robeyns 2006c; Wigley and Akkoyunlu-Wigley 2006; van Hees 2013.
[Other goals?]	[Other methods?]	[Other roles?]	[Other studies may be available/are needed.]

Source: Robeyns (2005a), expanded and updated.

Quantitative social scientists, especially economists, are mostly interested in measurement. This quantitative work could serve different purposes, e.g. the measurement of multidimensional poverty analysis (Alkire and Foster 2011; Alkire et al. 2015), or the measurement of the disadvantages faced by disabled people (Kuklys 2005; Zaidi and Burchardt 2005). Moreover, some quantitative social scientists, mathematicians, and econometricians have been working on investigating the methods that could be used for quantitative capability analyses (Kuklys 2005; Di Tommaso 2007; Krishnakumar 2007; Krishnakumar and Ballon 2008; Krishnakumar and Nagar 2008).

Thick description or descriptive analysis is another mode of capability analysis. For example, it can be used to describe the realities of schoolgirls in countries that may have formal access to school for both girls and boys, but where other hurdles (such as high risk of rape on the way to school, or the lack of sanitary provisions at school) mean that this formal right is not enough to guarantee these girls the corresponding capability (Unterhalter 2003b).

Finally, the capability approach can be used for conceptual work beyond the conceptualisation of values, as is done within normative philosophy. Sometimes the capability approach lends itself well to providing a better understanding of a certain phenomenon. For example, we could understand education as a legal right or as an investment in human capital, but we could also conceptualise it as the expansion of a capability, or develop an account of education that draws on both the capability approach and human rights theory. This would not only help us to look differently at what education is; a different conceptualisation would also have normative implications, for example related to the curriculum design, or to answer the question of what is needed to ensure that capability, or of how much education should be guaranteed to children with low potential market-related human capital (McCowan 2011; Nussbaum 2012; Robeyns 2006c; Walker 2012a; Walker and Unterhalter 2007; Wigley and Akkoyunlu-Wigley 2006).

Of course, texts and research projects often have multiple goals, and therefore particular studies often mix these different goals and methods. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen’s (1996, 2002, 2013) comprehensive analyses of India’s human development achievements are in part an evaluative analysis based on various social indicators, but also in part a prescriptive analysis. Similarly, Nussbaum’s (2000) book Women and Human Development is primarily normative and philosophical, but also includes thick descriptions of how institutions enable or hamper people’s capabilities, by focussing on the lives of particular women.

What is the value of distinguishing between different uses of the capability approach? It is important because functionings and capabilities — the core concepts in the capability approach — play different roles in each type of analysis. In quality of life measurement, the functionings and capabilities are the social indicators that reflect a person’s quality of life. In thick descriptions and descriptive analysis, the functionings and capabilities form part of the narrative. This narrative can aim to reflect the quality of life, but it can also aim to understand some other aspect of people’s lives, such as by explaining behaviour that might appear irrational according to traditional economic analysis, or revealing layers of complexities that a quantitative analysis can rarely capture. In philosophical reasoning, the functionings and capabilities play yet another role, as they are often part of the foundations of a utopian account of a just society or of the goals that morally sound policies should pursue.

The flexibility of functionings and capabilities, which can be applied in different ways within different types of capability analysis, means that there are no hard and fast rules that govern how to select the relevant capabilities. Each type of analysis, with its particular goals, will require its own answer to this question. The different roles that functionings and capabilities can play in different types of capability analyses have important implications for the question of how to select the relevant capabilities: each type of analysis, with its particular goals, will require its own answer to this question. The selection of capabilities as social indicators of the quality of life is a very different undertaking from the selection of capabilities for a utopian theory of justice: the quality standards for research and scholarship are different, the epistemic constraints of the research are different, the best available practices in the field are different. Moral philosophers, quantitative social scientists, and qualitative social scientists have each signed up to a different set of meta-theoretical assumptions, and find different academic practices acceptable and unacceptable. For example, many ethnographers tend to reject normative theorising and also often object to what they consider the reductionist nature of quantitative empirical analysis, whereas many economists tend to discard the thick descriptions by ethnographers, claiming they are merely anecdotal and hence not scientific.

Two remarks before closing this section. First, providing a typology of the work on the capability approach, as this section attempts to do, remains work in progress. In 2004, I could only discern three main modes of capability analysis: quality of life analysis; thick description/descriptive analysis; and normative theories — though I left open the possibility that the capability approach could be used for other goals too (Robeyns 2005a). In her book Creating Capabilities, Nussbaum (2011) writes that the capability approach comes in only two modes: comparative qualify of life assessment, and as a theory of justice. I don’t think that is correct: not all modes of capability analysis can be reduced to these two modes, as I have argued elsewhere in detail (Robeyns 2011, 2016b). The different modes of capability analysis described in table 2.1 provide a more comprehensive overview, but we should not assume that this overview is complete. It is quite likely that table 2.1 will, in due course, have to be updated to reflect new types of work that uses the capability approach. Moreover, one may also prefer another way to categorise the different types of work done within the capability literature, and hence other typologies are possible and may be more illuminating.

Second, it is important that we fully acknowledge the diversity of disciplines, the diversity of goals we have for the creation of knowledge, and the diversity of methods used within the capability approach. At the same time, we need not forget that some aspects of its development might need to be discipline-specific, or specific for one’s goals. As a result, the capability approach is at the same time multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, but also forms part of developments within disciplines and methods. These different ‘faces’ of the capability approach all need to be fully acknowledged if we want to understand it in a nuanced and complete way.