2.7: The B-modules: non-optional modules with optional content

I believe that the best way to understand the capability approach is by taking the content of the A-module as non-optional. All capability theories need to endorse the content of the A-module (ideally in an explicit way) or at a very minimum should not have properties that violate the content of the A-module. But there are also properties of a capability theory where the module is non-optional, yet there is choice involved in the content of the module. This doesn’t mean that ‘anything goes’ in terms of the choice of the content, but it does mean that within each module, there is a range of options to choose from. These are the B-modules, each of which contains a range of possible content, from which the capability theorist can decide what content to adopt. However, the range of content of the B-modules must not contradict the A-module. The following table lists the non-optional B-modules with optional content.

Table 2.3 The B-modules: non-optional modules with optional content

B1: The purpose of the capability theory B2: The selection of dimensions B3: An account of human diversity B4: An account of agency B5: An account of structural constraints B6: The choice between functionings, capabilities, or both B7: Meta-theoretical commitments

2.7.1 B1: The purpose of the capability theory

The first module, which is itself non-optional, but where the content can be chosen, is the purpose of the theory. For example, one could use the capability approach to construct a theory of justice, to develop an international empirical comparison, to reform an educational curriculum, to develop alternative welfare economics, or to evaluate the effects of laws on people’s capabilities. Questions of scope and reach also need to be addressed in this module. For example, is a theory of justice a political or a comprehensive theory? Is such a theory domestic or global? Other questions that need to be addressed involve the intended audience. Is one constructing an academic theory where great attention is given to detail and even the smallest distinctions are taken as relevant, or is one addressing policy makers or societal organisations for whom every detail does not matter and the time to think and read may be much more constrained, while the accessibility of the ideas is much more important?

Of course, one could argue that B1 is not specific to capability theories, and also holds for, say, deontological theories, or utilitarian theories, or theories that use care ethics as their basic normative foundation. While that is true, there are two reasons to highlight B1, the purpose of the capability theory, in the account that I am developing. The first is that it will help us to be explicit about the purpose. There are plenty of pieces published in the capability literature in which the purpose of the application or theory is not made explicit, and as a consequence it leads to people based in different disciplines or fields talking alongside each other. Second, it seems that the need to be explicit about the purpose (including the audience) of one’s capability theory or application is stronger in the capability literature than in other approaches, because in comparison to those other approaches it has a much more radically multidisciplinary uptake.

2.7.2 B2: The selection of dimensions

The second B-module is the selection of capabilities and/or functionings. We need to specify which capabilities matter for our particular capability theory. This is a deeply normative question, and touches the core of the difference that the capability approach can make. After all, the dimensions that one selects to analyse will determine what we will observe — and also, equally importantly, what we will not observe since the dimensions are not selected.

There is, by now, a large body of literature discussing the various ways in which one can make that selection, including some overview articles that survey the different methods for particular purposes (e.g. Alkire 2002; Robeyns 2005a; Byskov forthcoming). These methods explicitly include various participatory, deliberative and/or democratic approaches, which are widely used in capability applications.

There are two crucial factors determining which selection procedure is suitable. The first is the purpose of the capability theory (hence the choice made in B1). If we develop an account of wellbeing for thinking about how our lives are going, we are not constrained by questions such as the legitimate scope of government intervention, whereas a theory of political justice would need to take that element into account. Another example is if we would like to use the capability approach to think about what is universally demanded by moral principles, hence to develop the capability approach into a theory of morality: there the selection may be constrained by a method of moral justification for categorically binding principles, which is much more demanding than a method that justifies principles we offer to each other as rationally defensible proposals in the public realm. At the empirical and policy level, similar questions arise. For example, one could take the international human rights treaties as reflecting a given political consensus, and use those to select capabilities (Vizard 2007). Or, one’s main goal may be to analyse what difference the capability approach makes for poverty or inequality analysis in comparison with income metrics, in which case one may opt for a method that makes the normativity explicit but nevertheless stays close to existing practices in the social sciences, assuming the epistemic validity of those practices (Robeyns 2003).

The second factor determining which selection procedure is suitable is the set of constraints one takes as given in the normative analysis one is making. In an ideal world, there would always be cooperation between scholars with different disciplinary expertise, who would understand each other well, and who would be able to speak the language of the other disciplines involved in developing the capability theory. In an ideal world, there would also be no time constraints on the amount of time one has to develop a capability theory, and no financial constraints on the data gathering, or social, psychological or political constraints on the types of question one can ask when conducting a survey. One would be able always to conduct one’s own fieldwork if one wanted, one would have access to all the empirical knowledge one needed, and one would not be constrained in gathering the information one wanted to gather. Clearly, the methods for such an ideal world would be very different from the methods that are used in practice — where database-driven selection may be the best one can do.

Still, whichever method one uses, what always remains important, and very much in the spirit of the capability approach, is not to act in a mechanical way, or to see the question of the selection of dimensions as a technocratic exercise. Even if one cannot, for example, collect certain data, one could nevertheless still mention the dimensions that one would have wanted to include if it had been possible, and perhaps provide some reasonable informed guess of what difference the inclusion of that dimension would have made.

2.7.3 B3: Human diversity

Within the capability approach human diversity is a core characteristic, and indeed a core motivation for developing the capability approach in the first place. Yet the account of human diversity that one endorses can differ. For example, scholars with a background in structuralist sociology or Marxism often believe that the social class to which one belongs is a very important factor in human diversity, which has great influence on which options lie open to a person, but also on how a person’s character and aspirations are formed. For those scholars, class interacts with, and in some cases even outweighs, all other identity aspects. For others, such as libertarians, these differences are not so important.³⁶ They would not attach much (normative or explanatory) importance to one’s gender, ethnicity, race, social class, and so forth: everyone is, first and foremost, an individual whose personal ambitions and projects matter. Yet, whether one is a Marxist or a libertarian or one of the many other positions one can take, one always, either implicitly or explicitly, endorses a view on human nature and on human diversity. That choice should be made in capability theories, since the capability approach rejects the use of an implicit, unacknowledged account of human diversity. Hence such an account belongs to the B-modules: one has to have an account of human diversity, but, as long as one is willing to defend one’s account and it survives critical analysis, there are several accounts that one can opt for.

Note that if one puts all the modules A, B and C together, a picture will emerge about the great importance attached to human diversity in the capability approach; this will be analysed in more detail in section 3.5.

2.7.4 B4: Agency

Another B-module is the acknowledgement of agency. As a working definition, we can use Sen’s definition of an agent as “someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives, whether or not we assess them in terms of some external criteria as well” (Sen 1999a, 19).

Applications of the capability approach should endorse some account of agency, except if there are good reasons why agency should be taken to be absent, or why in a particular capability application agency is simply not relevant (for example, when one wants to investigate the correlation between an income metric and some achieved functionings).

But clearly, as with other key ethical concepts such as ‘wellbeing’ or ‘freedom’, the concept of ‘agency’ can be fleshed out in many different ways. The capability approach is not committed to one particular account of agency. Similar to the acknowledgement of structural constraints, there is no agreed-upon or standard claim about how much agency, or what particular type, should be assumed; the claim is minimalistic in the sense that, as with the structural constraints which will be discussed in the next section, agency cannot simply be ignored and must be accounted for. One can give agency a key role in a capability theory (e.g. Crocker 2008; Claassen 2016) or a more restricted role, perhaps also using different terminology. One can also develop the account of agency by spelling out some of its preconditions, which may include capabilities. For example, Tom de Herdt (2008) analysed the capability of not having to be subjected to public shame as a precondition of agency, and showed how this may be relevant for social policymaking by illustrating its importance in a food relief programme in Kinshasa. For empirical scholars and policy scholars, an empirically sound account of agency will be crucial; for moral philosophers, a more theoretical account of what conceptualisation of agency is morally relevant will be needed. Thus, the precise content of this B-module will differ significantly between different capability theories and applications — but, in all cases, some acknowledgement of agency will be needed.³⁷

2.7.5 B5: Structural constraints

The fifth B-module is the account of structural constraints: the institutions, policies, laws, social norms and so forth, that people in different social positions face. Those differences in the structural constraints that people face can have a great influence on their conversion factors, and hence on their capability sets. For example, if relationships between people of the same sex are criminalised, then gay people may have all the means and resources they would wish, but they will still not be able to enjoy a happy family life. Or if people of colour face explicit or implicit discrimination on the labour market, then they will not be able to use the same labour-market resources (their degrees, training, experience) to generate the same levels of capabilities in the professional sphere of life, compared with groups that face no (or less) discrimination.

In addition, structural constraints also play a role in the shaping of people’s capabilities that are not heavily dependent on material resources. If one group of people is, for cultural, historical or religious reasons, stigmatized as outcasts, then they will be treated with disrespect by other groups in society. The same holds for all groups that suffer from stigma, such as, for example, people with psychiatric disorders or other mental health issues. These structural constraints will also affect the capabilities that do not rely on resources directly, such as opportunities for friendships or for a healthy sense of self-confidence.

Which of those structural constraints will be important for a particular capability analysis will depend on the context. For example, in her study of the living standards of waste pickers, scavengers, and plastic recycling and scrap trading entrepreneurs in Delhi, Kaveri Gill (2010) showed that caste plays a very important role in the capability sets of different castes. For example, those at the very bottom of the hierarchical ladder of waste workers — the waste pickers — have no opportunities for upward mobility due to social norms and societal discrimination related to their caste. In this study, social norms related to caste are key as a structural constraint; in other studies, it may be the anatomy of twenty-first century capitalism, or gender norms in gender-stratified societies, or some other set of structural constraints.

In sum, structural constraints can have a very important role in shaping people’s capability sets, and therefore have to be part of capability theories. Structural constraints vary depending on one’s caste, class, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, (dis)abilities, and the economic system in which one lives. These structural constraints are very likely to have an influence on a person’s capability set (and in most cases also do have that influence). Having an account of structural constraints is therefore non-optional: every capability theory has one, although sometimes this account will be very implicit. For example, I will argue in section 4.10 that part of the critique of mainstream welfare economics is that it has a very weak or minimal account of structural constraints. Heterodox welfare economists who are embracing the capability approach are not only doing so because they think the endorsement of the capability account of wellbeing is better than the preferences-based accounts that are dominant in mainstream economics, but often also because they hope that the minimal account of structural constraints in welfare economics can be replaced by a richer account that is better informed by insights from the other social sciences and from the humanities.

2.7.6 B6: The choice between functionings, capabilities, or both

In developing a capability theory, we need to decide whether we think that what matters are capabilities, functionings, or a combination of both. The core proposition that functionings and capabilities form the evaluative space (A5), was not decisive regarding the question of whether it is only functionings, or only capabilities, or a mixture of both, that form this space.

There are various arguments given in the literature defending a range of views that only capabilities matter; or that primarily secured functionings matter; or that for particular capability theories it is impossible only to focus on capabilities; or that we sometimes have good reasons to focus on functionings. These various claims and arguments will be reviewed in section 3.4; as will be argued in that section, there are good reasons why people could reasonably disagree on whether the capability analysis they are conducting should focus on functionings or capabilities or a mixture. It follows that a choice must be made, but that there are various options to choose from.

2.7.7 B7: Meta-theoretical commitments

Finally, each capability theory will embrace some meta-theoretical commitments. Yet often, these meta-theoretical commitments are shared commitments within one’s discipline or one’s school within that discipline, and as a graduate student one has become socialised in accepting these meta-theoretical commitments as given. As a consequence, it often happens that scholars are not even aware that there are such things as meta-theoretical commitments. For example, if one wants to conduct a measurement exercise (a choice made in the module B1) then one may be committed to the methodological principle of parsimony (to build a model with as few assumptions and as elegantly as possible) or, instead, to providing a measurement that is embedded into a rich narrative description aimed at a better understanding. Or, if one wants to construct a theory of justice (again, a choice made in the module B1), then one may aim for an ideal or non-ideal theory of justice, or for a partial or a comprehensive account of justice. Or one may espouse certain views about the status of theories of justice or meta-ethical claims related to, for example, the role that intuitions are permitted to play as a source of normativity. Some debates within the capability approach, but also between capability scholars and those working in other paradigms, would be truly enlightened if we made the meta-theoretical commitments of our theories, accounts and applications more explicit.

---

36 For an introduction to libertarianism, see Vallentyne and Van der Vossen (2014).

37 Martha Nussbaum explicitly refrains from integrating the notion of ‘agency’ in her capability theory (Nussbaum 2000, 14). However, this does not mean that there isn’t an account of agency in her theory, since the inclusion of the capability of practical reason on her list of central human capabilities can be understood as corresponding to one particular conceptualisation of agency.