2.11: The relevance and implications of the modular view

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Understanding the capability approach as having a modular structure leads to a number of insights. Let me highlight three important ones: countering the risk of inflation, whereby we have no criteria for deciding when a theory is or is not a capability theory; appreciating the diversity of capability theories that are possible; and getting a better sense of how Sen’s and Nussbaum’s writings relate to each other.

First, the modular view can help us to contain the risk of inflation: too many things being labelled as belonging to the ‘capability approach’, whereas they do not meet the essential characteristics of the A-module. The modular view of the capability approach which I presented gives us a description that includes all the work in the capability approach that should legitimately be included. There are, of course, other descriptions of the capability approach available in the literature. Yet to my mind most of these descriptions (including my own previous attempts at describing the approach) were insufficiently detailed and illuminating. If a description is too vague, we run the risk of inflation.

For example, one could aim to work on multi-dimensional poverty analysis and highlight the fact that we should be interested in the combination of achievements that people are able to have. This would point at two important insights in the capability approach — namely its multidimensional character, as well as focussing on opportunity sets rather than on outcomes. But if the opportunities one focusses on are not capabilities, but rather opportunities to access certain bundles of commodities, then it would be an unjustified inflation to call this a capability application; rather, it would be another type of opportunity-based multidimensional inequality measure.

Second, to understand that capability theories have a modular structure is crucial in understanding the diversity of capability theories that are possible. Let me try to illustrate this. Module C4 states that additional normative principles may be part of a capability theory, and property A6 that functionings and capabilities are not necessarily all that matters in a capability theory. From this it does not follow that all capability scholars have to endorse each and every capability theory. Surely there will be capability theorists who will take issue with the normative principles that are added in module C4 by other capability theorists when they design their theory. That is perfectly fine, as long as both theorists recognise that (a) the capability approach entails the possibility to add such additional normative principles in module C4, and (b) the normative principles they have added in module C4 are not thereby required for each and every other capability theory.⁴⁰

Take the following example. One may defend a political theory of disadvantage which states that no-one should live in poverty, no matter whether people are partly causally responsible for having ended up in that situation. Such a theory would endorse a principle (in module C4) that there should be, at the level of outcomes (and hence not at the level of opportunities) institutionally enforced solidarity via redistribution. Let us call those who endorse this principle the S-theorists (S for solidarity). This is a strong normative claim: many other normative political theories rather defend that everyone should have a genuine opportunity to live a decent life, but still attribute some responsibility to all persons for realising that life. Let us call these theorists the O-theorists (O for opportunity). Both the S-theorists and the O-theorists can agree that we should understand people’s wellbeing in terms of functionings and capabilities. The S-theorists and the O-theorists are both capabilitarians. They have to acknowledge that the other group’s theory is a capability theory, without having to endorse the other theory. In other words, a capability theorist can agree that the normative position or theory that someone else is defending is a capability theory, without having to endorse that specific theory. There is absolutely no inconsistency in this situation.

Thirdly, the modular view of the capability approach endorses the view that Martha Nussbaum’s work on the capability approach should be understood as a capability theory, that is, a theory in which specific choices are made regarding the modules. It is not, as Nussbaum (2011) suggests in her Creating Capabilities, a version of the capability approach structurally on a par with Sen’s more general capability approach. What Sen has tried to do in his work on the capability approach, is to carve out the general capability approach, as well as to give some more specific capability applications. Admittedly, Sen’s work on the capability approach (rather than his work on a variety of capability applications) would have benefited from a more systematic description of how he saw the anatomy of the capability approach. To my mind, that has been missing from his work, and that is what I have tried to develop here and in an earlier paper (Robeyns 2016b). Yet everything put together, I agree with the understanding of Mozaffar Qizilbash, who concludes an analysis of the difference between Nussbaum’s and Sen’s work on the capability approach by saying that “On this reading […] Nussbaum’s capabilities approach emerges as one particular application or development of Sen’s original formulation of the approach” (Qizilbash 2013, 38).

It is a mistake to understand the capability literature as a field with two major thinkers who have each proposed one version of the capability approach, which have then inspired the work by many other scholars. Rather, there is only one capability approach which is a generalisation of the work by Sen together with further developments by many others. In addition, there are many dozens capability theories — about justice, human rights, social choice theory, welfare economics, poverty measurement, relational egalitarianism, curriculum design, development project assessment, technological design, and so forth. Clearly, Nussbaum has been one of the most prolific and important contributors; she has pushed the boundaries of capabilitarian theories and has rightly advanced the agenda to achieve more clarity on the essential characteristics that any capability theory should meet. However, she has offered us a more specific capability theory, rather than another version of the approach, even if it is the capability theory that is by far the most influential capability theory among philosophers. Establishing the anatomy of the capability approach and its relation to particular capability theories is very important, because it vastly expands the scope of the capability approach, and increases the potential types of capability applications and capabilitarian theories.

In sum, there is much pluralism within the capability approach. Someone who considers herself a capabilitarian or capability thinker does not need to endorse all capability theories. In fact, it is impossible to endorse all capability theories, since different choices made in module C1 (ontological and explanatory theories that are endorsed) and module C4 (additional normative principles) can be in conflict with each other. It is presumably coherent to be a Marxist capabilitarian, and it is presumably also coherent to be a libertarian capabilitarian, but it is not coherent to endorse the views taken by those two positions, since they are incompatible.

40 I believe that Martha Nussbaum makes a mistake when she argues that a commitment to the normative principle of political liberalism is essential to the capability approach, hence to each and every capability theory. For my arguments why this is a mistake, see Robeyns (2016b). Political liberalism is an additional normative commitment that is not a property of the A-module, but rather a choice in module C4.