3.5: Human diversity in the capability approach

In the previous chapter, it was already highlighted that diversity among human beings is a key motivation as well as a conceptual characteristic of the capability approach (module B3). Given how central human diversity is to the approach, it is worth saying a few more words on this topic. There are two important points to make: first, the mechanisms that the capability approach has at its disposal to account for diversity, and second, the attention given to diversity within the existing capability literature.

The capability approach takes account of human diversity in at least two ways. First, by its focus on the plurality of functionings and capabilities as important evaluative spaces. By including a wide range of dimensions in the conceptualization of wellbeing and wellbeing outcomes, the approach broadens the so-called ‘informational basis’ of assessments, and thereby includes some dimensions that may be particularly important for some groups but less so for others. For example, in standard outcome assessments, women as a group virtually always end up being worse off than men. But if the selection of outcome dimensions is shifted to also include the quality and quantity of social relations and support, and being able to engage in hands-on care, then the normative assessment of gender inequality becomes less univocal and requires much further argument and normative analysis, including being explicit about how to aggregate different dimensions (Robeyns 2003, 2006a).

Secondly, human diversity is stressed in the capability approach by the explicit focus on personal and socio-environmental conversion factors that make possible the conversion of commodities and other resources into functionings, and on the social, institutional, and environmental contexts that affect the conversion factors and the capability set directly. Each individual has a unique profile of conversion factors, some of which are body-related, while others are shared with all people from her community, and still others are shared with people with the same social characteristics (e.g. same gender, class, caste, age, or race characteristics). In the account of the capability approach presented in chapter 2, this is made very explicit by having module A3 focus on the conversion factors, which is an important source of interpersonal variations (the other source is how structural constraints affect people differently). As Sen (1992a, xi) has argued, interpersonal variations should be of central importance to inequality analysis:

Investigations of equality — theoretical as well as practical — that proceed with the assumption of antecedent uniformity (including the presumption that ‘all men are created equal’) thus miss out on a major aspect of the problem. Human diversity is no secondary complication (to be ignored, or to be introduced ‘later on’); it is a fundamental aspect of our interest in equality.

Indeed, if human beings were not diverse, then inequality in one space, say income, would more or less be identical with inequality in another space, like capabilities. The entire question of what the appropriate evaluative space should be would become obsolete if there weren’t any interpersonal difference in the mapping of outcomes in one space onto another. If people were all the same and had the same needs and abilities, then the capability approach would lose much of its force and significance, since resources would be excellent proxies for our wellbeing and wellbeing freedom. But as it happens, human beings are very diverse.

However, we also need to acknowledge that there is significant scholarly dispute about the question of which dimensions and parameters of human diversity are salient, and which are not. Scholars embrace very different accounts of human diversity, which is why we have module B3 in the capability approach. One’s account of human diversity can often be traced back to the ontological accounts one accepts of diversity-related factors, as well as the role of groups in explanatory accounts. An example of the former is the account of gender and race that one embraces. If one holds a theory of gender and race that regards these as rather superficial phenomena that do not have an important impact on people’s behaviour and opportunities in life, then the attention given to diversity in a capability application or capability theory will be rather minimal. This is logically consistent with the structure of capability theories (as laid out in chapter 2), but it is also a view that has not been widely embraced in the capability literature. Instead, the capability approach attracts scholars who endorse accounts of dimensions of gender, race, and other dimensions of human diversity that are much richer. Presumably, these scholars recognise the ways in which the capability approach can account for human diversity, hence this may explain why most capability scholars endorse rich accounts of such diversity.

A strong acknowledgement of human diversity has therefore become a hallmark of the capability approach as that literature has developed. Its criticism of other normative approaches is often fuelled by, and based on, the claim that human diversity is insufficiently acknowledged in many normative frameworks and theories. This also explains why the capability approach is often favourably regarded by feminist scholars, and by academics concerned with global justice, race or class relations, or care and disability issues. One of the main complaints of these scholars about mainstream philosophy and economics has been precisely this issue: the relative invisibility of the fate of those people whose lives do not correspond to that of an able-bodied, non-dependent, caregiving-free individual who belongs to the dominant ethnic, racial and religious groups.