Creating Capabilities: The Human Development ApproachIf a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how—by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy—we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives. |
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User Review - Fledgist - LibraryThingNussbaum lays out the capabilities approach to human development, which she has developed jointly with Amartya Sen, in this monograph. This provides an alternative to rights-based theories of change and development for the non-Western world. Read full review
Contents
1 | |
2 The Central Capabilities
| 17 |
3 A Necessary CounterTheory
| 46 |
4 Fundamental Entitlements
| 69 |
5 Cultural Diversity
| 101 |
6 The Nation and Global Justice
| 113 |
7 Philosophical Influences
| 123 |
8 Capabilities and Contemporary Issues
| 143 |
Conclusion
| 185 |
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Common terms and phrases
agency freedom Amartya Sen animals areas argue argument Aristotle basic bilities bodily integrity Capa capabili Capabilities Approach capability failure Central Capabilities choice citizens combined capabilities comprehensive doctrines conception consequentialist constitutional Court disabilities domestic violence economic emotions equal respect ethical example focus focused free exercise functioning fundamental entitlements gender global goal Gujarat Heckman human capabilities Human Development human dignity human rights idea important India inequalities internal capabilities involving issues Kantian liberty lives ment negative liberty normative Nussbaum ofhuman ofjustice ofthe one’s opportunities overlapping consensus pabilities people’s person political liberalism poor poorer nations preferences proach problems protection quality oflife question Rawls Rawls’s reason religion religious requires role secure Sen’s SEWA Smith social contract social justice society specific Stoic Stoicism theoretical theory threshold tion tradition U.S. Supreme Court utilitarian Vasanti Wolff and De-Shalit women