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5 - Does identity matter? On the relevance of identity and interaction for capabilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Miriam Teschl  and
Laurent Derobert
Edited by
Flavio Comim ,
Mozaffar Qizilbash  and
Sabina Alkire
Miriam Teschl
Affiliation:
Lecturer Robinson College University of Cambridge
Laurent Derobert
Affiliation:
University of Avignon
Flavio Comim
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Mozaffar Qizilbash
Affiliation:
University of York
Sabina Alkire
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Introduction

Sen went a long way within economic analysis of well-being. By developing his capability approach to understand people's quality of life, he tried to respond to weaknesses he detected in other theories that dealt with human well-being. In particular, he addressed strong criticism towards the utilitarian approach, no matter how utility might be interpreted. Modern economics employs ‘utility’ to illustrate everything that an individual maximises and that led to the fact that ‘(m)athematical exactness of formulation … proceeded hand in hand with remarkable inexactness of content’ (Sen 1999a (1985): 2). Opposing, therefore, this kind of simplification, ‘which has the effect of taking a very narrow view of human beings (and their feelings, ideas and actions), thereby significantly impoverishing the scope and reach of economic theory’ (Sen 1999a: 3), he proposes a view that sees a person's well-being in terms of his or her ‘functionings’, i.e. what the person succeeds in doing or being. Functionings are people's achievements and reflect their state of existence. The well-being of a person is the evaluation of this existence. Well-being, therefore, is not concerned only with the possession of commodities or the happiness or desire fulfilment those may produce, it also evaluates the conversion of the characteristics of those goods into functionings according to the person who possesses them. Furthermore, Sen is interested in the freedom a person has in terms of the choice of functionings, which he calls a person's ‘capability’. Capabilities refer to the functionings a person can achieve (Sen 1999a: 3–15).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Capability Approach
Concepts, Measures and Applications
 , pp. 125 - 156
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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