Introduction

The success or failure of poverty programmes crucially depends on the behavioural response they generate from both the ‘poor’ and the ‘non-poor’. Amartya K. Sen discusses this issue in some recent publications on social policy (Sen 1995; 1999), arguing among other things that ‘capability-oriented reasonings in dealing with targeting problems have some distinct merits with regard to incentive compatibility’ (1995: 19). More specifically, Sen believes that targeting problems could be significantly reduced by structuring social policy initiatives in response to specific capability deprivations, such as illiteracy, sickness, malnourishment, etc. This is the essence of his ‘instrumental argument’ in favour of the capability approach, besides the better-known ‘fundamental argument’ (Sen 1999: 131). In the present contribution, I challenge the instrumental argument by proposing a more complex use of capability-oriented reasoning. To this end, I emphasise the plurality of concerns, which is in fact also part and parcel of Sen's approach. Indeed, Sen's suggestion that capabilities better reflect the decisional concerns of the potential ‘targets’ becomes much more convincing if we broaden the inventory of relevant functionings. More specifically, I consider whether the ability to appear in public without shame might be one of the more relevant determinants of human agency and hence of the behavioural response to social policy initiatives. In Sen's work, the term ‘agent’ refers to ‘someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives’ (Sen 1999: 19).