Slide 1
Equal resources can leave unequal real opportunities
The capability approach asks what people are actually able to do and be. Equal resources can produce unequal real opportunities in different circumstances.
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Imagine two people given identical bicycles where one cannot use the available roads. The resource count matches, but practical mobility does not. The example makes conversion from resources into opportunity visible.
Slide 2
A functioning is an achievement; a capability is an opportunity
A functioning is an achieved way of being or doing. A capability concerns the genuine opportunity to achieve such functionings.
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Being nourished and having the real option to be nourished are related but distinct. A person voluntarily fasting differs from someone unable to obtain food, even if an isolated observation shows neither eating.
Slide 3
Personal and social conditions change what resources enable
Personal, social and environmental conditions affect what resources enable. The same input can therefore support very different lives.
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A public service may exist on paper while distance, discrimination or inaccessible design prevents its use. Counting the service without investigating access can overstate the opportunity actually available to a particular person.
Slide 4
Sen and Nussbaum developed different versions
Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum developed influential but distinct capability approaches. They differ over specification and the role of a capability list.
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A flexible evaluative framework and a more explicit theory of justice need not answer every question in the same way. Calling both capability approaches should not erase disagreements about thresholds, selection and public reasoning.
Slide 5
The question is what someone can genuinely choose
Capability analysis asks what people can really choose, rather than what is merely provided on paper.
It evaluates their options without treating an imposed way of living as genuine freedom.
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Returning to the bicycle, a policy could improve roads, provide another transport mode or address an access barrier. The relevant question is which change creates usable opportunity, rather than which merely adds another counted object.
Sources
- The Capability Approach
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy