Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach - Notes

  • The Human Development approach focuses on what people are able to do and be, emphasizing real opportunities available to them.
  • It values the complexities of human life and striving, resonating with people's daily questions about their capabilities.
  • This approach has influenced international agencies like the World Bank and UNDP, leading to capability-based studies in various nations.
  • The Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) promotes research in this area.
  • The Capabilities Approach has influenced the Sarkozy Commission Report on economic performance and social progress.
  • Aims to offer an accessible explanation of the Capability Approach to counter dominant theories that misguide development policy.
  • It seeks to empower real people by respecting their lived experiences and constructing meaningful policy interventions.
  • Counter-theory needed to change development approach, articulates development in new ways, shows different priorities.
  • Leaders often focus on national economic growth, but people want meaningful lives leading to theoretical approaches that can aid their struggles, or at least provoke public debate by drawing attention to them.
  • GDP increase may not improve lives, reports of prosperity do not console those in deprivation, so there is a need for new theoretical approach.
  • Vasanti's story illustrates gender discrimination, nutritional deficiency, and lack of employment and political opportunities due to illiteracy.
  • Religion-based systems of personal law perpetuate inequalities for women regarding property and inheritance.
  • Gender imbalance in India's population is striking, with fewer women than expected due to factors like sex-selective abortion.
  • Education and health care disparities limit women's opportunities, with literacy rates significantly lower for women.
  • The Constitution was amended to assign one-third of seats in village councils to women, and that women should be able to control and plan their own lives.
  • Illiteracy cuts women off from understanding political and economic structures.
  • Domestic violence is a key issue fueled by alcoholism and weak law enforcement so there should be a focus on bargaining power in the marriage that includes exit options, land ownership, employment, education, property and savings.
  • Domestic violence affects physical and emotional health, inhibiting anger and pleasure so that exiting options offer solutions.
  • There is a need for more women to be active in politics and to form friendships where they are being respected as equals.
  • Workplace options as a Brahmin woman remain highly circumscribed, and her participation in political life is limited by her inability to read and write.
  • There is a need to focus on the ability of women to control and plan their own lives.
  • There should be consideration into Vasanti's working hours or the structure of her day, along with the protection of preserving leisure time for workers.
  • Consider Vasanti's relationship to the environment and the implications of the choices associated with the environment.
  • Important aspects in Vasanti's situation involve awareness of situation and what produces it.
  • Diverse aspects in Vasanti's situation interact with one another in complex ways.
  • The focus should be on freedom to choose and affect policy consideration.
  • Dominant theoretical approaches in development economics are not allies of Vasanti's struggle, and distract attention from her problems.
  • GDP increase has no value in Vasanti's life and does not solve Vasanti's problems, or reach poor women unless local elites are committed to policies of redistribution and direct state intervention.
  • Theory focused on GDP equated doing well with an increase in GDP per capita.
  • Developing policies means attending to diverse factors to affect quality of life.
  • An approach needed that defines achievement by each person's opportunities.
  • Preliminary hunches needed about what is significant, but search must be open to new learning.
  • Storytelling is never neutral, narrator directs attention to some features but not others, insist on genuine curiosity.
  • The Capabilities Approach is an alternative to the GDP approach.
  • Nations contain struggles for lives worthy of human dignity, equality and justice.
  • The Capabilities Approach supplies insights that other approaches may not.
  • "Human Development Approach" focuses on capabilities for comparative measurement; "Capability Approach" uses capabilities to make comparisons of life quality.
  • Nussbaum prioritizes Qualitative distinctions and the importance of entrenched discrimination.
  • Sen does not employ a threshold or a specific list of capabilities.
  • Capabilities are substantial freedoms, personal abilities and the political, social, and economic environment.
  • Combined capabilities represent opportunities for choice and action, while Internal capabilities are fluid states of the person that can be improved through education and resources.
  • It is important to support the development of internal capabilities because the individual also has the job of society.
  • Basic capabilities are the innate faculties of the person that make later development and training possible.
  • The political goal for all human beings in a nation is to rise above a certain threshold level of combined capability.
  • A functioning is an active realization of one or more capabilities in which it is important to have freedom to choose to improve emotional heatlh.
  • Child functioning is required, while paternalistic function oriented policies were not agreed upon.
  • Which capabilities are the most important, it is crucial to face these valuational questions and address them with pertinent arguments.
  • The innate capacity for cruelty should be starved and thwarted that are not bad or grounded in human nature, they are just not very important.
  • Public policy should focus on what a life worthy of human dignity requires, using ten Central Capabilities as a guide.
  • The list can be contested by other social conditions can make it seem impossible to deliver a threshold amount of all ten capabilities because of competition.
  • Standard cost-benefit analysis of tragic choice as violation of entitlement that is corrected with flexible school hours and nutritious midday meal.
  • Conflicts of choice ubiquitously exists in richer countries, in that an ample threshold not sufficient to address inequalities.
  • Deliberation about public policy is a social matter with relationship structuring of different kinds.
  • The way that constitutional laws and basic principles account for capabilities differ to some degree for each traditions and histories.
  • Should be enriched through development, support for new immigrant groups in building capabilities.
  • Important to provide support and security in promotion of human capabilities.