Capability-Promoting Policies: Enhancing Individual and Social Development

✍ Scribed by Hans-Uwe Otto (editor); Melanie Walker (editor); Holger Ziegler (editor)

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 338
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

How can unjust societies be overcome with a better distribution of opportunities to flourish? How can human development be revitalised in countries where social welfare is being questioned? In short, how can human development be fostered in practice? These are some of the important questions asked in this volume through analysis of existing policies and conceptualisations of coherent and systematic strategies for human development policies at the local, national and international level. International contributors innovatively combine the hitherto unpaired perspectives of the capability approach and the tradition of critical social policy with empirical examples using case studies from South-Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America. The result is a call for a new, feasible approach towards more socially balanced, democratic and innovative capability-promoting policy activities, models and programmes that reduce social and human suffering to promote an enhanced social quality of current societies around the world.

✦ Table of Contents

CAPABILITY-PROMOTING POLICIES
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Notes on contributors
INTRODUCTION
1. Human development, capabilities and the ethics of policy
Human development and the capabilities approach introduced
Policy into practice
Towards capability-promoting policies and policy analysis
Part 1. Conceptual challenges
2. What political liberalism and the welfare state left behind: chance and gratitude
Introduction: the visit of a wounded bird
The modern welfare state and democratic equality
Theorising conceptions of political liberalism: tolerance and non-discrimination
Expanded social cooperation or ‘patronal treatment’ scheme?
The core thought of Rawls’ theory of justice
Two ways to restructure Rawls’ theory of justice
Conclusion
3. The capability approach, agency and sustainable development
Introduction
The Mali case study
Measurement of agency
Measurement of multidimensional poverty
Profiles
Conclusion
4. Public policy: from welfare to empowerment of women in India
Introduction
Capability approach
Public policy through five-year plans: a shift from welfare to empowerment
The Karnataka study
Conclusion
5. The contribution to human development of social policies in the Central American Integration System
Introduction
Capabilities approach and human development in Central America national development plans
Lights and shades of human development and social policies from a regional perspective
The fundamentals of the SICA and its effects
Future prospects and conclusion
Part 2. Modalities of structure and civil society
6. A framework for urban integration: the case of Buenos Aires
Introduction
A conceptual framework to reduce urban inequality
Multidimensional dynamics
Building institutions
Fostering agency
Conclusion
7. Culture, equity and social wellbeing in New York City
Some theoretical considerations
Developing a neighbourhood-based measure of social wellbeing
Research questions and findings
Toward a capability-promoting cultural policy
8. The third sector and capability-promoting policies
Introduction: research questions and methodology
Research findings
Conclusion
9. Informal workers and human development in South Africa
The human development approach, the capability approach3 and social policy formulation
South Africa’s pressing social policy concerns
The gap in the South African social protection system: social protection for informal workers
Who are the informal workers in South Africa?
A policy proposal for social protection of informal workers in South Africa, based on human development and capability expansion
Conclusion
Part 3. Children, youth and education
The capability approach: what can it offer child protection policy and practice in 10. England?
Introduction
The historical and political contexts of child protection policy in England
The current child protection system
Poverty matters
Parental perspectives on the child protection system
Conclusion
11. The capability approach and a child standpoint
Introduction
The capability approach and social policy
Egalitarianism and a ‘fair go’ as central to underpinning Australian identity
Egalitarianism and a fair go in the distribution of resources
To what extent does Australia have a capability-promoting approach to social policy?
Capabilities from a child standpoint
(Re)conceptualising a ‘fair go’ from a child standpoint
Conclusion
12. Capabilities and the challenge to inclusive schooling
Different perspectives on inclusion
Application and conclusion: inclusive schools
13. Early childhood educational curricula: implications of the capability approach
Introduction
Early childhood education curricula
Reclaiming normative aims for ECE curricula through the capability approach
Conclusion
14. Education for all? Providing capabilities for young people with special needs
Introduction
Methodological approach to the discourse analysis and data
Sample of newspaper articles for the content analysis of public discourses
Results: a struggle between life-first and work-first discourses
Changes and positional struggles in relation to the capabilities targeted in the legislation
Conclusion
15. The instrumental values of education in the Southern Cone
Introduction
Public policies and the instrumental values of education
Bringing the instrumental values back in: education and poverty alleviation in Argentina, Brazil and Chile
Unveiling instrumental bottlenecks: the long shadow of inequality
Conclusion
CONCLUSION
16. What is to be done about capability-promoting policies?