Women and human development: the capabilities approach, by MARTHA NUSSBAUM (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2000, pp. xxi +312, hbk £17.95)

✍ Scribed by Frances Stewart

• Book ID: 102350776
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 38 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.773

✦ Synopsis

This is an ambitious book exploring, developing and interpreting the capabilities approach to development, with speci®c application to women. Nussbaum claims that the approach she puts forward is of universal validityÐand would apply to any societyÐthough in this book she is speci®cally concerned with the position of women in India.

Nussbaum's book has been written with many audiences in mind. In part she is talking to philosophers, which makes it dif®cult (and sometimes tedious) reading for non-philosophers, and may well mean that I have not done justice to her argument. But it is also intended for those in the development community; and for Indian decision-makers and feminists. It contains an important and stimulating philosophical justi®cation of a capabilities approach to development and gives the approach much more speci®c content than emerges from Sen's writings on the topic.

Most development specialists associate the capabilities approach with Amartya Sen, who has led the way in arguing that increasing capabilities, or enhancing what people can be or do, should be the fundamental objective of development, as against maximization of income or utility. However, apart from distinguishing some fundamental or basic capabilities, such as being nourished, healthy and educated, without which other capabilities may be impossible, Sen has done little to put clothes on the capabilities in question. This results in leaving the choices of which capabilities are selected in practice, and thus translate into functionings, to individual choice.

Nussbaum arrived at a capability approach to human development to some extent independently of Sen, following from her work as a leading Aristotelian scholar and especially her analysis of Marx's interpretation of Aristotle. Derived from Aristotle's ideas of human functioning, she interprets capabilities as the potentiality for beings and doings that are required for human ¯ourishing. In this book she identi®es a list of central capabilitiesÐwhich are necessary, she says, for a person to be fully human. This is a theme she repeats several times, describing those who lack some of the central capabilities as not being able to live `in a truly human way' (p. 74). This is an unnecessarily offensive way of making a point about what is needed for human ¯ourishing; it implies that the vast mass of humanity who are unable to enjoy the full list of human capabilities is subhuman, an illegitimate way of describing people. We are all human, even if some are more fortunate than others in the capabilities they enjoy.

Like the commandments, and our ®ngers and thumbs, conveniently Nussbaum proposes ten central capabilities. In summary they are life; health; bodily integrity (interpreted as freedom from bodily assault and choice in matters of reproduction); sense, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason (being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in planning of one's life); af®liation (shorthand for social relationships); respect for other species; play; control over ones political and material environment. She states (p. 76) that `The list represents the results of years of cross-cultural discussions a type of overlapping consensus' (a term derived from Rawls). A development strategy should aim to enhance all these capabilities and always to treat the promotion of individuals' capabilities as the objective, not as instrumental to some other ends. Moreover, it is the individual whose capabilities should be enhanced not that of the family or community or society, except as instrumental to the capabilities of individuals. Like Sen, Nussbaum emphasizes that it is promotion of capabilities not functionings which forms the development objective, because to aim at promoting de®ned functionings would be paternalist, restricting individuals' freedom of choice.

Taking her list of central capabilities as the fundamental objectives, Nussbaum shows how they can form the basis of legal and political treatment of many issues, with a particular focus, in this book, on the role of women.

By developing the capabilities approach in this way, Nussbaum's work gives much greater content to the approach than Sen's theoretical work. But there are some obvious objections to her development of the approachÐmost of which she herself recognizes and makes heroic efforts to rebut. One issue is whether there are universal values which can be laid down for all societies. Assuming one accepts the validity of a universal approach, a second question is whether she has arrived at the `right' set of values. Obviously, in practice societal values do differ, over time and place. Nussbaum's current list (which she regards as being subject to amendment) represents the philosophy of an early 21st century Western liberal. Quite a number of the elements would not have been part of any agreed list in Europe in the nineteenth century, would not be accepted by large numbers in modern Western societies, and are not the prevailing values of many, probably the majority, in many developing countries (notably freedom of reproductive Book Reviews 1191