What are Capabilities? Amartya Sen argues that while evaluating social arrangements or designing polices, the focus should be on what people are capable of doing and being, on the quality of their lives, and on removing hurdles from their lives so that they have more freedom to ‘live the life they value’. A capability is a perspective in terms of which the advantages and disadvantages of a person can be reasonably assessed. Sen searched for measure to adequately represent people’s well-being and deprivation and found that neither income and command over commodities, nor happiness and fulfillment of desires constituted good enough indicator of human well-being or lack of it. Thus, he focused on something more direct such as human functionings and capabilities. Capability: A capability reflects a person’s ability to achieve a given functioning (‘doing’ or ‘being’). While functionings refer to what people really “do and are”, capabilities denote what people really “can do and can be”. Functionings are, thus, a subset of the capabilities; they are the materialized options of an individual. Sen considers the life of a person to be constituted by various functionings – ‘being’ and ‘doings’ – and his/her capability is the set of lives from which he/she can choose one. The achieved functionings are the realized achievements and the capabilities are potentially possible. In other words, capabilities are different combinations of functionings that a person can achieve and reflect his freedom to choose. They are the ability to achieve. In other words, capabilities are like opportunities about what a person may like to do, have, or be. A person’s capability is best thought to be the equivalent of a person’s opportunity set. Functionings: Functionings are what people really “do and are”. They are achievements of people: what they manage to do or be. So, they are ‘doings’ or ‘beings’. Taken together, these doings and beings – achieved functionings – give value to life. The functioings may include being able to work, rest, being literate and healthy; being part of a community or group; being respected, and so on. Achieving a functioning (for example, being adequately nourished) with a given bundle of commodities (say, bread or rice) depends on a range of personal and social factors (e.g. age, gender, activity levels, health, access to medical services, nutritional knowledge and education, climatic conditions, and so on). A functioning therefore refers to the use a person makes of whatever is at his or her command.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 09:20:57 +0000
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