Valuing Freedoms: Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction

Ethics, April 2003
Alkire is continually fair-minded, careful in her reading, and insightful in her conclusions.


Economics and Philosophy Vol 19 No 2, 2003
This book is very careful and accurate in its explanation ... Alkire demonstrates a profound knowledge of Sen¡¦s work.


International Development Ethics Association 2003
Alkire has written an insightful, ambitious and stimulating book...I strongly recommend [it] to anyone interested in the participatory approach.


Book Description
This is a book about Amartya Sen's capability approach - his proposition that the objective of development should be that of "expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy." The book is written for academics and practitioners in economic development who consider using the tools of their trade - whether these be econometric modelling techniques or small non-governmental organization activities or monitoring and evaluation procedures - in order to expand people's real freedoms. They wish to think through, systematically, such questions as "what are valuable capabilities in my areas?", "how do I think through trade-offs" and "who should decide what?". In short, they wish to consider how to operationalize Sen's approach - to put it into practice in uncomfortable, messy, compromised practical work at the microeconomic level. It is also written for skeptics (philosophical and economic) who claim there to be nothing value-added in the capability approach because it leaves too many values issues unresolved so is impractical. These pages address, in a number of ways, the question: "how do we identify 'valuable' capabilities". This question contains a number of sub-questions, such as "valuable to whom?" and "how valuable" and "who are the 'we'?" This book is intended to be an accessible contribution to the academic debate. Each chapter synthesises Sen's position on one issue, the criticisms he has received, and shapes a way to operationalize the capabilities approach on these issues. It refers to the corpus of Sen's writing but is by no means complete in its treatment of the discussions he has led others to undertake. It sketches the shape that further work in these areas may helpfully pursue. Anyone who undertakes to publish a sketch is bound to feel self-conscious, as it exposes so many roughnesses of knowledge and mind. However there may be significant value in offering up a sketch to the public space, that others may adapt it, contribute to it, and above all improve it. It is to that end that this book has been devoted.


About the Author
Sabina Alkire is a Research Associate at the Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University. She received a DPhil in economics from Magdalen College, Oxford, as well as a MSc in Economics for Development and an MPhil in Christian political ethics. She previously worked for the Commission on Human Security, for the Poverty Reduction Unit at the World Bank, and with Oxfam and the Asia Foundation in Pakistan. She is interested in others' work on the capability approach.


Excerpted from Valuing Freedoms: Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction by Sabina Alkire. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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"Alkire examines how Nobel Prize-Winning economist Amartya Sen's capability approach can be coherently - and practically - put to work in participatory poverty reduction activities. Sen argues that economic development should expand 'valuable' capabilities. Alkire probes how we identify what is valuable." "Sen deliberately left the capability approach 'incomplete' in order to ensure its relevance to persons and cultures with different understandings of the good. Part I proposes a framework for identifying valuable capabilities that retain this 'fundamental' incompleteness and space for individual and cultural diversity. Drawing on the work of John Finnis and others, Alkire addresses foundational issues regarding the identification and pursuit of 'valuable' dimensions of human development based in practical reason, then observes that much of the criticism and development arises from negative impacts on social or cultural/religious dimensions that are also deeply valued by the poor. Part I closes with a four-part 'operational definition' of basic capability that bridges 'basic needs', participation, and informed consent." Part II proposes an alternative participatory method for systematically identifying valued changes in participants' capability sets. Three case studies of women's income generation activities in Pakistan - goat-rearing, adult literacy, and rose cultivation - contrast economic cost-benefit analysis of each activity with capable analysis.


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