The Capability Approach and the Praxis of Development

In 1990 the United Nations Development Programme launched its first Human Development Report. This marked a radical paradigm shift in development thinking. Gone are the days in which development was seen as a process of change from an ‘underdeveloped’ to a ‘developed’ stage, as a process of industrialization and economic growth through which ‘underdeveloped’ countries would replicate the evolution undergone by industrialized countries. Development is from now on ‘human development’. It is a matter of widening people’s choices in all areas of their life, economic, social and cultural, and increasing their level of achieved well-being. Development no longer sacrifices people’s lives for the sake of increasing the numerical value of some economic outputs such as Gross National Product or Income. People, and the nature of the life that they are living, is the sole end that matters.

Paraphrasing Sen’s definition, the Human Development Reports define development as a process of ‘expanding choices and opportunities so that each person can lead a life of respect and value’ (UNDP, 2000, p. 2). However, a quick glance at the reports shows us that they have not particularly kept the insights of Sen’s capability approach for assessing human well-being in terms of the ‘freedoms that people have reason to choose and value’. They have assessed the successes and failures of countries in undertaking actions towards the enhancement of human well-being on the basis of a set of functionings and not on the basis of people’s abilities to achieve these functionings should they so choose. For example, the capability of people to be adequately nourished has been assessed through malnutrition statistics. The freedom that people have to be adequately fed, should they so choose, has not been reflected in the data. Moreover, although ‘expanding choices’ is to be the end of development, the reports have not considered all choices as having equal value, but have regarded some choices as more privileged than others, even if some people might not value these choices. For example, literacy is seen as a better state than illiteracy; gender equality is always considered as a good that all societies should promote; living in a non-polluted environment is always something desirable; the absence of freedom of expression is never considered a good; the destruction of a cultural heritage or the disappearance of a minority language is never seen as a successful achievement of development; and the capabilities of consuming alcohol or drugs never seem to be capabilities worthwhile to be promoted, even if some people might value them highly.