An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach

Freedom and Agency

Edited by Séverine Deneulin
with Lila Shahani

Contents

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes	ix
List of Contributors	xi
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations	xv
Introduction	xvii
Part I Concepts	1
1     A Normative Framework for Development	3
Sabina Alkire and Séverine Deneulin
Normative, positive and predictive	4
Case studies	6
Normative frameworks matter	12
People first	13
2     The Human Development and Capability Approach	22
Sabina Alkire and Séverine Deneulin
Human development	24
Going deeper: The capability approach	30
3     Ideas Related to Human Development	49
Séverine Deneulin
Human development and market liberalism: Freedom compared	51
How the idea of freedom is spread	54
The basic needs approach	56
Human rights	59
Human security	62
Other related ideas	66
Part II Topics	71
4      Economic Growth	73
Randy Spence
Growth in the history of economic thought	74
Contemporary approaches to economic growth	83
Economic growth as a means to human flourishing	90
5     Equality and Justice	101
Ingrid Robeyns
A brief description of the literature on theories of justice	102
Rawls’ theory of justice in a nutshell	106
Rawlsian justice versus the capability approach	109
What do we need for a capability theory of justice?	112
Gender justice and justice for marginalized groups	115
From theories of justice to just practices and policies	116
6     Poverty and Inequality Measurement	121
Sabina Alkire and Maria Emma Santos
The importance and limitations of measurement	122
Income-based measures of inequality	125
Income poverty measurement: Two steps	133
Measuring development and well-being: The Human Development Index (HDI)	139
Multidimensional poverty measurement	143
7     Institutions, Markets and Economic Development	162
Susan Johnson
Institutions in economic development	164
Markets	171
Institutions and markets in the human development approach	178
8     Democracy and Political Participation	185
Séverine Deneulin
A mechanism for exercising agency in public sphere	186
The value of democracy	191
From democratic theory to practice	196
Public reasoning	201
Political participation at the global level	202
9     Education	207
Elaine Unterhalter
Human capital	208
Human capital and the capability approaches compared	212
Applying the capability approach to education	217
10     Health	228
Proochista Ariana and Arif Naveed
What is health?	229
Conventional approaches to health	230
Health within the human development and capability approach	234
Health at the heart of inter-locking deprivations	238
11     Culture and Religion	246
Sarah White and Séverine Deneulin
Part I Culture	247
Development perspectives	248
Anthropological perspectives	250
Human development perspectives	253
Part II Religion	261
The Protestant ethic approach	261
Religion as moral base	262
Religion as human right	264
Religion as dimension of well-being	265
Faith-based organizations	266
The possibility of reasoning	267
Part III Policy	273
12     Human Development Policy Analysis	275
Randy Spence and Séverine Deneulin
Main areas of public policy	276
Policy in the private, non-profit and international sectors	286
Politics and power	289
Tools for policy analysis	291
A human development perspective	294
13     Policy Case Studies	300
edited by Séverine Deneulin and Lila Shahani
A personal narrative of a woman’s life in Ghana	302
Gender policy in Turkey	304
Fiscal policy in Syria	312
Security policy in Haiti	318
Technical assistance policy in Afghanistan	324
Post-conflict policy in Liberia	329
Appendix 1 Teaching the human development and capability approach: Some pedagogical implications	334
Melanie Walker
Appendix 2 Didactic Pictures	339
Index	345