scholarly journals Creating capabilities: Childcare policies in comparative perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara A Yerkes ◽  
Jana Javornik
Keyword(s):  
Service Provision ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Care Arrangement ◽  
Childcare Policy ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach

This article analyses childcare services in six countries, assessing this policy instrument’s potential to facilitate parents’ capabilities for arranging childcare in a way they have reason to value. It draws on Sen’s capability approach to conceptualize and assess childcare policy design across five key aspects of childcare provision (accessibility, availability, affordability, quality and flexibility) in a country-comparative perspective. The conceptualization of the multifaceted nature of childcare provides compelling insights into the complexity of comparing childcare services across countries. The ensuing analysis and comprehensive overview of national policies challenges the idea of a defamilialization policy cluster, which masks key distinctions between public and market service provision. The more nuanced conceptualization and operationalization of childcare policy design through the capability approach reveals parents’ real opportunities for arranging childcare and the varying effects of policy design across gender and class. In addition, it goes beyond implicit commodification assumptions and opens up space for parents’ potential desire for multiple care arrangement possibilities.

Ask rather than assume: the capability approach in the practitioner setting1

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Jana Javornik ◽  
Mara A. Yerkes ◽  
Erik Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Features ◽  
The Capability Approach

This chapter investigates the relationships between science and society, in particular social policy 'practice', by consulting the social policy actors (i.e. researchers, professionals and practitioners who deal with or implement diverse policy decisions). The purpose of the chapter is to develop our innovative communication initiative, in which we engaged with social policy professionals and practitioners in a two-way, mutually enriching theory-practice dialogue. Using the capability approach as an analytical lens hereallows for a fresh look at social policy implementation and delivery and helps to better understand how social policies in their entirety play out in different contexts. The historical and political contexts of social policies and people's different needs and values, the cornerstone of the CA, are increasingly recognised by policy practitioners and professionals who have first-hand experience with policy delivery or application at the local level. This chapter demonstrates that their experience with multiple access and eligibility-related issues on the ground sheds new light on the applicability of the CA, and how this approach may help to identify key features grounded in local knowledge, be it around social policy design, delivery or implementation.

scholarly journals Beyond Equality of What: Sen and neutrality

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-235
Author(s):  
Christopher Robert Lowry
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Primary Goods ◽  
Political Liberal ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach

Based on a close reading of the debate between Rawls and Sen on primary goods versus capabilities, I argue that liberal theory cannot adequately respond to Sen’s critique within a conventionally neutralist framework. In support of the capability approach, I explain why and how it defends a more robust conception of opportunity and freedom, along with public debate on substantive questions about well-being and the good life. My aims are: (i) to show that Sen’s capability approach is at odds with Rawls’s political liberal version of neutrality; (ii) to carve out a third space in the neutrality debate; and (iii) to begin to develop, from Sen’s approach, the idea of public value liberalism as a position that falls within that third space.

scholarly journals Rethinking social policy from a capability perspective

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Mara A. Yerkes ◽  
Jana Javornik ◽  
Anna Kurowska
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Conversion Factors ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach

In this chapter, we discuss the key challenges and issues related to interpreting basic concepts of the capability approach (CA) in a social policy context. We start by briefly introducing the CA, tracing the idea of capabilities back to the writings of Aristotle and interpreting them in the context of Sen's capability approach. We then discuss the theoretical and empirical debates surrounding the CA as it was further developed by Nussbaum and later interpreted by other scholars such as Robeyns. The focus here is on the main conceptual and empirical debates in relation to social policy research and practice, centred on the key concepts in Sen's approach to capabilities: means, capabilities, functionings, conversion factors, and agency. Multiple interpretations of these concepts create difficulties in applying the CA to social policy research. This chapter offers a way forward in addressing these issues as they apply specifically to social policy research and practice.

Metrics of Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-85
Author(s):  
Ali Mehdi
Keyword(s):  
Capability Approach ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
Social Level ◽  
The Capability Approach

This chapter characterizes and critiques the relevant aspects of various metrics of justice put forth by major theories of justice, with a special focus on Amartya Sen’s capability approach. It then goes on to discuss some of the relevant issues pertaining to the measurement of justice within the capability framework. For instance, justice is to be eventually measured at the individual and not the social level, although our choice will be governed by the evaluative purpose. It ends with a conceptual assessment of the capability approach, highlighting some of its challenges.

scholarly journals The Capability Approach: Insights for a New Poverty Focus

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROD HICK
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
The Many ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach

AbstractThe concepts of poverty, social exclusion and deprivation are widely employed but often problematic. This paper discusses some problems with prominent interpretations of these concepts and how Amartya Sen's capability approach can provide a conceptual framework that can overcome these problems. It is argued that the capability approach can reflect the many ways that human lives are blighted and that it thus offers a promising framework for poverty analysis. Six insights for poverty analysis provided by the capability approach are discussed.

scholarly journals Do learning support assistants’ perceptions of their role support the capability approach? A small-scale study in a Jordanian international school

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Matthew Lee
Keyword(s):  
Capability Approach ◽  
Human Life ◽  
International School ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Learning Support ◽  
Learner Agency ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Capability Approach

This article reports on a small-scale study which explored the perceptions of learning support assistants (LSAs) about how they facilitate learner agency and wellbeing, two key facets of the capability approach. Interviews were conducted with ten LSAs working in an international school to investigate whether LSAs support aspects of this theoretical framework within their role, where their efficacy is often valued by the quantity of time they spend with the child rather than the quality of the support provided. The capability approach was utilised as an analytic framework by using the four capability approach categories which Sen (1999) argues can evaluate human life: wellbeing achievements, agency achievements, wellbeing freedoms, and agency freedoms. The findings from the study indicate that whilst LSAs did support key aspects of the capability approach, they felt unsure if every part of their role could be based on it due to a range of factors beyond their control, such as parental expectations and the school’s deployment of the LSAs. Possibilities for future research, such as the impact of higher-education on LSAs’ ability to further the capability approach, are discussed briefly.

ENDORSEMENT AND FREEDOM IN AMARTYA SEN'S CAPABILITY APPROACH

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
SERENA OLSARETTI
Keyword(s):  
Capability Approach ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Exact Role ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Evaluative Space ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach ◽  
The Way

A central question for assessing the merits of Amartya Sen's capability approach as a potential answer to the “distribution of what”? question concerns the exact role and nature of freedom in that approach. Sen holds that a person's capability identifies that person's effective freedom to achieve valuable states of beings and doings, or functionings, and that freedom so understood, rather than achieved functionings themselves, is the primary evaluative space. Sen's emphasis on freedom has been criticised by G. A. Cohen, according to whom the capability approach either uses too expansive a definition of freedom or rests on an implausibly active, indeed “athletic,” view of well-being. This paper defends the capability approach from this criticism. It argues that we can view the capability approach to be underpinned by an account of well-being which takes the endorsement of valuable functionings as constitutive of well-being, and by a particular view of the way in which endorsement relates to force and choice.

scholarly journals New Zealand’s Living Standards Framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hall
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Design Feature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Policy Relevance ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach

Amartya Sen’s capability approach is a guiding light for international efforts to improve the measurement of national well-being. This article compares Sen’s nuanced philosophical ideal with the New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, which identifies the capability approach as one of various influences. However, the idea of the capability – that is, people’s freedoms to lead the kind of lives they have reason to value – remains an interpretive possibility, rather than a design feature. To give the capability its due importance, policymakers will need to utilise this idea when making sense of the Dashboard’s indicators and instilling policy relevance.

scholarly journals The Capability Approach and Well-Being Measurement for Public Policy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabina Alkire
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Measurement Properties ◽  
Gross National Happiness ◽  
Relevant Material ◽  
Sen’S Capability Approach ◽  
The Capability Approach

This chapter presents Sen’s capability approach as a framework for well-being measurement with powerful and ongoing relevance to current work on measuring well-being in order to guide public policy. It discusses how preferences and values inform the relative weights across capabilities, then draws readers’ attention to measurement properties of multidimensional measures that have proven to be policy relevant in poverty reduction. It presents a dual-cutoff counting methodology that satisfies these properties and outlines the assumptions that must be fulfilled in order to interpret ensuing indices as measuring capability poverty. It then discusses Bhutan’s innovative extension of this methodology in the Gross National Happiness Index and reflects upon whether it might be suited to other contexts. It closes by responding at some length to relevant material in other Handbook chapters.

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