What is to be done about capability-promoting policies?

This book has examined how the capability approach provides a politically normative metric for the critical analysis of policies and public policy structures, as well as policy interventions driven by human development or human security concerns. It has demonstrated that existing social structures and institutions play a key role in the realisation of capabilities or the feasibility of human flourishing. This chapter summarises the book's main arguments and considers new principles and aspirations towards capability-promoting policy. It argues that an alliance with the tradition of critical social science may ‘secure’ the capabilities approach, with its analytic focus on real-world conditions and requirements for renegotiating social justice and creating more capabilities-promoting policies, and vice versa. Capability-promoting policies include emancipatory and democratic strategies that transform unjust structures in order to enhance the agency of individual subjects in terms of human flourishing.

Human development, capabilities and the ethics of policy

This book examines policy interventions driven or influenced by human development or human security concerns and how a capability approach can be implemented to achieve more just societies and foster equal opportunities for individuals and groups across the social and class spectrum. It also analyses the discrepancies and obstacles that actual policies present to what a capability approach could mean in social policy practice. The primary goal of the capability approach is to advance democracy at the community, local and national level in ways that promote genuine possibilities for agency to enable everyone to actively participate in shaping public policy. The book considers how the capability approach has been conceptualised and operationalised into practice in different parts of the world, including India, Buenos Aires, South Africa, England and New York City.

Culture, equity and social wellbeing in New York City

This chapter examines how the capability approach has been applied to cultural policymaking in New York City using a multidimensional index of social wellbeing for the city's neighbourhoods. The project was conceived based on the belief that cultural engagement is a core capability in its own right and that it can facilitate the achievement of other capabilities, the so-called ‘fertile functionings’. The chapter first provides an overview of the political context within which the current research has taken place before outlining three conceptual contributions to the discussion of capability-promoting policies: culture as a capability, the importance of neighbourhood context, and the tension between social justice and democratic decision making. It then describes a measure of cultural engagement based on the presence of institutions (non-profit and for-profit cultural resources), artists and cultural participants in a neighbourhood. Finally, it explains how capability-promoting cultural policy can be used to address long-term social inequality.

The contribution to human development of social policies in the Central American Integration System

This chapter examines the contribution to human development of social policies in the Central American Integration System (SICA), a tool for designing and implementing regional initiatives complementary to national policies. It considers whether the conceptual foundations of the social dimension in SICA are adequately defined and offers suggestions for redefining the social dimensions on the paradigm of human development and the capability approach. After providing an overview of the extent of human development and capability approaches in Central American development plans, the chapter discusses the progress of national social indicators in the region in terms of of the effectiveness of policies and indicators associated with human capabilities. In terms of regional policies, one proposal is to adjust the focus of the strategic approach of social integration in the SICA framework to the human development capabilities approach in member countries.

Public policy: from welfare to empowerment of women in India

This chapter examines the paradigm shift in public policy from welfare to the empowerment of women in Karnataka, India. Drawing on data collected through sample surveys from two districts in rural Karnataka, it considers the impact of policy interventions on the empowerment of women in Karnataka at the micro level by using the capability approach. The study tests whether the policy of involving non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the empowerment of rural women positively affects the autonomy of women measured in terms of capabilities. The chapter first presents an overview of the capability approach, its application to women's empowerment and agency, and indicators to measure autonomy before discussing the findings from the study of Karnataka women. The study provides evidence that the policy of involving NGOs in delivering inputs for the empowerment of women has enhanced the capabilities of women in Karnataka.

The instrumental values of education in the Southern Cone

This chapter considers whether public policies impinge on the values of education by focusing on the experience of three Southern Cone countries: Argentina, Brazil and Chile. It first provides an overview of some theoretical arguments underpinning the impact of public policy on the instrumental values of education before discussing educational development in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. It then analyses the interrelationships between education and social, employment, urban and language policies. It also looks at the link between education and poverty alleviation in the three countries and concludes by outlining more concrete indications of the current challenges to the global governance of education. While prosperity and welfare expansion appear to have had a positive effect on the educational development of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, a number of contradictions has also consolidated inequality.

Capabilities and the challenge to inclusive schooling

This chapter examines the role of schools in inclusion and capabilities formation and proposes an ethical model that views inclusion as social participation. The proposed model is based on two intuitions: inclusion understood as a social phenomenon and inclusion that is concerned with freedom. The chapter first considers the different perspectives on inclusion and its normative implications as a moral value in the field of education before discussing the ways that the capability approach can articulate and analyse the intuition of the freedom to be included, thus enhancing the concept of ‘full’ or ‘substantive’ inclusion. It also explains how the proposed ethical model of inclusion can be applied to design inclusive schools. It also discusses some examples of corresponding best practice in the field of education, drawn from international empirical research and practice.

The capability approach and a child standpoint

This chapter examines what the capability approach can do for realising the Australian ideal of the ‘fair go’—expounding the strongly held values around egalitarianism and ensuring that people have a reasonable opportunity to make what they want of their lives. It first acknowledges social policy as a normative enterprise, seeking not only to ‘develop and deliver services for people in order to meet their needs for welfare and wellbeing’, but to do so in ways that privilege particular ideas and values. It then considers how a ‘fair go’ resonates with a capability approach, with synergies between the expansion of capabilities and freedom to live the life one values and Australian ideas of egalitarian individualism. It also explains how a child standpoint can be useful in rethinking social policy to move beyond the narrow agenda of workforce participation to an agenda of social inclusion, social justice and opportunity.

The capability approach: what can it offer child protection policy and practice in England?

This chapter examines what the capability approach can contribute to child protection policy and practice in England as an alternative conceptual framework for social work that challenges the dominance of neoliberal ideology in ways consistent with the promotion of human rights and social justice. After providing an overview of the historical and political contexts of child protection policy in England, the chapter considers the ways poverty and parenting are constructed in the dominant discourses as well as the policies and practices that have developed within this context. It also analyses the impact of interventions on parents and argues that contemporary child protection policy and practice in England is based on a narrow approach to child and family welfare and the role of social work. It concludes with recommendations for policy and practice that aims to promote greater social justice.

Informal workers and human development in South Africa

This chapter examines how the human development approach and the capability approach can be used to inform policy formulation by considering the case of social insurance for informal workers in South Africa. It begins with a discussion of the nature of the human development approach and the capability approach and the ways they can be used in the formulation of social policy. It then describes a short background study of poverty and problems in contemporary South Africa before outlining a policy proposal for social protection of informal workers in South Africa, based on human development and capability expansion. This proposal involves a savings plan based on the Mbao scheme in Kenya that might alleviate poverty. The chapter argues that this savings plan may help address the cycle of over-indebtedness among the poor and the emerging lower middle class in South Africa.