Development as Freedom (49 page)

The capability perspective involves, to some extent, a return to an integrated approach to economic and social development championed particularly by Adam Smith (both in the
Wealth of Nations
and in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
). In analyzing the determination of production possibilities, Smith emphasized the role of education as well as division of labor, learning by doing and skill formation. But the development of human capability in leading a worthwhile life (as well as in being more productive) is quite central to Smith’s analysis of “the wealth of nations.”

Indeed, Adam Smith’s belief in the power of education and learning was peculiarly strong. Regarding the debate that continues today on the respective roles of “nature” and “nurture,” Smith was an uncompromising—and even a dogmatic—“nurturist.” Indeed, this fitted in well with his massive confidence in the unprovability of human capabilities:

It is not my purpose here to examine whether Smith’s emphatically nurturist views are right, but it is useful to see how closely he links
productive
abilities and
lifestyles
to education and training and presumes the improvability of each.
²³
That connection is quite central to the reach of the capability perspective.
²⁴

There is, in fact, a crucial valuational difference between the human-capital focus and the concentration on human capabilities—a difference that relates to some extent to the distinction between means and ends. The acknowledgment of the role of human qualities in promoting and sustaining economic growth—momentous as it is—tells us nothing about
why
economic growth is sought in the first place. If, instead, the focus is, ultimately, on the expansion of human freedom to live the kind of lives that people have reason to value, then the role of economic growth in expanding these opportunities has to be integrated into that more foundational understanding of the process of development as the expansion of human capability to lead more worthwhile and more free lives.
²⁵

The distinction has a significant practical bearing on public policy. While economic prosperity helps people to have wider options and to lead more fulfilling lives, so do more education, better health care, finer medical attention, and other factors that causally influence the effective freedoms that people actually enjoy. These “social developments” must directly count as “developmental,” since they help us to lead longer, freer and more fruitful lives,
in addition
to the role they have in promoting productivity or economic growth or individual incomes.
²⁶
The use of the concept of “human capital,” which concentrates only on one part of the picture (an important part, related to broadening the account of “productive resources”), is certainly an enriching move. But it does need supplementation. This is because
human beings are not merely means of production, but also the end of the exercise.

Indeed, in arguing with David Hume, Adam Smith had the occasion to emphasize that to see human beings only in terms of their productive use is to slight the nature of humanity:

Despite the usefulness of the concept of human capital, it is important to see human beings in a broader perspective (breaking the analogy with “a chest of drawers”). We must go
beyond
the notion of human capital, after acknowledging its relevance and reach. The broadening that is needed is additional and inclusive, rather than, in any sense, an
alternative
to the “human capital” perspective.

It is important to take note also of the instrumental role of capability expansion in bringing about
social
change (going well beyond
economic
change). Indeed, the role of human beings even as instruments of change can go much beyond economic production (to which the perspective of “human capital” standardly points), and include social and political development. For example, as was discussed earlier, expansion of female education may reduce gender inequality in intrafamily distribution and also help to reduce fertility rates as well as child mortality rates. Expansion of basic education may also improve the quality of public debates. These instrumental achievements may be ultimately quite important—taking us well beyond the production of conventionally defined commodities.

In looking for a fuller understanding of the role of human capabilities, we have to take note of:

The relevance of the capability perspective incorporates each of these contributions. In contrast, in the standard literature human capital is seen primarily in terms of the third of the three roles. There is a clear overlap of coverage, and it is indeed an important overlap. But there is also a strong need to go well beyond that rather limited and circumscribed role of human capital in understanding development as freedom.

In this book I have tried to present, analyze and defend a particular approach to development, seen as a process of expanding substantive freedoms that people have. The perspective of freedom has been used both in the evaluative analysis for assessing change, and in the descriptive and predictive analysis in seeing freedom as a causally effective factor in generating rapid change.

I have also discussed the implications of this approach for policy analysis as well as for the understanding of general economic, political and social connections. A variety of social institutions—related to the operation of markets, administrations, legislatures, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, the judiciary, the media and the community in general—contribute to the process of development precisely through their effects on enhancing and sustaining individual freedoms. Analysis of development calls for an integrated understanding of the respective roles of these different institutions and their interactions. The formation of values and the emergence and evolution of social ethics are also part of the process of development that needs attention, along with the working of markets and other institutions. This study has been an attempt to understand and investigate this interrelated structure, and to draw lessons for development in that broad perspective.

It is a characteristic of freedom that it has diverse aspects that relate to a variety of activities and institutions. It cannot yield a view of development that translates readily into some simple “formula” of accumulation of capital, or opening up of markets, or having efficient economic planning (though each of these particular features fits into the broader picture). The organizing principle that places all the different bits and pieces into an integrated whole is the overarching
concern with the process of enhancing individual freedoms and the social commitment to help to bring that about. That unity is important, but at the same time we cannot lose sight of the fact that freedom is an inherently diverse concept, which involves—as was discussed extensively—considerations of processes as well as substantive opportunities.

This diversity is not, however, a matter of regret. As William Cowper puts it:

Development is indeed a momentous engagement with freedom’s possibilities.

1.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
2.4, 2–3.

2.
Aristotle,
The Nicomachean Ethics
, translated by D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition, 1980), book 1, section 5, p. 7.

3.
I have discussed, in earlier publications, different aspects of a freedom-centered view of social evaluation; on this see my “Equality of What?” in
Tanner Lectures on Human Values
, volume 1, edited by S. McMurrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980);
Choice, Welfare and Measurement
(Oxford: Blackwell; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982; republished, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997);
Resources, Values and Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984); “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984,”
Journal of Philosophy
82 (April 1985);
Inequality Reexamined
(Oxford: Clarendon Press; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). See also Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds.,
The Quality of Life
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

4.
In my Kenneth Arrow Lectures, included in
Freedom, Rationality and Social Choice: Arrow Lectures and Other Essays
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming). A number of technical issues in the assessment and evaluation of freedom are also examined in that analysis.

5.
The evaluative and the operational reasons have been explored more fully in my “Rights and Agency,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs
11 (1982), reprinted in
Consequentialism and Its Critics
, edited by Samuel Scheffler; “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom”;
On Ethics and Economics
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

6.
The components correspond respectively to (1) the process aspect and (2) the opportunity aspect of freedom, which are analyzed in my Kenneth Arrow Lectures, included in
Freedom, Rationality and Social Choice
, cited earlier.

7.
I have tried to discuss the issue of “targeting” in “The Political Economy of Targeting,” keynote address to the 1992 Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, published in
Public Spending and the Poor: Theory and Evidence
, edited by Dominique van de Walle and Kimberly Nead (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). The issue of political freedom as a part of development is addressed in my “Freedoms and Needs,”
New Republic
, January 10 and 17, 1994.

8.
I have discussed this issue in “Missing Women,”
British Medical Journal
304 (1992).

9.
These and other such comparisons are presented in my “The Economics of Life and Death,”
Scientific American
266 (April 1993), and “Demography and Welfare Economics,”
Empirica
22 (1995).

10.
On this see my “Economics of Life and Death,” and also the medical literature cited there. See also Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen,
Hunger and Public Action
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). On this general issue, see also M. F. Perutz, “Long Live the Queen’s Subjects,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
352 (1997).

11.
This can be worked out from the background data used to make life expectancy calculations (for 1990), as presented in C.J.L. Murray, C. M. Michaud, M. T. McKenna and J. S. Marks,
U.S. Patterns of Mortality by County and Race: 1965–1994
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 1998). See especially table 6d.

12.
See Colin McCord and Harold P. Freeman, “Excess Mortality in Harlem,”
New England Journal of Medicine
322 (January 18, 1990); see also M. W. Owen, S. M. Teutsch, D. F. Williamson and J. S. Marks, “The Effects of Known Risk Factors on the Excess Mortality of Black Adults in the United States,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
263, no. 6 (February 9, 1990).

13.
See Nussbaum and Sen, eds.,
The Quality of Life
(1993).

14.
See Martha Nussbaum, “Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,”
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
(1988; supplementary volume); see also Nussbaum and Sen, eds.,
The Quality of Life
(1993).

15.
See Adam Smith,
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(1776), republished, edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), volume 2, book 5, chapter 2 (section on “Taxes upon Consumable Commodities”), pp. 469–71.