Development as Freedom (52 page)

35.
Aristotle,
The Nicomachean Ethics
, translated by D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition 1980), book 1, section 7, pp. 12–14. On this see Martha Nussbaum, “Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,”
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
(1988; supplementary volume).

36.
Smith,
Wealth of Nations
(1776), volume 2, book 5, chapter 2.

37.
Smith,
Wealth of Nations
(1776), volume 2, book 5, chapter 2, in the edition by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 469–71.

38.
See my “Equality of What?” in
Tanner Lectures on Human Values
, volume 1, edited by S. McMurrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press); reprinted in my
Choice, Welfare and Measurement
(1980); also in John Rawls et al.,
Liberty, Equality and Law
, edited by S. McMurrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), and in Stephen Darwall, ed.,
Equal Freedom: Selected Tanner Lectures on Human Values
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). See also my “Public Action and the Quality of Life in Developing Countries,”
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics
43 (1981);
Commodities and Capabilities
(Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985); “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom”
(1985);
(jointly with Jean Drèze)
Hunger and Public Action
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); and “Capability and Well-Being,” in
The Quality of Life
, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

39.
On the nature and pervasiveness of such variability, see my
Commodities and Capabilities
(1985) and
Inequality Reexamined
(1992). On the general relevance of taking note of disparate needs in resource allocation, see also my
On Economic Inequality
, chapter 1; L. Doyal and I. Gough,
A Theory of Human Need
(New York: Guilford Press, 1991); U. Ebert, “On Comparisons of Income Distributions When Household Types Are Different,” Economics Discussion Paper V-86–92, University of Oldenberg, 1992; Dan W. Brock,
Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Alessandro Balestrino, “Poverty and Functionings: Issues in Measurement and Public Action,”
Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia
53 (1994); Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, “A New Approach to Evaluation of Well-Being and Poverty by Fuzzy Set Theory,”
Giornale degli Economisti
53 (1994); M. Fleurbaey, “On Fair Compensation,”
Theory and Decision
36 (1994); Elena Granaglia, “More or Less Equality? A Misleading Question for Social Policy,”
Giornale degli Economisti
53 (1994); M. Fleurbaey, “Three Solutions for the Compensation Problem,”
Journal of Economic Theory
65 (1995); Ralf Eriksson and Markus Jantti,
Economic Value and Ways of Life
(Aldershot: Avebury, 1995); A. F. Shorrocks, “Inequality and Welfare Comparisons for Heterogeneous Populations,” mimeographed, Department of Economics, University of Essex, 1995; B. Nolan and C. T. Whelan,
Resources, Deprivation, and Poverty
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Alessandro Balestrino, “A Note on Functioning-Poverty in Affluent Societies,”
Notizie di Politeia
(1996; special volume); Carmen Herrero, “Capabilities and Utilities,”
Economic Design
2 (1996); Santosh Mehrotra and Richard Jolly, eds.,
Development with a Human Face
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Consumers International,
The Social Art of Economic Crisis: … Our Rice Pots Are Empty
(Penerz, Malopia: Consumers International, 1998); among other contributions.

40.
See my “Equality of What?” (1980),
Commodities and Capabilities
(1985), and
Inequality Reexamined
(1992). See also Keith Griffin and John Knight,
Human Development and the International Development Strategies for the 1990s
(London: Macmillan, 1990); David Crocker, “Functioning and Capability: The Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Development Ethic,”
Political Theory
20 (1992); Nussbaum and Sen,
The Quality of Life
(1993); Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover,
Women, Culture, and Development
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Meghnad Desai,
Poverty, Famine, and Economic Development
(Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1994); Kenneth Arrow, “A Note on Freedom and Flexibility,” and Anthony B. Atkinson, “Capabilities, Exclusion and the Supply of Goods,” both in
Choice, Welfare and Development
, edited by K. Basu, P. Pattanaik and K. Suzumura (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Stefano Zamagni, “Amartya Sen on Social Choice, Utilitarianism and Liberty,”
Italian Economic Papers
2 (1995); Herrero, “Capabilities and Utilities” (1996); Nolan and Whelan,
Resources, Deprivation, and Poverty
(1996); Frank Ackerman, David Kiron, Neva R. Goodwin, Jonathan Harris and Kevin Gallagher, eds.,
Human Well-Being and Economic Goals
(Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997); J.-Fr. Laslier et al., eds.,
Freedom in Economics
(London: Routledge, 1998); Prasanta K. Pattanaik, “Cultural Indicators of Well-Being: Some Conceptual Issues,” in
World Culture Report
(Paris: UNESCO, 1998); Sabina Alkire, “Operationalizing Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach to Human Development” (D. Ph. thesis, Oxford University, 1999).

41.
Even the elementary functionings of being well-nourished involve significant
conceptual and empirical issues, on which see, among other contributions, Nevin Scrimshaw, C. E. Taylor and J. E. Gopalan,
Interactions of Nutrition and Infection
(Geneva: World Health Organization, 1968); T. N. Srinivasan, “Malnutrition: Some Measurement and Policy Issues,”
Journal of Development Economics
8 (1981); K. Blaxter and J. C. Waterlow, eds.,
Nutritional Adaptation in Man
(London: John Libbey, 1985); Partha Dasgupta and Debraj Ray, “Adapting to Undernutrition: Biological Evidence and Its Implications,” and S. R. Osmani, “Nutrition and the Economics of Food: Implications of Some Recent Controversies,” in
The Political Economy of Hunger
, edited by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Partha Dasgupta,
An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); S. R. Osmani, ed.,
Nutrition and Poverty
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

42.
These issues are discussed in my Tanner Lectures included in my
The Standard of Living
, edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), in which see also the contributions of Geoffrey Hawthorn, John Muellbauer, Ravi Kanbur, Keith Hart and Bernard Williams, and my response to these comments. See also Kaushik Basu, “Achievement, Capabilities, and the Concept of Well-Being,”
Social Choice and Welfare
4 (1987); G. A. Cohen, “Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods and Capabilities,”
Recherches Economiques de Louvain
56 (1990); Norman Daniels, “Equality of What: Welfare, Resources or Capabilities?”
Philosophy of Phenomenological Research
50 (1990); Crocker, “Functioning and Capability” (1992); Brock,
Life and Death
(1993); Mozaffar Qizilbash, “Capabilities, Well-Being and Human Development: A Survey,”
Journal of Development Studies
33 (1996), and “The Concept of Well-Being,”
Economics and Philosophy
14 (1998); Alkire, “Operationalizing Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach to Human Development” (1999). See also the symposia on the capability approach in
Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia
53 (1994), and in
Notizie di Politeia
(1996; special volume), including contributions by Alessandro Balestrino, Giovanni Andrea Cornia, Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, Elena Granaglia, Renata Targetti Lenti, Ian Carter, L. Casini and I. Bernetti, S. Razavi, and others. See also the related symposium on entitlement analysis in
Journal of International Development
9 (1997), edited by Des Gasper, which includes contributions by Des Gasper, Charles Gore, Mozaffar Qizilbash, and Sabina Alkire and Rufus Black.

43.
When numerical representation of each functioning is not possible, the analysis has to be done in terms of the more general framework of seeing the functioning achievements as a “functioning n-tuple,” and the capability set as a set of such n-tuples in the appropriate space. There may also be considerable areas of incompleteness as well as fuzziness. On this see my
Commodities and Capabilities
(1985). The recent literature on “fuzzy set theory” can be helpful in analyzing the valuation of functioning vectors and capability sets. See particularly Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, “A New Approach to Evaluation of Well-being and Poverty by Fuzzy Set Theory”
Giornale degli Economisti
, 53 (1994), and her “Standard of Living Evaluation Based on Sen’s Approach: Some Methodological Suggestions,”
Notizie di Politeia
, 12 (1996; special volume). See also Kaushik Basu, “Axioms for Fuzzy Measures of Inequality” (1987); Flavio Delbono, “Povertà come incapacità: Premesse teoriche, identificazione, e misurazione,”
Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali
97 (1989); A. Cerioli and S. Zani, “A Fuzzy Approach to the Measurement of Poverty,” in
Income and Wealth Distribution, Inequality and Poverty
, edited by
C. Dagum et al. (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990); Balestrino, “Poverty and Functionings” (1994); E. Ok, “Fuzzy Measurement of Income Inequality: A Class of Fuzzy Inequality Measures,”
Social Choice and Welfare
12 (1995); L. Casini and I. Bernetti, “Environment, Sustainability, and Sen’s Theory,”
Notizie di Politeia
(1996; special volume); among other contributions.

44.
The relevance of the capability perspective in many different fields has been well explored, inter alia, in a number of doctoral dissertations done at Harvard that I have been privileged to supervise, in particular: A. K. Shiva Kumar, “Maternal Capabilities and Child Survival in Low-Income Regions” (1992); Jonathan R. Cohen, “On Reasoned Choice” (1993); Stephan J. Klasen, “Gender, Inequality and Survival: Excess Female Mortality—Past and Present” (1994); Felicia Marie Knaul, “Young Workers, Street Life, and Gender: The Effects of Education and Work Experience on Earnings in Colombia” (1995); Karl W. Lauterbach, “Justice and the Functions of Health Care” (1995); Remigius Henricus Oosterdorp, “Adam Smith, Social Norms and Economic Behavior” (1995); Anthony Simon Laden, “Constructing Shared Wills: Deliberative Liberalism and the Politics of Identity” (1996); Douglas Hicks, “Inequality Matters” (1998); Jennifer Prah Ruger, “Aristotelian Justice and Health Policy: Capability and Incompletely Theorized Agreements” (1998); Sousan Abadian, “From Wasteland to Homeland: Trauma and the Renewal of Indigenous Peoples and Their Communities” (1999).

45.
See the rather extensive literature on this, referred to in my
On Economic Inequality
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, expanded edition, 1997), with a substantial annex jointly written with James Foster. See also the references given in notes 38–44, above, and also Haidar A. Khan,
Technology, Development and Democracy
(Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 1998); Nancy Folbre, “A Time (Use Survey) for Every Purpose: Non-market Work and the Production of Human Capabilities,” mimeographed, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1997; Frank Ackerman et al.,
Human Well-Being and Economic Goals;
Felton Earls and Maya Carlson, “Adolescents as Collaborators: In Search of Well-Being,” mimeographed, Harvard University, 1998; David Crocker and Toby Linden, eds.,
Ethics of Consumption
(New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); among other writings.

46.
This approach is called “elementary evaluation” of the capability set; the nature and scope of elementary evaluation is discussed in my
Commodities and Capabilities
(1985). See also G. A. Cohen’s argument for what he calls “midfare,” in “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,”
Ethics
99 (1989); “Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods and Capabilities” (1990); and
Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See Richard Arneson, “Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare,”
Philosophical Studies
56 (1989), and “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs
19 (1990).

47.
These issues have been discussed extensively in my
Freedom, Rationality and Social Choice
(forthcoming). See also Tjalling C. Koopmans, “On Flexibility of Future Preference,” in
Human Judgments and Optimality
, edited by M. W. Shelley (New York: Wiley, 1964); David Kreps, “A Representation Theorem for ‘Preference for Flexibility,’ ”
Econometrica
47 (1979); Peter Jones and Robert Sugden, “Evaluating Choice,”
International Review of Law and Economics
2 (1982); James Foster, “Notes on Effective Freedom,” mimeographed, Vanderbilt University, presented at the Stanford Workshop on Economic Theories of Inequality, sponsored by the
MacArthur Foundation, March 11–13, 1993; Kenneth J. Arrow, “A Note on Freedom and Flexibility,” in
Choice, Welfare and Development
, edited by Basu, Pattanaik and Suzumura (1995); Robert Sugden, “The Metric of Opportunity,” Discussion Paper 9610, Economics Research Centre, University of East Anglia, 1996.

48.
On this see my
Commodities and Capabilities
(1985) and “Welfare, Preference, and Freedom,”
Journal of Econometrics
50 (1991). On various proposals on assessing the extent of “freedom,” see also David Kreps, “A Representation Theorem for ‘Preference for Flexibility’ ” (1979); Patrick Suppes, “Maximizing Freedom of Decision: An Axiomatic Analysis,” in
Arrow and the Foundations of Economic Policy
, edited by G. R. Feiwel (London: Macmillan, 1987); P. K. Pattanaik and Y. Xu, “On Ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice,”
Recherches Economiques de Louvain
56 (1990); James Foster, “Notes on Effective Freedom” (1993); Kenneth J. Arrow, “A Note on Freedom and Flexibility,” in
Choice, Welfare and Development
, edited by Basu, Pattanaik and Suzumura (1995); Carmen Herrero, “Capabilities and Utilities”; Clemens Puppe, “Freedom, Choice, and Rational Decisions,”
Social Choice and Welfare
12 (1995); among other contributions.