How can we work to overcome unjust societies and achieve a better distribution of opportunities to flourish? How is human development best fostered? How can human development be revitalised in betteroff countries where the role of social welfare is under scrutiny? These are some questions this volume aims to answer by analysing policies and conceptualising coherent and systematic strategies at the local, national and international level, and what seems possible in real-world contexts. We consider not just policy but also human development and capabilities expansion – ‘picking out valuable ways of being and doing’ – as the ‘final ends’ of responsible policy...

Four men stand in four different corners of a room, each holding a gun. They all set their sights on each other and none of them can turn down his gun. They are at a deadlock in a four-way standoff.

Then, suddenly, a wounded little bird flies down and falls right in the middle of the four men. Strangely, its faint breath travels across their guns and is perceived clearly on their hands. At this moment, the four men all lower their guns, deeply appreciating the fact that they have escaped the worst situation at the last minute.

Can we...

For the past 15 years, there has been a coordinated effort by the international community to track countries’ progress for addressing extreme poverty, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion while promoting gender equality, education and environmental sustainability, in a quantifiable manner or ‘target’ as framed by the Millennium Declaration Goals – MDGs. However millions of people have been left behind by such ‘progress’. Many live in entrenched poverty, rising inequality and face discrimination. This is exacerbated when looking at marginalised groups: the old, people with disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities, and in particular women and girls, and sexual minorities (Stuart...

Public policy addressing gender issues in India started with a constitutional declaration in 1950: Article 15(1) of the Fundamental Rights of Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Furthermore, Article 15(3) empowers the state to take affirmative actions in favour of women. These measures, however, did not ensure gender equality, as strong socio-cultural factors and patriarchy resulted in a greater gender gap in access to opportunities. This gap could be observed in all capabilityenhancing inputs across the country. According to the 2011 census, the gap in the literacy rate of male and...

Central America is a region well known for its conflicts, poverty and exclusion. Most of the Central American population lives below the national poverty threshold, but the main problem of the region is inequality and exclusion. Although some Central American countries are the poorest in Latin American, their human development indicators reflect the Latin American average and far exceed South Asian and African figures. Besides, indicators are heterogeneous among the members of the Central American Integration System (or SICA, to use the acronym for its Spanish name)¹ on which this chapter focuses.

The struggle against poverty and concern for human...

Latin America is the world’s most urbanised continent, with 80% of its population living in urban areas. A third of Latin Americans live in cities with more than one million people (CEPAL, 2014). Argentina does not escape this Latin American characteristic: about 90% of its population is urban, and a third of its overall population – about 15 million of its 45 million inhabitants – is concentrated in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires.

Latin America has also long been the most unequal continent (Cornia, 2014; Lopez-Calva et al. 2015), and its cities mirror that inequality. In 2010, a quarter of the...

This chapter reports on research undertaken to apply the capabilities approach to cultural policymaking in New York City. The authors used previous work in Philadelphia to develop a conceptualisation of social wellbeing based on a multidimensional phenomenon. The project grows out of a belief that cultural engagement is a core capability in its own right. Furthermore, the chapter argues that cultural engagement can facilitate the achievement of other capabilities, what Wolff and De-Shalit (2007) characterise as ‘fertile functionings’. Finally, the chapter suggests two amendments to the conceptualisation of capability-promoting policy: one, to consider the role of immediate social context – that...

By adopting the capability approach as a basic framework to analyse social phenomena, this chapter disentangles the role of third sector associations at the local level in increasing social innovative processes by enabling the integration of groups otherwise excluded from the labour market (for example, disadvantaged young people). This participatory research at the micro level focused on two urban areas Giambellino in Milan and Scampia in Naples where the most disadvantaged among the young population are concentrated. In these areas, the unemployed rates are higher than elsewhere in Italy.

In this chapter, we argue that social innovation can be produced...

In recent years, scholars and human rights agencies have been emphasising the importance of seeing civil and political rights and economic and social rights as closely related and in fact integrated (Carpenter, 2009; UN, 2011¹). In South Africa, it is clear that the achievement of political rights has not been sufficient to bring about either comprehensive human development or redress in terms of social and economic inequality.

The anti-apartheid revolutionary and former South African president Nelson Mandela had the following to say on an integrated view of different human rights:

Today, when we talk of human rights we understand that...

The capability approach (CA) has been used to assess individual wellbeing and the evaluation of social arrangements, and to develop policies and practices to effect social change. In recent years, the CA has gained attention and influence in a broad number of public policy areas and across academic disciplines. This chapter explores child protection policy and practice in England, an area of social policy that has hitherto received very limited analysis from the perspective of the CA. It presents an overview of child protection policies and practices, their historical development and their current manifestation in contemporary England, where the political...

Policy is focused on the identification of actual or anticipated problems and on responses to those problems. It refers to ‘the principles that govern action about means as well as ends and it, therefore, implies change: changing situations, systems, practices, behaviour’ (Titmuss, 1974, p 138). Social policy, which is the focus of this chapter, can be defined as ‘the actions taken within a society to develop and deliver services for people in order to meet their needs for welfare and wellbeing’ (Alcock, 2008, p 2). Determining the actions that should be taken to enhance welfare and wellbeing is by no...

This chapter proposes an ethical model of inclusion that views inclusion as social participation. It thus opposes ideas of inclusion such as those commonly found in systems theory, for example, where it is understood in purely instrumental-functional terms and on a societal level (Luhmann, 1984; Stichweh, 2009). From the perspective of systems theory, inclusion is merely a binary question of being ‘in’ or ‘out’. There are no processes of inclusion and no communities as interpersonal associations that include or exclude. This chapter aims to offer an alternative to this vision, arguing that we can refine our understanding of what we...

This chapter endeavours to explore the potential of a capabilitypromoting policy in early childhood education (ECE). More specifically, reference to Martha Nussbaum’s list of basic human capabilities, developed as a relatively definite standard of minimal justice, and an adequate frame for capability-promoting policy in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and especially in the curriculum development will be considered (Richardson, 2015). These central capabilities, defined as the minimum human entitlement, are deeply rooted in the normative principles that govern ECE, and provide a general framework for policymaking and policy evaluation.

The significance of ECE is generally accepted and many countries are exploring...

Policies that support human development among young people with special education needs (SEN) and other young people on the edge of the society are the main focus of this chapter. This will be addressed through the case of a promising policy from Denmark that entitles all young people to upper secondary education regardless of their special educational needs or disability. In order to set the scene for this policy, let me briefly describe the current situation and the historical development in this regard. According to Martha Nussbaum’s central list of capabilities, the benchmark for measuring the freedom or capability for...

Education is clearly an appropriate context for discussing the potential of capability-promoting policies. Certainly, in keeping with their explicit commitment to abstraction, Nussbaum (2000) and Sen (1999) do not necessarily make reference either to education or other policy fields. However, the United Nations Development Programme has included education in its Human Development Index since the early 1990s. Moreover, for the past decade, a growing literature has been discussing the underlying implications of the Education for All (EFA) goals for human capabilities. This chapter draws on the human capabilities approach in order to appraise to what extent an array of public...

While the capabilities approach is a convincing conception that attempts to theoretically reconcile allegedly competing demands associated with the fundamental principles of equality, recognition, welfare, liberty and human dignity, there is still surprisingly little research on capabilitypromoting policies in real-life contexts. The aspiration of this book has been to contribute to closing this gap. Some of the contributions have thus examined how a human development approach has been operationalised and these chapters assess the possibilities, obstacles and dilemmas of this approach when put into practice. In doing so, the contributions in this volume clearly demonstrate that the perspective of the...