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In
Defence of Amartya Sen
Ingrid Robeyns (University of
Amsterdam, Netherlands)
© Copyright 2002
Ingrid Robeyns
In Issue 15 of
the Post-Autistic Economics Review, Emmanuelle Benicourt (2002) argues that Amartya Sen’s capability
approach remains “undeniably neoclassical”, and is “just a variation of
standard microeconomics”. She
also categorizes Sen as a traditional mainstream
economist. I wish to explain why I believe that these views are
fundamentally mistaken.
The capability approach reconsidered
Sen’s capability approach has its roots both in
welfare economics (Sen 1985, 1987), where it was
the logical extension of his earlier work on the informational poverty of
utilitarian calculus (e.g. Sen 1979), as well as
in the philosophical literature on inequality (1980), where it was
proposed as an alternative to both the utilitarian and the resourcist paradigms. The capability approach
advocates that in making evaluations of well-being or policies, we focus
on what people can do and be, instead of exclusively on their mental
states (utilitarianism) or on the goods that they have at their disposal
(resourcism). Over time, Sen and others have extended the scope of the
capability approach to study such divers issues as development and
development ethics (Gasper 1997, Sen 1999), the
evaluation of small-scale NGO-projects (Alkire
2002), eating disorders and famines (Lavaque-Manty 2001), unemployment and inactivity
(Burchardt 2002), gender inequality in western
societies (Robeyns 2002), to mention just a few.
At this moment PhD students are using the capability framework to study
topics such as well-being of disabled people, environmental law and
climate change, and the impact of a financial crisis on people’s
well-being. The Human Development Report, which is currently (one
of) the strongest alternative frameworks to the neoliberalist “Washington consensus”, is largely based
on the normative foundations of Sen’s capability
approach. In other words, the capability approach has gradually developed
into a paradigm, which moves between and beyond existing
disciplines, and which is applied in many more domains than only welfare
economics or liberal philosophy.
Is the capability approach just mainstream
economics?
Does the
capability approach make a difference with a standard mainstream economic
analysis of these issues? I think that the existing work in the capability
paradigm strongly suggest that it does. Some examples can
illustrate this.
Sabina Alkire (2002) showed, based on fieldwork in Pakistan,
that a cost-benefit evaluation that only focuses on material (financial)
change, will not capture the changes in a number of important
capabilities, such as self-respect. NGO projects that are not viable from
a narrow economistic point of view may lead to
many non-material beneficial changes in poor people’s lives.
Tania Burchardt (2002) developed a method to measure a
person’s capability for employment, instead of their achieved
functioning (thus their real opportunity to hold a job, instead of the
job-holding itself). By applying that method to British panel data, she
can empirically distinguish between those who do not hold a job because
they do not have a real opportunity to hold one, and those who do not hold
a job although they could have one if they wished so. As Burchardt concludes, measuring employment capability
would be more adequate than relying upon standard unemployment
statistics.
In my own
PhD-dissertation (Robeyns 2002), I first
theoretically analysed (and empirically illustrated) why mainstream
economics is fundamentally unsuited to study over-all gender inequality in
well-being. A capability perspective, in contrast, allows us to see
ambiguities and complexities that a pure utility- or income based analysis
cannot reveal. For example, while women in western societies are worse off
than men in many dimensions, there are also strong suggestions that men
fare worse with respect to interpersonal relations and social support.
‘Emancipation’ then becomes much less an issue of getting women into jobs,
but more radically about abolishing gender as we know
it.
Reinventing the wheel?
Of course, it
is often argued that ultimately the capability approach is doing the work
that sociologists and other social scientists have been doing for ages. I
agree that much of the work that is done in other social sciences is very
similar to analyses that are done in the capability framework. However, a
crucial distinction is that the capability approach gives a consistent
normative framework to place these scattered studies, thus providing a
sort of theoretical umbrella for existing empirical work. Moreover, the
capability approach makes it theoretically very clear how different
dimensions, such as commodities, observable outcomes and unobservable
opportunities are related. Empirical and theoretical work, or micro and
macro work, thus become much more connected. In addition, because of its
inter- or post-disciplinary character, the capability approach offers a
framework in which scholars and policy makers from different disciplines
can easily meet.
This inter-
or post-disciplinary character of the capability approach is one of its
most interesting aspects. In my opinion, most fields in economics are more
connected to related fields in other social sciences or the humanities,
than to other fields in economics. The capability approach offers a
paradigm for those utopian idealists who are dreaming of breaking down the
walls between the disciplines and to do research and teaching based on
topics and links between fields, instead of disciplinary assumptions and
methodologies.
Of course,
all this does not imply that the capability approach cannot substantially
be improved or refined, or that it is completely ready to deliver;
therefore much more work needs to be done – work that is currently
undertaken by scholars across the disciplines, including many economists.
Sen’s support for economists
outside the neoclassical mainstream
Amartya Sen’s work is
extremely wide-ranging. Some of his work might be labelled mainstream-like
because of its highly mathematical character. But few of these articles
model behaviour; instead, most are about measurement or social choice. I
doubt that this work should even be labelled neoclassical, because Sen has criticised many core neoclassical assumptions,
like exclusively self-interested behaviour or the dogma of optimisation.
In addition, Sen has written scores of articles
that are definitely non-mainstream.
And although he has spoken of himself as a “mainstream” economist,
he has added that for him that mainstream is economics in the tradition of
Joan Robinson, Marx, Kaldor and so forth. Thus, when Sen calls himself a mainstream economist, he is trying
to rescue economics from the narrow-minded, imperialist discipline that it
has become.
I think we
must make a firm distinction between an economist who is a
traditional mainstream economist, and those who, from time to time, use
neoclassical mainstream tools. Moreover, we should not fear or
condemn economists who use mainstream tools (1) if they have a positive
encouraging attitude towards non-neoclasscial
economists, and (2) if they do not try to dominate them, for example, by
only giving jobs to mainstream economists or by refusing on methodological
grounds to publish articles of other persuasions. Sen cannot be accused of any of this. Sen has done much to make economics more inclusive for
economists with non-traditional views, and has given much personal support
to such economists and their organisations (see also Fine 2001). He is,
for example, a patron of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, and
has given much support to the International Association for Feminist
Economics and its journal. On a personal note I want to add
that when I was his PhD-student he actively encouraged me to do what I
believed in, without being straightjacket by disciplinary or
methodological requirements – a situation that many contemporary economics
PhD students can only dream of.
Using
Sen’s work to develop an alternative
economics
In recent
months, several authors in the Post-Autistic Economics Review have argued that we need to focus
our attention on trying to develop an alternative economics. I believe
that much of the constructive work that has to be done can potentially
benefit from Sen’s work. Or, to use Ben
Fine’s
(2001: 12) words:
“[Sen] has not been captured by economics imperialism
and, unlike its practitioners, he opens and is open to debate across key
issues. The contrast with mainstream economics is sharp, where the
language let alone the ideas necessary for a genuine political economy of
capitalism are precluded by its reductionism. Ultimately, the nature and
extent of Sen’s lasting contribution will depend
upon taking his work forward critically rather than allowing it to be
captured and transformed by the dismal science. Political economy may not
always be able to stand on Sen’s shoulders in
the coming period, but he certainly provides many weapons in addressing
the social, the macro, the material, and the cultural in the intellectual
battles that lie ahead in defining the “economic” for social science.”
Indeed, it would be a
capital mistake not to regard Sen and his work
as an ally in our struggle to open up economics, even if Sen himself prefers not to jump on the barricades, but
to provide us with some fundamental concepts and tools that can be used to
provide the hard-needed alternative.
References
Alkire, Sabina (2002). Valuing Freedoms. Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction,
Oxford University
Press.
Emmanuelle Benicourt, “Is Amartya
Sen a Post-Autistic Economist?”,
post-autistic
economics review,
issue no.
15,
September 4, 2002, article 4. http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue15.htm
Burchardt, Tania (2002).
“Constraint and Opportunity: Women’s Employment in Britain”, paper
presented at the
conference on
promoting women’s capabilities, Cambridge, 9-10 September 2002.
Fine,
Ben (2001). “Amartya Sen: A Partial and Personal Appreciation”, London,
SOAS: CDPR Discussion
Paper
1601.
Gasper, Des (1997), “Sen’s
Capability Approach and Nussbaum’s Capability Ethics”, Journal of
International
Development,
9/2,
281-302.
Lavaque-Manty Myka (2001) “Food, Functioning and Justice: From
Famines to Eating Disorders”, Journal of
Political Philosophy, 9/2 150-167.
Robeyns, Ingrid (2002), Gender Inequality. A
Capability Perspective. PhD-thesis, Cambridge University.
Sen, Amartya (1979)
“Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: What’s wrong with Welfare
Economics?”,
Economic Journal, 89, pp. 537-558.
____ (1980) “Equality
of What?” in: S. McMurrin (ed.) Tanner
lectures on Human Values, Vol 1, Cambridge
University Press.
____ (1985). Commodities and
Capabilities, Amsterdam, North Holland.
____ (1987). The Standard of Living, Cambridge University
Press.
____ (1999) Development as Freedom. Knopf
publishers.
Ingrid
Robeyns
(irobeyns@fmg.uva.nl) was one of the authors of the Cambridge 27 proposal,
“Opening Up Economics”. She is now a post-doctoral research fellow at the
University of Amsterdam, working on the capability approach and the
welfare state.
_______________________
SUGGESTED
CITATION:
Ingrid
Robeyns,
“In Defence of Amartya Sen, post-autistic
economics review, issue
no. 17, December 4, 2002, article 5.. http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue17/Robeyns17.htm
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