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Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach
Abstract
If a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities , however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how—by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy—we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives.
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“For example, perspectives such as Occupational Justice (90) and the Capabilities Framework (91, 92) ground an understanding of what people can do and be in the structural and contextual conditions that support or restrict possibilities for doing, and thereby could locate time use scholarship and practice in the realm of social justice.”
From Contributions of a time use perspective in community mental health practice: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [92]
In the citing paper
“Sen's (1999) and Nussbaum's (2011) capability approach provides a normative framework for evaluating how Swaraj's leadership expanded substantive freedoms and opportunities for women in political life and beyond.”
From Transcending Boundaries: Sushma Swaraj and the Multidimensional Paradigm of Women's Empowerment in Political Leadership (2025) · cites this paper as Nussbaum's (2011)
In the citing paper
“Social justice requires equal rights through equitable access to resources and opportunities, especially for people living in poverty or with disability, or who are marginalized in various ways 41,42 .”
From Ethical challenges in contemporary psychiatry: an overview and an appraisal of possible strategies and research needs (2024) · cites this paper as [42]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Nussbaum, M. C.
- Corresponding author
- Nussbaum, Martha C.
- Venue
- Harvard University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Published
- 2011-12-31
- OpenAlex
- W4240580964
- Cited by
- 5,664
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 851 · 2025: 597 · 2024: 405 · 2023: 466 · 2022: 391 · 2021: 451 · 2020: 404 · 2019: 434 · 2018: 319 · 2017: 270 · 2016: 236 · 2015: 159 · 2014: 452 · 2013: 135 · 2012: 74
- FWCI
- 269.84
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Harvard University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Income, Poverty, and Inequality
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Philosophy and Ethics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Human Rights and Development
- Keywords
- capability approach, human development, basic needs, human dignity, self-respect, development theory, economic indicators, justice, non-human animals, cultural differences, personal narrative, inequality, Martha Nussbaum
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