Two trends, each a generation in the making, have affected the recent study of poverty and inequality. In 1979, Amartya Sen asked “Equality of What?” in his Tanner Lecture at Stanford University. There, and in numerous articles and books since, Sen and his collaborators developed a rich account of poverty, inequality, and of human well-being more generally considered. This work, though its original basis was in the classical political economy of subsistence and human freedom, grew to be buttressed by a wide range of ethical, social, and other economic matters. In so doing, it encouraged the development of the second trend, the greater interweaving of developments in the different social sciences and in political and philosophical theory that might be brought to bear on the consideration of poverty and inequality. There has come to be a greater understanding by economists, sociologists, political theorists, and philosophers of what they might learn from one another.
These two edited volumes reflect these tendencies in different ways and in them Sen's approach plays a central role. In Poverty and Inequality, David Grusky, a sociologist, and Ravi Kanbur, an economist, bring together “an all-star cast of economists, sociologists, and philosophers and [ask] them to weigh in on the conceptual challenges that must be met in devising new approaches to measuring and understanding inequality and poverty” (p. xi). In Capabilities Equality, Alexander Kaufman, a philosopher, has brought together a series of contributions that focus specifically on the elaboration and evaluation of Sen's work on the capability approach (CA).
Sen's approach arose from his criticism of views that see poverty or inequality assessed solely in terms of income or welfare. While income may be necessary to achieving well-being, it is only a means, and people and societies differ in the capacity to convert income or commodities into valuable achievements. Welfarist approaches that emphasize utility or desire fulfillment also are defective, partly because the impact of the development process cannot fit neatly into a metric based on a single scale. Sen argues that people choose for reasons other than their own interest and that “happiness or desire fulfillment represents only one aspect of human existence” (Resources, Values and Development, 1984, p. 512). Importantly, social conditioning or adaptation to circumstances can sway perceptions of welfare or utility. Finally, the goal of utility maximization is to affect their satisfaction, a state of persons, and so discounts their agency and freedom. For these reasons, he champions another approach, one that emphasizes what people are able to do or be, which he calls their functionings. Capability is the freedom to achieve valuable functionings, which can be simple, such as escaping avoidable illness, or complex, such as being able to appear in public without shame.
Grusky and Kanbur start off their volume with a useful intellectual history of poverty and inequality assessment in economics and sociology. Their introduction, which ends by making a case for interdisciplinary research in this area, provides a useful scaffolding on which to place the contributions that follow. Amartya Sen's chapter uses the example of China's poverty reduction and inequality increase to argue that the CA allows one to capture important dimensions of the development experience that the income paradigm misses. Martha Nussbaum's chapter begins by stressing the commonality of her approach and Sen's, especially with regard to the special position of women, but proceeds to take Sen to task for his reluctance to a) assemble a list of capabilities a society ought to pursue and to b) define the minimum amounts of these that are compatible with justice. Nussbaum also argues for an Aristotelian rather than Kantian underpinning for the social contract tradition. In his very clear contribution, the economist Francois Bourguignon addresses the impasse in the development of the income approach to poverty and inequality: While the approach has been almost fully mastered, reduction of income poverty does not always reduce feelings of social exclusion. This points to the need for a richer approach that focuses on opportunities or capabilities: The challenge is to measure poverty in this multidimensional way that is still feasible. He argues that we currently fall well short of this goal but that there has been some progress, as well as prospects for more. While it is written from an economic standpoint, his chapter recognizes work in the sociology of exclusion, the topic of the next two chapters.
William Julius Wilson defends the use of the concept of “underclass,” a term he uses to encapsulate the jobless and socially isolated urban poor. He argues that it is not just income shortfalls but social isolation and weak attachment to labor markets that lead to a fuller understanding of the phenomena of poverty in the United States. Douglas Massey also focuses attention on the geography of urban poverty, pointing out patterns of residential segregation by race, thus reinforcing Wilson's contribution, though his concerns differ somewhat from Wilson's (p. 130). The last contributor to the Grusky-Kanbur volume, Martha Albertson Fineman, a legal scholar, criticizes philosophical, sociological, and economic approaches to the family, arguing that they all need to reconsider the way in which family is conceived, the better to understand poverty and inequality in the United States. The traditional family structure, she writes, is increasingly less common, and in it there is a differential sharing of the costs and benefits of the family enterprise.
Each of the authors makes an important contribution to the multidimensional understanding of poverty and inequality. But the authors differ significantly in their strategies, and any hope of a significant and novel collaboration across disciplines is not evidenced in the volume. Partly, this is because the first three chapters focus on international development and the last three (more sociological) chapters on the United States. The authors are more apt to defend their own positions than to incorporate insights from other approaches. Nevertheless, the individual contributions are notably clear and well written and encapsulate each particular approach well. The volume makes for important reading for the general scholar and for the graduate student who wishes to find out how poverty and inequality are treated in different fields.
Alexander Kaufman's book is more tightly focused on the adequacy of Sen's CA and is dominated by contributions by philosophers. The first part of this volume focuses on Nussbaum's elaboration of Sen's approach. Her chapter here, which is very close in content to her contribution to the Grusky-Kanbur volume, reprises her list of fundamental human capabilities and her view that “a society that does not guarantee these to all its citizens, at some appropriate threshold level, falls short of being a fully just society” (p. 51). Richard Arneson argues against the threshold view, saying that the moral importance of keeping each individual at a “good enough” level, regardless of other concerns, is not clear. The section ends with Kaufman responding to Arneson, arguing that the CA extends beyond a threshold view. But this debate remains inconclusive, with Kaufman concluding, “it is a question that deserves further examination” (p. 76). Part II addresses the relation of the CA to other types of egalitarian theory. In a subtle chapter, Peter Vallentyne argues that the CA is close to, though not the same as, an approach that gives priority to opportunity for well-being. Timothy Hinton considers the relation of Nussbaum's analysis (based on unequal economic and social circumstances) to a feminist analysis emphasizing relations of domination and subordination, arguing that each approach enriches the other. Kaufman closes this section by arguing for the distinctiveness of the CA from the opportunities account of G. A. Cohen. He argues convincingly not only that Sen's focus on achievement as well as freedom to achieve is coherent but also that it enriches egalitarian thought.
Part III moves from conceptual issues to those of implementation. In separate chapters, Victoria Kamsler and David Wasserman consider attempts to expand the CA to focus on environmental and disability issues, respectively. A reason Sen has hesitated to provide a list of important human capabilities is his view that such a list should be the outcome of democratic deliberation. Sabina Alkire and David Crocker, in complementary chapters, address this issue. Alkire reports on and evaluates interesting field work on participatory discussions that elicit common values and priorities, even in highly unequal communities. Crocker, in another substantial contribution, argues that the CA to international development can and should draw on aspects of thinking on deliberative democracy. Together, these chapters encourage a different way of arriving at capabilities than by listing them a priori.
Kaufman's volume is more demanding on the reader than the Grusky-Kanbur collection since it deals with unresolved and intricate recent debates. It is also more specialized, although the excellent introduction by Kaufman helps the reader who is new to the area. It should be valuable to those who are interested in exploring how the CA intersects with different areas of egalitarian and democratic thought.
