The capability community has often called for the publication of a handbook on the capability approach. As the editors note in their general introduction (pp. 1–3), the capability approach has its roots in Amartya Sen's Tanner Lecture on ‘Equality of What?’, which introduced the notion of capabilities as an alternative measure of well-being to utility, subjective welfare, resources, and public goods. Since then, the capability literature has grown exponentially in volume, status, and influence, in the process inspiring important policy frameworks, such as the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index. It is thus surprising that it has taken so long to publish a handbook on the capability approach. The Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach therefore presents a landmark in this regard and in the history of the scholarship on the capability approach, which in its editors and contributors draws on significant expertise on the capability approach.
Yet, important questions remain about whether a handbook of the capability approach is really needed and, if so, whether it would fulfil the needs of the capability community. The Handbook is structured in three main parts. The first part looks at some of the philosophical debates with which capability scholars engage, including differences between the capability approach and other measures of well-being, such as utilitarianism (L. W. Sumner), resourcism (Ilse Oosterlaken), and Rawlsianism (Henry S. Richardson), the question of how to select a list of capabilities (Rutger Claassen), and the roles of political liberalism and individualism in the capability approach (Richard Arneson and Solava Ibrahim, respectively). The second part of the Handbook is mainly aimed at capability scholars who are interested in employing the capability approach to empirical measurements and studies and provides discussion of a range of methodologies and methodological issues. The third part focuses on the application of the capability approach to particular policy issues, such as education (Melanie Walker) and children's well-being (Mario Biggeri), disability (Lorella Terzi) and social exclusion (Jonathan Wolff), income inequality (Rolph van der Hoeven), human rights (Polly Vizard), and religion (Séverine Deneulin and Augusto Zampini-Davies).
Philosophers in general, and readers of Utilitas in particular, would find most value in the first and third parts. A particular contribution of the first part of the Handbook is the in-depth examinations of the historical philosophical foundations of the capability approach found in the chapters of Martha C. Nussbaum, David Leopold, and David Weinstein – something that has been sorely lacking since Vivian Walsh's 2003 essay ‘Sen after Putnam’ – although one can question whether three chapters (four, if Luiginio Bruni's chapter on the legacy of Adam Smith and the Cambridge tradition in Sen's work is included) on this are needed. Richard Arneson's chapter provides a strong rebuttal of Nussbaum's argument that the capability approach is, or should be, committed to political liberalism.
However, there is throughout a lack of engagement with recent developments in the capability literature, in particular, Ingrid Robeyns's modular view of the capability approach as presented in her book Well-Being, Freedom, and Social Justice (2017). In her book, Robeyns identifies a core of claims that any capability theory should be committed to, ranging from the commitment to conceptualize well-being in terms of capabilities and/or functionings to the commitment to treat each person as an end. In addition to this core, capability theorists can make optional commitments, such as the purpose of one's capability theory, its stances on human diversity and agency, what structural constraints to take into account, how to weigh different well-being dimensions against each other, and what additional normative principles and concerns to take into account. The biggest consequence of Robeyns's modular framework is that we should no longer consider Sen's and Nussbaum's theories as constitutive of the capability approach; rather these are merely more specific (albeit, highly influential) capability theories on par with other capability theories.
By neglecting to engage with this alternative way of conceptualizing the capability approach as a framework for ‘assembling’ vastly different, more specific capability theories by making different modular choices, the Handbook gives an outdated view of the capability approach in which we need to analyse the works of Sen and Nussbaum in order to understand the capability approach. While the amount of time it takes to put together a work of this size and stature may account for these issues of not engaging with more recent contributions and should therefore be acknowledged, it also means that the reader is offered a handbook that is outdated at the point of publication and where the chapters that analyse Sen's and Nussbaum's works, while interesting and highly illuminating, no longer provide an analysis of the capability approach as such, but only of Sen's and Nussbaum's particular capability theories.
Moreover, it entails that some of the debates, which the Handbook treats as central to our understanding and application of the capability approach, are no longer concerned with how we should understand and conceptualize the core of the capability approach. For example, Arneson's discussion of political liberalism versus political perfectionism is relegated to being on the level of developing specific capability theories rather than about how to conceptualize the normative commitments of the capability approach as such. That is, following from Robeyns's modular view, it is possible to have both a capability theory that is committed to political liberalism (say, Nussbaum's) and another capability theory that is committed to political perfectionism. Likewise, in addition, some of the individual chapters neglect to take into account recent literature. Claassen's chapter, for example, fails to engage with some of the literature on how to select capabilities and how to bridge the supposed divide between procedural and substantive methods.
The third part of the book, meanwhile, does a good job of rounding up the various policy applications of the capability approach. Readers looking to get an overview of the capability literature within their specific research topic would do well to begin here. That said, some arguably prominent topics within the capability literature are absent from this part of the Handbook. Many Indigenous scholars, for example, have argued that the capability approach provides the preferred framework for conceptualizing Indigenous rights and calls for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in the capability literature have in recent years seen engagements with Indigenous and non-Western philosophies, such as Ubuntu, Māori philosophy, and Buen Vivir. Yet, although Nussbaum's chapter has a section on the non-Western philosophical influences of the capability approach, there is no dedicated chapter on Indigenous rights, non-Western philosophies, and the capability approach. The most egregious oversight, however, is the lack of discussion of gender inequality and justice and feminist philosophy (beyond Stephan Klasen's chapter on how to measure gender inequality), especially given its long history of prominence within the capability approach. A contribution from a leading authority on gender justice and the capability approach, such as Robeyns or Serene Khader, is sorely lacking.
In addition, although it should be acknowledged that a handbook cannot do everything, the editors missed an opportunity to make a novel contribution by not engaging with some of the underdeveloped and emerging topics within the capability literature. For example, an interesting, yet underdeveloped, topic within the capability literature to include would have been animal ethics and the rights of animals and other non-human entities – something which Nussbaum has been at the forefront of developing. Likewise, it would have been interesting to hear how the capability approach can be applied within, for example, the philosophy of technology and topics like artificial intelligence and surveillance, as well as within business and professional ethics and the rights of employees. There have been contributions on all of these topics in recent years and not including some of the authors of these is a missed opportunity to advance the literature on the capability approach.
So, who is this Handbook for? There are two potential readerships. First, there are scholars who are new to the capability approach and are looking to engage with and learn more about capability themes concepts. Second, there are established capability scholars, who are interested in reading about the latest developments within their particular field of capability studies. The Handbook offers something for both of these readerships.
For scholars already familiar with the capability approach, particular advancements and novel contributions to the capability literature are Nussbaum's chapter (on the philosophical history of the capability approach, including non-Western philosophy); Arneson's chapter on political liberalism and political perfectionism; and Solava Ibrahim's discussion of the role of collectivities in expanding capabilities. Readers new to the capability approach, meanwhile, might find useful introductions to the capability approach and particular concepts and debates in Oosterlaken's and Richardson's chapters dealing, respectively, with capabilities as an alternative measure to resources and Rawlsian primary goods and Claassen's chapter on how to select a list of capabilities, while readers interested in particular policy applications will find valuable the chapters in the third part of the Handbook. Readers of Utilitas would probably also be interested in Sumner's chapter on J. S. Mill and Amartya Sen.
However, the attempt to appeal to both readerships is also the main weakness of the Handbook. On the one hand, many of the chapters rely on a background knowledge of the capability approach and the Handbook does not offer an introduction to the capability approach and its core concepts, such as the difference between capabilities and functionings; the idea of ‘doings’ and ‘beings’; the conceptualization of capabilities as real or substantive freedoms to do or be certain things; the notion of conversion factors and how they influence what people can do or be; the notions of and differences between agency and well-being freedoms and achievements; and the roles of human diversity and agency in the capability approach. The result is that some new readers might not fully grasp nuances which are apparent to capability scholars. On the other hand, many of the chapters do not introduce or engage sufficiently with new topics within the capability approach to appeal to veteran capability scholars. For example, capability scholars working on disability, education, or human rights would probably not find much new in the respective chapters of Terzi, Walker, and Vizard, all three of whom have published extensively on these topics in the past. Established capability scholars in these areas are likely to already be familiar with the work being done in these areas.
As a consequence, new readers and established capability scholars alike might be better served by picking up other (edited) volumes on the capability approach. For example, The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures, and Applications edited by Flavio Comim, Mozaffar Qizilbash and Sabina Alkire and the three chapters on the capability approach in Christopher Morris’s Amartya Sen both provide better introductions to the capability approach and its core concepts than the Handbook, while Robeyns's aforementioned book provides a novel re-examination of how the capability approach should be conceptualized.
Meanwhile, scholars already familiar with the capability approach – and, indeed, new readers who wish to apply the capability approach to their specific field of research – might be better served with picking out some of the wealth of specialized (edited as well as single-authored) volumes that engage with specific topics from a capability perspective, such as education (e.g. Melanie Walker and Elaine Unterhalter's Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education); gender (e.g. Bina Agarwal, Jane Humphries, and Ingrid Robeyns's Capabilities, Freedom, and Equality: Amartya Sen's Work from a Gender Perspective and Flavio Comim and Martha Nussbaum's Capabilities, Gender, Equality: Towards Fundamental Entitlements); human development (e.g. Severine Deneulin and Lila Shahani's An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach); children's well-being (e.g. Mario Biggeri, Jerome Ballet, and Flavio Comim's Children and the Capability Approach and Caroline Hart, Mario Biggeri, and Bernhard Babbic's Agency and Participation in Childhood and Youth: International Applications of the Capability Approach in Schools and Beyond); climate change (e.g. Breena Holland's Allocating the Earth: A Distributional Framework for Protecting Capabilities in Environmental Law and Policy); health justice (e.g. Sridhar Venkatapuram's Health Justice: An Argument from the Capability Approach and Jennifer Prah Ruger's Health and Social Justice); disabilities (e.g. Christopher A. Riddle's Disability and Justice: The Capabilities Approach in Practice); and deliberative democracy (e.g. David Crocker's Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy). And of course, the most recent scholarly literature can be found in The Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, which publishes on all aspects of the capability approach.
To sum up, although the Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach satisfies the need for a dedicated handbook and offers several new insights that contribute to the understanding of the capability approach, it is difficult to pinpoint the gap in the capability literature that it fills. That said, both new and established capability scholars might find value in some of the individual chapters of the Handbook depending on their research interests. In the end, the Handbook is a bit like those supermarket-bought mozzarella balls that come wrapped in plastic: safe, inoffensive, and likely to have a broad appeal. However, for those bothering to look, there are alternatives out there with more depth and flavour.
