The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is expected to result in the launching of a process to devise a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2015. Whilst indicators are perceived to be a good vehicle of monitoring progress, currently there is no universally agreed method of measuring sustainable development. This thesis addresses this issue through assessing whether the capabilities approach can be adopted for a global framework in measuring sustainable development. In order to determine this, both theoretical and practical implications will have to be understood. The former is addressed through reviewing the compatibility between the key concepts of sustainable development and the capabilities approach. The latter is addressed through obtaining empirical evidence on the key drivers in selecting indicators via focus group discussions and a quantitative survey with key individuals involved in the Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) project in Malaysia. It was found that a weak conceptual basis can be attributed as the major challenge for establishing global sustainable development indicators. Whilst recognising that a range of mechanisms are required for operationalization, it was concluded that the capabilities approach provides a sound conceptual basis, framed on the basis of justice and equity in expanding and sustaining the capabilities of current and future generations to pursue their needs.

Most recent attempts at solving the Non-Identity Problem have focused on providing a deontological solution to the problem, often by giving special attention to rights. In this paper, I argue for a solution that focuses on highlighting the morally permissible second-personal reasons and claims that nonidentity victims may have. I use a natural marriage between a Kantian conceptualization of what it means to be free and equal—being one’s own master—and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to identify the rights that all individuals, current and future are assigned. I claim that these rights, or capabilities, are what all are entitled to master for themselves in the Kantian sense. I conclude with a solution that produces intuitively correct results and dissolves the nonidentity problem altogether.

Virginity Testing, a traditional Zulu pre-nuptial custom that determines the worth of a bride, has been resurrected in communities in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa as a response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The practice takes place during large community festivals when young girls have their genitals physically examined to determine whether they are virgins and results are made public. Supporters of the tradition claim that in fostering a value of chastity among its youth, it encourages abstinence from sexual intercourse which leads to a lower HIV infection rate and prevents the disease from spreading. Human rights activists disagree; Rather than slowing the spread of a disease, they argue, the practice instead endangers girls. Those who fail are often shunned and turn to prostitution, while those who pass may be exposed as potential targets for rape (due to a myth that says intercourse with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS). Despite a ban on the practice in 2005, the testing festivals continue, and are described by supporters as an important part of the preservation of Zulu culture. This thesis examines the ways in which human rights may be re-negotiated for young girls in Zulu communities while maintaining a respect for local culture. It moves beyond the traditional debate between relativism and universalism in order to propose solutions to rights violations in culturally diverse contexts by exploring ideas of inclusive human rights and capabilities theories.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.

Is open-mindedness necessary for intellectual well-being in education? To answer this question this thesis draws on Aristotle‟s virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. It is argued that in order to understand eudaimonia (well-being) it is necessary to understand phronesis. In this regard, it is implied that in order to understand well-being, it is necessary to understand virtue, thus, well-being needs virtue(s). Just as Aristotelian virtue ethics defends the necessity of virtue(s) for well-being, virtue epistemology defends the priority of intellectual virtues for intellectual well-being. Unlike epistemology, virtue epistemology focuses on how an individual can be a good informant through the cultivation of intellectual virtues. To this end, this thesis proposes an alternative regulative educative virtue epistemology for intellectual well-being in education. In this context, open-mindedness is examined as an intellectual virtue that secures and facilitates other virtues both for individual and collective well-being in education. Bringing together White‟s and Nussbaum‟s seemingly opposed approaches to well-being, this thesis argues that a better theory of well-being in education must be one that equally combines a collective subjective major-informed desire theory with an individual objective list account of well-being. This account of well-being implies a certain understanding of intellectual open-mindedness. Drawing on Wolff‟s and De-Shalit‟s novel ideas of „secure‟ and „fertile functioning‟ as well as on Roberts‟ and Wood‟s „intellectual functionings‟, this thesis proposes a genuine intellectual open-mindedness that is both well-informed, reasonable, and necessary to „secure‟ and „fertile‟ „intellectual functionings‟ for intellectual well-being in education. Throughout the discussion, the thesis asserts that particular attention needs to be paid to the well-being of student teachers. Although it is widely accepted that pupils‟ well-being is important, less attention has been given to teachers‟ well-being. This thesis argues that teachers‟ and pupils‟ well-being is inextricably connected and initial teacher education should focus on student teachers‟ intellectual well-being as they constitute the future teaching workforce. The implications of how this account of well-being might inform Scottish initial teacher education programmes is addressed.

Les usages de la catégorie de vulnérabilité se sont multipliés ces dernières années, dans le champ de la philosophie morale et politique, ainsi que dans le champ des sciences sociales. Partant de l’hypothèse selon laquelle ces usages signalent l’émergence d’une nouvelle conception du sujet, distincte de la conception qui sous-tend la tradition politique libérale mais aussi la tradition morale de l’autonomie comme maîtrise de soi, ce travail tente de cerner la signification de cette catégorie et d’analyser les implications éthiques et politiques d’une anthropologie du sujet vulnérable. Confrontant les conceptions de la vulnérabilité que l’on peut dégager des travaux de Martha Nussbaum, d’Axel Honneth et des théoriciennes du care telles que Carol Gilligan et Joan Tronto, il soutient que la catégorie de vulnérabilité doit être comprise comme une catégorie duale : d’un point de vue anthropologique, elle renvoie à la situation d’exposition et de dépendance dans laquelle se trouvent les sujets humains en tant que sujets incarnés et relationnels et signifie que l’autonomie qui leur est accessible dépend fondamentalement de la manière dont les autres se rapportent à eux ; d’un point de vue sociologique, elle désigne les effets subjectifs induits par des situations sociales dans lesquelles les sujets sont privés des conditions nécessaires au développement et au maintien de leur autonomie. Cette conception de la vulnérabilité est ensuite vérifiée négativement par le biais d’un examen des approches sociologiques de la vulnérabilité, plus particulièrement des sociologies de la désaffiliation, de la disqualification sociale et de la domination. Enfin, elle est mise au service d’un retour à la théorie normative dont l’enjeu est de dégager les principes et les institutions d’une société qui prendrait en compte la vulnérabilité des sujets dans sa double dimension. Dans ce cadre, nous soutenons que le néorépublicanisme de Philip Pettit peut, à condition d’intégrer les apports des théories du care et de la reconnaissance, permettre de poser les bases d’une politique de la vulnérabilité visant la promotion des conditions relationnelles et sociales de l’autonomie. / The notion of vulnerability has recently become central in contemporary moral and political philosophy and in contemporary sociology. This work starts from the assumption that this notion carries with it a new conception of the subject, distinct both from the liberal conception and from the conception promoted by the moral tradition that defines autonomy as self-mastery. In order to define the concept of vulnerability, we first compare the way Martha Nussbaum, Axel Honneth, and care theorists such as Carol Gilligan and Joan Tronto use that notion. This comparison leads us to develop a dual conception of vulnerability according to which vulnerability should be understood as an anthropological category and a sociological one: vulnerability primarily refers to the situation of exposition and dependence in which corporeal and relational subjects are necessarily placed; that we are vulnerable means that our autonomy is dependent on the way others treat us. But vulnerability can also refer to the subjective effects produced by social situations or social contexts that deprive the subject of the conditions that are necessary for the development of her autonomy. We then show that this conception can be confirmed by an analysis of the way sociology makes use of the notion. We focus on the sociology of disaffiliation, social disqualification and domination. Finally, we try to highlight the normative implications of our conception of vulnerability. We argue that neorepublicanism, as developed by Philip Pettit, can help us to define a politics of vulnerability committed to the promotion of the relational and social conditions of autonomy, if we rework it by including in it the major contributions of care ethics and recognition theory.

Adam Smith considered consumption the sole end and purpose of all production. Concerning the measurement of welfare, this requires a sound understanding of the connection between consumption and welfare. The consumerist conceptualization of this connection implies that the amount of consumption equals welfare and the level of production can be an indicator for welfare. The limits and problems of production measures are widely accepted. Yet, indicators like GDP remain the focus of mainstream economic theory and policy. We trace the origin of this lock-in back to the economic model of behaviour and the concept of agency in mainstream economics. The suggested alternative stems from literature about human needs in heterodox economics and psychology. This literature incorporates the relevance of social aspects and cultural change for welfare. It turns out that consumerism can be a threat to well-being and welfare rather than a requirement for it. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The word education comes from the latin educare meaning "drive out". Education, understood here as the act of educating, it can occur at school, interaction with colleagues or can be developed via the media. Until the nineteenth century, education was a privilege for the few, the intellectual formation was restricted elites and popular classes were indoctrinated in accordance with the interests of the elite. In the twentieth century, the progressive education and postmodern trace other purpose for education, not indoctrination but rather the formation of critical citizens who are able to understand the reality around them and transform it. The functions performed by education, according to the progressive pedagogical thought of Paulo Freire and postmodern and the reports of the UNESCO (2013, 2014) and by the UNDP (2015), forward this study to the analysis of education in space freedom. The Capability Approach crafted by Amartya Sen (1979a, 1985, 2010) focuses on the freedom that the individual must possess to perform the beings and doings it considers of value to your life, having the freedom to expand their set of freedoms. By adopting the Capability Approach as a theoretical framework this paper aims to provide answers the following question: what is the contribution of the Capability Approach in the analysis of the roles (instrumental and intrinsic) of education in the lives of individuals? The main objective of this study was to present education in the Capability Approach and explores the relevance of education not only as a tool for the expansion of human freedom but also as an important resource for their very existence, by allowing the individual to develop their judgment and discernment skills. The theoretical and bibliographic references used allowed to describe various aspects associated with access to education that strengthened the importance of analyzing education through the prism of human freedoms. Education not only improves the social and economic conditions of individuals, but contributes to its formation as a human being, aware of the reality around him, respect human diversity (racial, gender, cultural, religious, etc.), knowledgeable of their rights and duties, opinion leader. Education, formal and informal, makes the free individual to exercise control over your own life and achieve what he considers value for you (positive freedom), not only acts as an instrumental freedom, but rather as an intrinsic freedom by value which has in shaping the individual as a human being (substantive freedom). / A palavra educar vem do latim educare que significa conduzir para fora ou direcionar para fora . A educação, entendida aqui como o ato de educar, pode ocorrer na escola, na interação com colegas ou pode ser desenvolvida via meios de comunicação. Até o século XIX, a educação escolar era privilégio para poucos, a formação intelectual era restrita as elites e as classes populares eram doutrinadas de acordo com os interesses da elite. No século XX, a educação progressista e a pós-moderna traçam outra finalidade para o ensino, não mais a doutrinação e sim, a formação de cidadãos críticos que sejam capazes de compreender a realidade a sua volta e transformá-la. As funções desempenhadas pela educação, de acordo com o pensamento pedagógico progressista de Paulo Freire e pós-moderno e com os relatórios apresentados pela UNESCO (2013, 2014) e pela UNDP (2015), encaminham este estudo para a análise da educação no espaço da liberdade. A Abordagem das Capacitações trabalhada por Amartya Sen (1979a, 1985, 2010) focaliza a liberdade que o indivíduo deve possuir para realizar os beings and doings que considere de valor para a sua vida, ter a liberdade para expandir o seu conjunto de liberdades. Ao se adotar a Abordagem das Capacitações como referencial teórico este trabalho pretendeu responder o seguinte questionamento: qual a contribuição da Abordagem das Capacitações na análise dos papéis (instrumental e intrínseco) da educação para a vida dos indivíduos? O objetivo central do presente estudo foi apresentar a educação na Abordagem das Capacitações e explorar a relevância da educação não só como instrumento para a expansão da liberdade humana, mas também como um recurso importante pela sua própria existência, por permitir ao indivíduo desenvolver suas habilidades de julgamento e discernimento. O referencial teórico e bibliográfico utilizado permitiu descrever diversos aspectos associados ao acesso à educação que fortaleceram a importância de se analisar a educação sob o prisma das liberdades humanas. A educação não só melhora as condições sociais e econômicas dos indivíduos, mas colabora para a sua formação enquanto ser humano, consciente da realidade a sua volta, que respeita a diversidade humana (racial, de gênero, cultural, religiosa, etc.), conhecedor de seus direitos e deveres, formador de opinião. A educação, formal e informal, torna o indivíduo livre para exercer o controle sobre sua própria vida e realizar o que considera de valor para si (liberdade positiva), não atua somente como uma liberdade instrumental, mas principalmente, como uma liberdade intrínseca pelo valor que possui na formação do indivíduo enquanto ser humano (liberdade substantiva).

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The idea that the development of people's capabilities lies at the heart of all community and social development has gained support internationally over the past decades. This reflects a significant shift in community and society development thinking, addressing the broad spectrum of social upliftment, human rights and poverty alleviation needs that gained ground during the different historic economic phases of the past two centuries. Historically development thinking progressed from a centralised, structured and systemic approach as, for example, espoused by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, to Maynard Keynes’s more people-centred approach, and more specifically the Capability Approach advanced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. In the world of liberal democratic capitalism, the mainstream view of development holds that civil society is a key role player in both deepening democracy and enhancing forms of development through various programmes and practices. In turn, the professionalised Non-Governmental Organisations sector, as opposed to more localised community-based organisations or social movements, tends to receive most donor funding to deliver high impact interventions. In sum, the development of society’s capabilities relies significantly on NGOs to deliver capability enhancing services to the needy in society. A key consideration in development debates has been how to efficiently operationalise the development of capability enhancing activities based in the context of the Capability Approach, the focus of my study. This study recognises that NGOs are major delivery agents of development work, both in South Africa and internationally. Their operations focus on delivering quality impact on their beneficiary communities, and on raising funds to sustain their operations. The current methods to assess the impact of NGO operations, both by NGOs and their donors, primarily address past performance of the organisation in delivering external programmes as measured against the objectives stated in NGO concept and roll-out proposal documents. These assessments are customised for every NGO, making it impossible to standardise assessments for comparative and rating purposes and focus on external delivery. When problems are uncovered, this approach results in proposing corrective recommendations during or after completion of a funding round. This study argues that a gap exists in techniques to assess NGO internal performance to improve external delivery before and during NGO operations. Furthermore, it will contribute to assessing the merits of NGOs' internal capacity to deliver on the promises made in funding proposals - before and during NGO operations. In practice the assessment of an NGO for funding purposes currently consists of consideration of a project proposal in the form of a concept and roll-out document of what the organisation intends to achieve, accompanied by historic record data. The assessment of project roll-out focuses on the outputs claimed in the proposal document without paying too much attention to the NGOs internal organisational culture and capacity which is the key to successful external service delivery. In addressing this two part gap of incomplete assessment techniques and overlooked key internal indicators, the study demonstrates, via a series of ten case-studies, that a direct causal relationship exists between the internal organisational capabilities of an NGO, including the motivation, skills and culture of its staff, and its delivery on its external programmes. In essence, an organisation’s internal capabilities will impact directly on the organisation’s ability to deliver externally on its programmes. In spite of this, no standardised organisational capability assessment is used by NGOs or grantmakers, and to date no set of instruments exists to measure the internal capabilities of NGOs. The study sets out to address this gap by offering a methodology for the systemic assessment of internal NGO capabilities, and includes its operationalisation in a toolkit of instruments to measure these capabilities. The instruments presented enable the quantifying of qualitative staff motivational data to develop comparable baseline results between NGOs assessed, thereby presenting qualitative data in a quantitative form that enables a comparison between NGOs’ performances. This capacity addresses a significant shortcoming in the assessment of NGO performance based on purely qualitative assessment that is the current norm, not enabling a measurement against a standardised baseline for NGO performance. In contrast the validity and reliability of the proposed instruments are demonstrated through its application to ten real-world case studies drawn from the SEEDS Consortium. The system proposed in this study is based on Nel and Beudeker's commercial change management and organisational performance improvement model. Nel developed his system over a period of some twenty years whilst working for the then Arthur Andersen Consulting and subsequently as a private change management consultant focusing on the development of high performance organisations, and it has been administered in more than 3000 companies. This model uses key performance indicators, using quantitative methods to develop a standardised internal capability profile for a business based on qualitative data. This study expands on and makes innovative changes in developing new NGO specific metrics to substantially refine Nel's model and thus provides an instrument for measuring the capability profile of NGOs. The modifications were necessitated as Nel's model was designed for commercial change management applications presupposing that all governance considerations are in place and that the business is a running medium or large concern. Nel's proven commercial change management system does not make provision for NGO specific criteria that are critical indicators for both internal NGO performance assessment and for grant-maker capability assessments. The areas added to the instrument relate to internal NGO specific considerations such as internal governance, management, monitoring and evaluation processes that are standard and legislated compliance issues in commercial concerns. This goes beyond the requirements for a substantial commercial concern to include key internal organisation indicators that reflect the opinion of the staff, the people who deliver on the NGO's objectives. As staff are the people who directly impact on the NGO's output, the system does not only rely on the opinion of the CEO of the NGO or the fundraising staff, i.e. the "promise-makers", alone. In order to assess the value of the proposed method, and more specifically the internal capability toolkit, the measuring instruments were administered to the CEOs and staff of ten NGOs/NGO equivalent projects at universities. The responses were quantified and confirmed that in at least ten of these cases, there is a 95% correlation between internal organisational capability and external performance output, both positive and negative. The results also enabled the creation of a baseline internal capability profile for NGOs. Ten international grant-makers from OECD embassies were also interviewed on current methods of assessing funding applications, indicating a 62% confidence level in current systems and an 84% confidence level in the proposed internal organisational capability assessment method. This serves as an indicator of external delivery on promises and to guide internal change interventions to optimise output. This approach reflects the potential value of a shift in assessment thinking beyond a systems approach towards a people-centred approach that focusses on the measurement and development of the organisation and its staff's internal capabilities to meet and exceed its external delivery objectives. My research confirms that a focus on NGO internal organisational capabilities directly reflects the capability levels of staff to deliver externally. The output is a new, standardised, replicable and defendable methodology and toolkit of instruments for assessing an NGO’s current and future operational performance. The toolkit should also provide for the objective comparison of the performance of NGOs and thus be of great use for future grant-maker decision-making. It will also complement existing assessment techniques by focusing on the internal people motivation and capability issues of an NGO. Furthermore, the study provides a method to support organisational self-improvement efforts and grant-making efficiency that can be used in pre-project and during project capability assessment. This goes beyond the more prevalent post-project systemic and summative evaluation methods. In conclusion, the proposed method and toolkit can make a significant contribution to the efficiency of NGOs as the key role-players in enabling the delivery of capability development of communities and societies. All the elements described collectively point to a practical way to operationalise the Capability Approach, an aspect criticised as a weakness in Amartya Sen's work.

This is an inter-disciplinary argument for a moral entitlement to a capability to be healthy. Motivated by the goal to make a human right to health intelligible and justifiable, the thesis extends the capability approach, advocated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, to the theory and practice of the human health sciences. Moral claims related to human health are considered at the level of ethical theory, or a level of abstraction where principles of social justice that determine the purpose, form, and scope of basic social institutions are proposed, evaluated, and justified. The argument includes 1) a conception of health as capability, 2) a theory of causation and distribution of health capability as well as 3) an argument for the moral entitlement to a sufficient and equitable capability to be healthy grounded in the respect for human dignity. Moreover, the entitlement to the capability to be healthy is defended against alternative ethical approaches that focus on welfare or resources in evaluating and satisfying health claims. In specific, it is argued that human health is best understood as a capability to be healthy - a meta-capability to achieve a cluster of basic and inter-related capabilities and functionings. Such a cluster of capabilities and functionings is in line with Martha Nussbaum's central human capabilities. A theory of causation and distribution of health capability is put forward that integrates the 'classic' biomedical factors of disease (genetic endowment, exposure to hazardous materials, behaviour), social determinants of disease, and Drèze and Sen's econometric analysis of the causation and distribution of acute and endemic malnutrition. Furthermore, the argument critiques Norman Daniels's revised Rawlsian theory of health justice, and advocates for the capability approach to recognize group capabilities in light of 'population health' phenomena. Lastly, the thesis also argues that a coherent, capability conception of health as a species-wide conception will tend to make any theory of justice recognizing health claims a cosmopolitan theory of justice.