Running From Utility to Capability

Ever bought something and felt totally satisfied? I think I get it from a new pair of running shoes, the sensation of a sole unburdened by kilometres of compression. A mesh upper that's free from dirt and grime in a shoe with an overall level of cleanliness they'll never see again. 

In economics, this satisfaction is referred to as the utility of a good. Utility is framed as a measure of worth or value, not just the price of the materials or the cost of its construction, but also the pleasure it brings the owner.

Given the freedom to choose, which pair of shoes might I buy? We call this utility function. It's the ability to order our choices by preference. 

We must be honest with ourselves and agree that utility function isn't strictly logical. I'm heavily influenced by brand loyalty. I have established the belief that as the last seven pairs I've owned have been designed by Salomon that their newest model will also leave me feeling as equally satisfied. This is by no means certain. But I believe it is true, so it influences my utility function. 

Utility function is a very utilitarian way of thinking. There's a clue in the name. My choice of shoes has real consequences. If I choose poorly, I'll soon have hotspots, rubbing, and blisters. If the tread isn't good or the lugs are too short, then running downhill will probably result in a fall. Without enough durability in the sole, I'll soon feel the repeated beating of the tarmac on my knees. 

There's a whole branch of utilitarian ethical thinking devoted to framing the morality of an action by its consequences. Consequentialism, as it's known, tells us that a morally good action produces a positive outcome. 

This would mean that a marketing email which leads me to enjoy a run by positively influencing my utility function is a morally just action.

If we look at development and the actions of neoliberal and third-way economists, we are often met with consequentialist moral accounts. Suppose a policy maker can point to an increase in GDP, and an increase in GDP is almost universally regarded as good. In that case, a consequentialist moral argument follows that the actions taken to increase GDP were good.

The paradigm of modernist development theory seems to rely on these theories of consequentialism and utility. If you've followed everything so far, buying running shoes can make me happy, so everything that led to me buying those shoes was morally good. So isn't the whole supply chain, consumer marketing, promotional emails, and mass consumption orientation of society a morally good thing?

I think this is the knife edge. 

Can you like buying a new pair of running shoes and not be a neoliberal capitalist who embraces modernist approaches to development?

For Amartya Sen, the answer is yes. Sen can be confident in his yes because he rejects the idea of utility and utilitarianism. For Sen, it's not the new shoes that are giving us happiness, it's the opportunity to have running shoes coupled with the knowledge that we have the capability to make use of them. 

Running shoes would not make me happy if I couldn't go running. For Sen, it's not the utility of the shoe; it's my capability to use them. 

To try and unpack what Sen means here, I need to talk a little more about running and my dislike of golf. 

I like running. I like that running prevents me from holding onto unneeded excess weight. I like that running makes my body more efficient at utilising energy from the fats that I consume. I like that running triggers me to eat more fats because they leave me feeling fuller for longer. I like the aesthetic effects that running has on my thighs and calf muscles. I like the meditative opportunities that long-distance running affords me. 

Playing golf doesn't give me any of this. I don't like golf. 

As Amartya Sen would say, individuals can differ significantly in their ability to convert the same resources into a valuable function. 

Running around the golf course; great. Playing golf on the golf course; less so.

I can't turn golf shoes into much of anything of value to me other than through an exchange. Yes, selling golf shoes and buying something else would make me feel better. But I can turn running shoes into something of value simply by putting them on my feet and heading out of the door.

If we were to evaluate well-being, as we might want to if we were interested in measuring something as ephemeral as development, we might measure something like access to green space. The importance of access to green space for promoting well-being is well established in the literature and has the advantage of being quantitatively measurable.

Measuring access to greenspace is built on the assumption that people can utilise that green space, and it is through the greenspace's utilisation that it contributes to well-being. This focus on utility-by-the-individual contributing to well-being assumes that everyone is equally able to access and utilise it in the same way. 

If that greenspace was a golf course, and we all enjoyed golf, then there would be no issue as that greenspace would contribute to our well-being. I don't enjoy golf; I like running. If I weren't allowed to run in the golfing green space, then although I would satisfy the means for utility for an evaluator, I wouldn't have the capability to do the thing that would improve my well-being. 

Utility is concerned with the value of something, and greenspace is indeed valuable, but there is a tendency when applying utilitarian approaches to measure well-being that people are homogenised. 

My example of not being able to run could be written off as selfish, so let's consider someone with a physical disability. Without specific goods to make it accessible, that greenspace would do nothing to improve the well-being of a physically disabled person. As Amartya Sen would say, if we don't consider the particular circumstances of individuals, our utilitarian approaches are insufficient.

Following this line of thinking, Amartya Sen began to recognise all sorts of limitations to measuring development. Sen saw the very grounding of development measures in utilitarian approaches an issue. 

His counter was developing his capability approach. 

The utility of a resource, Sen argues, is an insufficient measure of well-being as we don't know what an individual might be able to be or do with it, given their circumstances. Amartya Sen proposed that utilitarian perspectives offer too-narrow a view of what we might mean by human flourishing by neither recognising what people might be able to do with resources in a practical sense by which we might determine their real freedom, and challenging the orthodoxy that simply raising an individuals income would improve their well-being. 

Now, that's certainly a mouthful, with a lot of ideas bundled together, so let's look at it as it relates to the concept of poverty.

Redefining Poverty

How might we define poverty? There's a question of specificity at work here. In general terms, we might think of poverty as being extremely poor or below some measurable standard of life. Poverty can be both absolute, and it can be relative. Being in the lowest quartile of income within any nation, particularly one with a high degree of income inequality would likely put you in a state of relative poverty. 

Having an income so low as to be unable to meet the minimum calorific intake for yourself and your family would mean you are in absolute poverty. These are general concepts around which we generally find some measure of agreement. 

There is greater difficulty in finding broad agreement around where relative poverty exists within and between nation-states. You can plausibly be in a state of relative poverty in one nation and have an iPhone, experiencing a standard of living that would be considered the reserve of the upper-middle class in another. 

Here, we have made the distinction purely on utilitarian terms. Having an iPhone is suggestive of wealth, income, or prioritisation. But what do we do with those iPhones? Does everyone use them equally to learn about the world, challenge their misconceptions, stay abreast of developments in the news and learn a language? 

It's undoubtedly true that every iPhone can be utilised in this way, but it's certainly not true to say that everyone uses their iPhone in this way or that they can. This becomes a question of capability. 

How capable is every one of using their iPhone to increase the sum total of their substantive knowledge and developing a schema of usefully connected knowledge that can be used to solve problems and allow them to flourish in their human experience? How much are people imprisoned by social norms around media consumption and constantly having to take photos of everything they're about to put in their mouths?

This is the type of question that Amartya Sen would have posed to himself when questioning how we might define poverty. Amartya Sen would argue that whilst we might all have the same iPhone, we don't all have the same capability in using it to enhance our lived experience and improve our well-being. 

Think back to the green space, and remember that without specific goods, those with a physical disability may lack the capability to utilise it. Amartya Sen makes the case that not everyone has the capability to utilise the opportunities offered by the iPhone. 

Giving out free iPhones doesn't make for a knowledge-rich society, nor does it overcome relative poverty. For Amartya Sen, the solution lies in ensuring that everyone has the capability to make good use of the resources available.

In summary, Sen argues that people who are free to make informed choices and those who have the capability can utilise resources to improve their well-being. In Sen's mind, the development question we should be asking is not how to make people wealthier but how to make people more capable. 

If freedom to choose is how people make the best use of resources, how do we liberate them from their unfreedoms? It might sound a little 1984, but yes, unfreedoms is the term that Sen employs, and so must we.

In his 1999 book 'Development as Freedom', Amartya Sen identified five main human freedoms: political, economic, social, transparency guarantees, and protective security. It's interesting to think that we might have stumbled on the source of political, economic, and social factors used in GCSE Geography.

Amartya Sen makes the case that sufficient constraints to these five freedoms would constitute poverty. For Sen, freedom is both the route and end-point of the human condition. 

Economic freedoms might be considered the right to own land, access to savings opportunities, and protection from bondage. Constraints to these freedoms would be a lack of access to credit, legal constraints to women entering the workforce, or limited educational opportunities. 

Similarly, transparency guarantee freedoms would include mechanisms for achieving justice and access to police protection. Constraints to these freedoms might be racial profiling, a lack of contractual enforcement or the presence of corruption.

The recruitment effect of such a pluralistic definition of living in a state of poverty is hard to overstate. Almost every moral philosopher and development economist can see something of their view reflected in Sen's position. 

This goes a long way towards explaining the adoption of much of Amartya Sen's work on redefining poverty and considering the nature of freedom into the mainstream discourse around the topic of deprivation. 

Redefining Development

Deprivation can coexist with great opulence. Unfreedoms are endured by those surrounded by those who enjoy the greatest freedoms, though they will almost certainly find themselves excluded from sharing the same spaces. Sen's capability approach redefines development as something that's no longer the exclusive domain of nations in the lowest GDP per capita group. 

Taking Sen's capability approach, high-income countries have a lot of work to overcome poverty among their citizens. Indeed, Sen's approach to redefining development is the first theory that doesn't place America firmly at the top of a hierarchy or as the final destination on a pathway but as a nation with institutional and systematic issues of poverty. Poverty wrapped up in the unfreedoms of racism and sexism and distorted by the effect of inherited wealth. 

For Sen, development is the process of addressing unfreedoms and improving the freedoms of all citizens. All meaning all; no one is left behind.

Sen's theory doesn't require any particular economic approach but rather a reconsideration of what every citizen is entitled to for being a part of that nation-state. Indeed, Sen argues that we should focus directly on achieving the goal of addressing unfreedoms by the most expedient process rather than 'fetishising' any singular means to its achievement. 

Again, the recruitment effect of using language like 'the most expedient process' cannot be overstated.

Neoclassical economics by any other name

What might this mean in practice? Has the theory of human development and Amarta Sen's work influenced development economics? So far as I can tell, no, not really. 

It's all too easy to suggest that the wealthier the individual, the fewer unfreedoms they endure. So, if you want fewer unfreedoms, the easiest route is to make people more prosperous. 

What is the prevalent thinking on making people richer? Yep, it's neoliberal economics. 

Can you act like a neoliberal and say you strive for Amarta Sen's human development? Yes, yes, you can. 

Capability theory is a really insightful idea - one that has the potential to build a considerable amount of agreement, one that does an excellent job of balancing individual liberty against community and nationhood. Its processes' inclusivity and recruitment effect make it easy for most to get onboard. This might also be the source of its greatest weakness. What does taking a capabilities approach to international development really look like? 

Is it simply a tool for reframing our thinking?

Or worse, is it just a catch-all label we can use to justify what we were already thinking and doing?