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Meanings and understandings of wellbeing: an exploration of Somali refugees’ conceptions of human wellbeing
Abstract
Although there is a substantial body of literature on human wellbeing, there is
no universally agreed-upon meaning and understanding of the concept. This
article explores the meanings and understandings which Somali refugees in
Kampala, Uganda attach to the concept. Drawing on 14 in-depth individual
interviews and seven focus group discussions with 70 Somali refugee study
participants in Kisenyi, I argue that wellbeing is mainly understood in terms of
having access to objective elements that result in having a good or comfortable
life. Objective elements can be seen to represent human needs with respect
to Doyal and Gough’s theory of human need. These objective elements were
discussed as prerequisites for having a good life. They include peace and
security, health, education, employment and housing. Adequate access to these
objective elements is perceived as fundamentally important in promoting and
guaranteeing human wellbeing.
... They are part and parcel of human well-being. Individuals cannot discuss or talk about human well-being without necessarily talking or using human needs (see Balyejjusa, 2015b;Costanza et al., 2007;Doyal & Gough, 1991;Gasper, 2007b;Max-Neef, 1991;Wright, 2012) ...
... Using Max-Neef's (1991 and Allard's (1976) categories of needs, that is, existential and axiological, and basic needs classifications respectively, human needs are strategies for meeting well-being elements shown in Table 1. For instance, Balyejjusa (2015b) demonstrates that having peace and security (need) is a strategy for satisfying well-being elements of health, freedom of movement, good physical environment (neighbours, calmness, cleanliness), body integrity (sleeping well, freedom from sexual harassment and abuse), working well, learning well, security of property, engaging in work and pursuance of learning, contributing to life of others, being able to think and imagine and having peace of mind. ...
... The outcomes of having peace and security and other needs (strategies) are similar to some of Martha Nussbaum's (2011) central capabilities. 7 For instance, life, bodily integrity, imagination and thought, emotions, affiliations and control over one's environment are all similar to Balyejjusa's (2015b) well-being outcomes of person having peace and security. Indeed, Nussbaum notes that these are important elements of people's quality of life. ...
The concept of human need and human well-being are commonly used in social work literature. However, their relationship remains unexplored. Although there is some literature on the relationship between human needs and human well-being in other fields, there is little literature explicitly analysing the nature of this relationship. Drawing on literature on both human needs and human well-being scholars from disciplines such as development studies, social policy, psychology, social work and so on, I argue that the relationship between human needs and human well-being is constitutive and instrumental-normative; and it is a two-fold relationship. Human needs are constitutive of human well-being, and human needs are preconditions for realising human well-being, they result into human well-being when adequately satisfied. I conclude by noting that this nature of relationship demonstrates that human needs are fundamental in promoting and realising human well-being. One cannot talk about human well-being without human needs. Therefore, social workers should focus on identifying and meeting clients’ human needs in order to promote their well-being.
... Most importantly, individuals who experienced considerable insecurity and instability in their lives recognize, express, and prioritize wellbeing centering on stability and security (Balyejjusa, 2015;Chase, 2013;Vaquera et al., 2017). Stability refers to the degree to which a person can maintain conditions to live well over time (Kidd et al., 2016), while security refers to freedom from psychological and physical danger (Ani et al., 2019). ...
... Stability refers to the degree to which a person can maintain conditions to live well over time (Kidd et al., 2016), while security refers to freedom from psychological and physical danger (Ani et al., 2019). Stability and security are recognized aspects of wellbeing among people experiencing homelessness (Somerville, 2013), sex workers (Mcnaughton & Sanders, 2007), displaced Native Americans (De Leon, 2020), undocumented Americans (Vaquera et al., 2017), migrants (Noble, 2005), and refugees (Balyejjusa, 2015). For example, Somali refugees' conceptualization of wellbeing centered peace and security (Balyejjusa, 2015) and unaccompanied young asylum seekers described wellbeing as a sense of stability, or an "existential need for a sense of a projected self beyond the here and now" (Chase, 2013, p. 860). ...
... Stability and security are recognized aspects of wellbeing among people experiencing homelessness (Somerville, 2013), sex workers (Mcnaughton & Sanders, 2007), displaced Native Americans (De Leon, 2020), undocumented Americans (Vaquera et al., 2017), migrants (Noble, 2005), and refugees (Balyejjusa, 2015). For example, Somali refugees' conceptualization of wellbeing centered peace and security (Balyejjusa, 2015) and unaccompanied young asylum seekers described wellbeing as a sense of stability, or an "existential need for a sense of a projected self beyond the here and now" (Chase, 2013, p. 860). ...
We examine resettled refugees’ construction of wellbeing using semi-structured interviews of Somali, Hmong, and Middle Eastern refugees in the United States and Canada. Resettled refugees’ descriptions of wellbeing center ‘stable security,’ an enduring sense of being secure in the world and in oneself. Stable security encompasses physical, psychological, and social experiences that, together, contribute to a sustained sense of being secure. The participants also described a set of strategies to enhance stable security. We contribute to current theoretical wellbeing conceptions, provide important insights into the dynamic nature of wellbeing and elucidate the pathways identified by refugees to achieve stable security.
... The basic needs literature has been criticized by Gasper (2007) who encourages researchers to consider who decides what needs are considered 'basic' and what does it mean when someone has the means to acquire these so called 'basic needs' but chooses not to. The limits of what needs are considered 'basic' are not shared by everyone, and many researchers have extended basic needs to also include social needs such as social status (Guillen-Royo, 2008), social support (Thomas, Gray, & McGinty, 2012), education, employment (Senkosi, 2015), and community and religious connections (Camfield, Guillen-Royo, & Velazco, 2010;Ryff, Singer, & Dienberg Love, 2004). The assumption is that basic needs are merely a step that, once satisfied, makes possible the pursuit of subjective and psychological wellbeing. ...
... Empirical research with Somali refugees showed they emphasized living a comfortable life where their needs were met. Specifically, the Somali participants named peace and security, health, education, employment and housing (Senkosi, 2015). As previously stated, Sudanese refugees in Canada described a multidimensional sense of home that was integral to their wellbeing (Simich et al., 2010). ...
I examine how experiences of adversity contribute to growth among marginalized groups. This aligns with post adversarial growth theory, which highlights how people perceive psychological growth (i.e., improved social relationships, changed sense of self, and a new sense of what matters in life) after struggling with adverse life events. I specifically examine a changed sense of self through development of a hybrid multicultural identity (HMI) and a new sense of what matters in life among resettled refugees in North America. Studies 1 and 2 focus on how people can grow from adverse experiences to form new understandings of themselves- specifically as a hybrid multicultural. HMI distinguishes itself from additive conceptualizations of multicultural identity in that it is a superordinate identity, unifying people from different cultural backgrounds into a single, shared identity. Study 1 reveals the three primary categories of precursors for the development of a multicultural identity: personal multicultural experiences, perceptions of macro-level marginalization, and culturally related interpersonal experiences. Additionally, on the basis of explicitly and implicitly observed relationships between each of the variables in Study 1, a detailed model of HMI development is presented in Study 1. Study 2 tested this model using structural equation modeling. The measurement model had good model fit (CFI= .961; TLI = .958, RMSEA = .054, and SRMR = .057) and the factor loadings were acceptable. The structural model also had good model fit (CFI = .968; TLI = .966, RMSEA = .045, and SRMR = .072) and the pathway estimates largely confirmed the model presented in Study 1. Further, Study 2’s analysis highlights the importance of culture mixing as the strongest individual predictor of HMI. This work advances current knowledge of HMI development by focusing on the development of HMI through the participants’ experience of their social contexts. I specifically emphasize the developmental importance of (1) social invalidation and other negative appraisals of their social contexts and (2) the degree to which participants experienced culture mixing. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate how people can grow from adversity to create new life philosophies for themselves. I studied this topic using the combined data of a photovoice project with adolescent refugees and an interview project with adult refugees resettled in North America. Across these samples which varied in several dimensions including religion, age, ethnicity, and time of resettlement, a common model of wellbeing was stressed: ontological security (the confidence in the presence, continuity, and order of the things one finds important in life). We found that ontological security in the refugee context included peace of body, peace of mind, rootedness in one’s self, and rootedness in meaningful connections. The participants’ experience with instability and insecurity influenced their value of this wellbeing dimension, however it was apparent that ontological security remained a central aspect of wellbeing even when refugees perceived their lives to be currently stable. On the basis of this work and previous work that has stressed the importance of ontological security, I propose that ontological security is a model of wellbeing, alongside current models of subjective and psychological wellbeing rather than merely a precondition for these ‘higher forms’ of wellbeing.
... 81). However, THN is the needs theory most often used for climate change research (Balyejjusa, 2015a(Balyejjusa, , 2015bDillman et al., 2021;Gasper, 2004;Guillen-Royo et al., 2013;Gough et al., 2007;O'Neill, 2011;Schramme, 2018;Ward & Johnson, 2013 More than half the citations of have been since 2015, including those focused on climate change and global sustainability (Holden et al., , 2018. Following the application of needs theory to climate change (Gasper, 2013;Rauschmayer et al., 2011), Gough (2015a) challenged welfare economics' entrenched commitment to preference satisfaction theory and its neglect of theories of human need. ...
... Doyal and Gough (1991) and Gough (2000) list these two needs as intermediate needs to ensure that a human being avoids experiencing harm in relation to his/her physical health and autonomy. Indeed Balyejjusa (2015;2017) reports these two as part of Somali refugees' definition of their wellbeing. Due to the social networks, some Somali refugees were able to have their human need of housing met through pooling house rents. ...
Although there is substantial research on refugees and their wellbeing, there is limited
research that examines the role of refugees‘ agency in their lives. Using Doyal and Gough‘s (1991) theory
of human need, the study analyses Somali refugees‘ wellbeing by examining the satisfaction of their
human needs. Drawing on data from 70 Somali refugees in Kisenyi, Kampala, the study found that
Somali refugees exercised their socio-culturally mediated agency to promote their wellbeing. The socioculturally
mediated agency was demonstrated in form of an individual‘s/family‘s ability to start and
maintain small and medium-scale business enterprises, and develop social networks with the host
community, fellow Somalis within Uganda and abroad. Individuals/families that engaged in either or both
of the agency actions were able to adequately meet their human needs, thus promoting their wellbeing
because adequate satisfaction of human needs leads to human wellbeing.
Adolescent refugees confront a complex interplay of trauma arising from forced displacement, resettlement, and the challenges of transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Using photovoice methodology, this study engaged 14 Iraqi and Syrian adolescent refugees now residing in the United States with the aim to illuminate their well‐being experiences. Our findings show that temporal continuities and discontinuities in adolescent refugees' lives contributed to their sense of well‐being by helping satisfy their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and safety. Temporal continuities involved drawing upon past resources and formulating future career aspirations based on present experiences. Temporal discontinuities encompassed contrasting past and present and processing adversities endured. This study underscores that, beyond current circumstances, the interpretation of life experiences over extended timeframes influences the well‐being of adolescent refugees.
We explore the role of personal values in the experiences and endeavors of a good life among Hmong and Somali former refugees who have resettled in the United States. Using thematic analysis of semi-structured qualitative interviews, we first identify and examine personal values central to their sense of a good life. With a person-centered analysis, we then highlight patterns showing how different values are related to one another in former refugees’ statements of a good life. We highlight how former refugees’ life experiences may lead them to hold motivationally opposing values that typically do not coexist as value priorities.
Sustainable development has become a mantra in politics, academia and development policy and practice. Indeed, many policy and practice strategies, such as the sustainable development goals, have been devised in order to achieve sustainable development. Although the contents and items in these agendas are human needs, the use of ‘human needs’ language is less emphasised/explicitly spelt out. In fact, the language of human needs is almost absent. In this article, I argue that the adoption of the human needs language will strengthen sustainable development practice, efforts and agenda. This is because, unlike other aspirations, human needs by nature are universal. Secondly, human needs are limited in number compared to wants, desires, goals and capabilities. This nature of human needs makes the human needs language effective in promoting the sustainable development agenda and efforts, thus, adequately meeting the needs of the current and future generations.
What should those who measure well-being try to measure? To address this question one must consider the nature of well-being, and the various purposes of the exercise of conceptualizing and measuring. This chapter concentrates on the nature of well-being, especially in the earlier sections; purposes will be addressed too, especially in the second part.
What are the relationships between human needs and human wellbeing? I will address the question by considering the conceptual linkages between these two umbrella categories. This requires investigation of the nature of each of them as a family of concepts. That is attempted in sections 2.3 and 2.4 of this chapter. I briefly point to the further topic of their empirical connections in section 2.5. Bracketing these discussions, the opening and closing parts of the chapter consider and compare human needs and human wellbeing as research programmes. How far is the wellbeing programme a continuation or successor to the tradition of thinking and investigation on human needs, and what lessons may arise from the somewhat troubled history of research on needs? The rise of wellbeing as an important, if not yet major, research focus in development studies and policy and more widely is extremely welcome and long overdue. As recently as 1994, Routledge's The Social Science Encyclopaedia (Kuper and Kuper 1994) could appear without an entry on wellbeing or quality of life or happiness. Even in two excellent late 1980s textbooks on the emergent field of economic psychology (Furnham and Lewis 1986; Lea, Tarpy and Webley 1987) wellbeing remained a minor theme. Lea et al. in over 500 pages did not discuss it as a separate topic; Furnham and Lewis devoted just four pages to the relationship between wealth and happiness.
At first sight it appears incongruous to discuss wellbeing in relation to developing countries. Most often, and properly, our attention and concern is for the many people who experience suffering as a consequence of their poverty. However, there are a number of reasons why it is important to confront this apparent incongruity. The first is to acknowledge the fully rounded humanity of poor men, women and children in developing countries; recognising that they are not completely defined by their poverty, nor can they be fully understood in its terms alone. Poor people in developing countries strive to achieve wellbeing for themselves and their children. For the poorest, and in the worst instances, this will largely be a struggle to limit the extent of their illbeing and suffering. But even alongside deprivations, poor men, women and children are able to achieve some elements of what they conceive of as wellbeing, as Biswas-Diener and Diener (2001) demonstrate; without this, we would argue, their lives would be unbearable. Furthermore, it is striking that the non-poor in developing countries can often experience what appear to be high levels of life satisfaction. Wellbeing is far from an irrelevant concept in the study of international development. From this perspective the notion of poverty (or rather poverties) has a number of limitations and the literature around it is becoming increasingly complex and to some extent muddled.
Happiness is the main goal; most individuals reach out for a happy life and many policy makers aim at greater happiness for a greater number. This pursuit of happiness calls for understanding of conditions for happiness and for that reason the subject has received much attention in the history of western thought. The study of happiness has long been a playground for philosophical speculation. Due to the lack of empirical measures of happiness, it was not possible to check propositions about the matter. Hence, understanding of happiness remained speculative and uncertain. During the last decades, survey-research methods introduced by the social sciences have brought a breakthrough. Dependable measures of happiness have developed, by means of which a significant body of knowledge has evolved. This chapter presents an account on this field. The literature on happiness can be framed within some key questions that can be ordered as steps in the process for creating greater happiness for a greater number. (1) What is happiness precisely? (2) Can happiness be measured? (3) How happy are people presently? (4) What causes us to be happy or unhappy? (5) Can happiness be raised lastingly?
The terms 'quality-of-life', 'wellbeing' and 'happiness' denote different meanings; sometimes they are used as an umbrella term for all of value, and the other times to denote special merits. This paper is about the specific meanings of the terms. It proposes a classification based on two bi-partitions; between life 'chances' and life 'results', and between 'outer' and 'inner' qualities. Together these dichotomies imply four qualities of life: 1) livability of the environment, 2) life-ability of the individual, 3) external utility of life and 4) inner appreciation of life. This fourfold matrix is applied in three ways: firstly to place related notions and alternative classifications, secondly to explore substantive meanings in various measures for quality of life and thirdly to find out whether quality-of-life can be measured comprehensively. This last question is answered in the negative. Current sum-scores make little sense. The most inclusive summary measure is still how long and happily people live.
This volume, which grows out of The Quality of Life (eds. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, 1993), combines philosophical inquiry with economic concerns regarding women's equality in the developing world. Adopting Amartya Sen's capability framework, international contributors tackle issues of cultural relativism vs. cultural imperialism on the one hand, and questions of local traditions vs. universalist critical judgement on the other. The chief aim of this work is to critically explore the relationship between culture and justice as pertinent to women's development, with special attention paid to cultural sensitivity but without compromising the clarity of rational judgement in cases where women's capabilities are at stake. Building upon the practical and philosophical implications of the lived experience of women from a variety of cultures, the authors theorize the pragmatics of economic development beyond utility towards a vision of gender equality. This book is a must‐read for anyone interested in the ethics of women's economic development.
The concepts of well-being and quality of life concern evaluative judgements. There is insufficient understanding in current literature that these judgements are made variously due to the use of not only differing values and differing research instruments but also differing standpoints, differing purposes, and differing theoretical views and ontological presuppositions. The paper elucidates these sources of differences and how they underlie the wide diversity of current conceptions.
Systematic, large discrepancies exist between direct measures of well-being and the measures that economists largely concentrate on, notably income. The paper assesses and rejects claims that income is satisfactorily correlated with well-being, and addresses the implications of discrepancies between income measures and measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and objective well-being (OWB) and also between subjective and objective well-being measures themselves. It discusses a range of possible responses to the discrepancies: for example, examination of the specifications used for income, SWB and OWB, and looking for other causal factors and at their possible competitive relations with economic inputs to well-being. It rejects responses that ignore the discrepancies or drastically downgrade their significance by adopting a well-being conception that ignores both SWB and OWB arguments (e.g.: by a claim that all that matters is choice or being active). It concludes that the projects of Sen and others to build syntheses of the relevant responses require further attention.
Sen's capability approach (SCA) has supported valuable work on Human Development (HD). It has brought attention to a much wider range of information on people's freedoms and well-being than in most earlier economic planning; but it also has troubling features and requires modification and enrichment. This paper first identifies the approach's components, the contributions of the HD Reports, and the doubts about whether SCA has a sufficient conception of human personhood to sustain work on HD beyond finding indices superior to GDP. It then examines SCA's central concepts. The concepts of capability and functioning lead us to consider both possibilities and outcomes, but their definition and use has been confusing. Besides Sen's opportunity concept of 'capability' we must distinguish skills and potentials; and distinguish levels and types of 'functioning'. To understand both consumerism and what can motivate and drive more humanly fulfilling development, we must elaborate different aspects and sources of 'well-being' and the content and requirements of 'agency', more than in Sen's chosen strategy. SCA's priority category of opportunity-capability must be read as a measure of personal advantage relevant in many public policy situations, rather than as a theory of well-being; and its concept of freedom must be partnered by concepts of reason and need.
Large samples of data from the World Values Survey, the US Benchmark Survey and a comparable Canadian survey are used to estimate equations designed to explore the social context of subjective evaluations of well–being, of happiness, and of health. Social capital, as measured by the strength of family, neighbourhood, religious and community ties, is found to support both physical health and subjective well–being.
Our new evidence confirms that social capital is strongly linked to subjective well–being through many independent channels and in several different forms. Marriage and family, ties to friends and neighbours, workplace ties, civic engagement (both individually and collectively), trustworthiness and trust: all appear independently and robustly related to happiness and life satisfaction, both directly and through their impact on health.
Needs, Values, Truth brings together of some of the most important and influential writings by a leading contemporary philosopher, David Wiggins; they are drawn from twenty-five years of his work in the broad area of the philosophy of value. The author passes to and fro between problems of ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of logic and language. The following themes are prominent: the elucidation of the ideas of truth, objectivity, subjectivity and intersubjectivity the scope and limits of the attribution of the status of plain truth among the judgements of morals, politics and aesthetics the compatibility of moral cognitivism both with criticism and with a 'no-foundations' view of morals, politics and aesthetics the part played in the fixation of the sense of evaluative language by the antecedent possibility of agreement not only in judgements but also (the Humean addendum) in sentiments the philosophical ineliminability of explanations that explain a subject's thought by vindicating it, and the indispensability of evaluative and subjective categories to such vindications the irreplaceability and irreducibility for practical or valuational thinking of such ideas as those of need, self and metaphysical freedom. For this third edition the author has added a new essay on incommensurability, in addition to making minor revisions to the existing text. The volume will stand as a definitive summation of his work in this area.
A Cold War context preserves in its vacuous nature the power of ‘traumas’ of defeat and humiliation, memories of history. If there are dialectical factors working through peace and war, often they emerge from the wounds of war. Like the mythological phoenix, those who are ruined by war will try to rise from the ashes. Hatred can never be conquered by hatred, and it is through love alone that hatred can be conquered, and that is the eternal law according to the Buddha. Jack Kornfield and Mahatma Gandhi have emphasised that we need a deep process of grief, outrage, sadness, loss and pain that honours grief and betrayal—repeated over and over again in our hearts, and this is not a misguided effort to suppress or ignore pain.
Prefaces - Introduction - PART I RELATIVISM AND THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN NEED - Who Needs Human Needs? - The Inevitability of Human Needs - The Grammar of Human Needs - PART 2 A THEORY OF HUMAN NEED - The Basic Needs of Persons - Societal Preconditions for Need Satisfaction - Human Liberation and the Right to Optimal Need Satisfaction - Optimising Need Satisfaction in Theory - PART 3 HUMAN NEEDS IN PRACTICE - Measuring Need Satisfaction - Health and Autonomy - Intermediate Needs - Societal Preconditions for Optimising Need Satisfaction - Charting Human Welfare - PART 4 THE POLITICS OF HUMAN NEED - Towards a Political Economy of Need Satisfaction - The Dual Strategy
National governments, civil society organizations and international agencies have for many years assembled and reported data on achieved human wellbeing, be it for individuals, families, regions or countries. Human well-being achievement at the level of countries receives special attention. It is now commonplace for international agencies, such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank, to publish annual reports that rank countries according to various well-being or well-being related indicators.
Any concept of peace includes the absence of direct violence between states, engaged in by military and others in general, and of massive killing of categories of humans in particular. But peace would be a strange concept if it does not include relations between genders, races, classes and families, and does not also include absence of structural violence, the non-intended slow, massive suffering caused by economic and political structures in the form of massive exploitation and repression. And the absence of the cultural violence that legitimizes direct and-or structural violence.
This chapter opens with a definition of the terms used in the discussion. Well-being is defined as a subjective emotion whose condition and expression vary from person to person. Several approaches to well-being are discussed in the succeeding sections. These are: the peace-based approach; the development approach; the health-based approach; the human rights-based approach; and the Buddhist approach, with its concepts of suffering and fulfilment. The main purpose of the mentioned approaches is to 'move' individuals from states of ill-being to well-being and to satisfy basic human needs. Studies and research on peace, well-being, and politics are then presented to enrich the discussion. The chapter concludes with the idea that well-being hinges on two things. First is a removal of suffering through the satisfaction of basic needs and then sustaining this state of 'non-suffering'. Second is to find meaning and purpose in one's life.
Veteran scholar and peace activist David Cortright offers a definitive history of the human striving for peace and an analysis of its religious and intellectual roots. This authoritative, balanced, and highly readable volume traces the rise of peace advocacy and internationalism from their origins in earlier centuries through the mass movements of recent decades: the pacifist campaigns of the 1930s, the Vietnam antiwar movement, and the waves of disarmament activism that peaked in the 1980s. Also explored are the underlying principles of peace - nonviolence, democracy, social justice, and human rights - all placed within a framework of 'realistic pacifism'. Peace brings the story up-to-date by examining opposition to the Iraq War and responses to the so-called 'war on terror'. This is history with a modern twist, set in the context of current debates about 'the responsibility to protect', nuclear proliferation, Darfur, and conflict transformation.
Improving wellbeing and sustainability are central goals of government, but are they in conflict? This engaging new book reviews that question and its implications for public policy through a focus on indicators.
From anxieties over work-life balance and entangling technologies, to celebrations of cool jobs and great places to live, quality of life frames the ways we enhance our lives and legitimate social change today. But how does the idea of quality of life envision the greater good, and what gets lost as a result?
Amartya Sen (1933–) was born and educated in India before completing his doctorate in economics at Cambridge University. He has taught in India, England, and the United States and is currently the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. He is one of the most widely read and influential living economists. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Price in Economics for his work on welfare economics, poverty and famines, and human development. He has also made major contributions to contemporary political philosophy. In this essay, he proposes that alternatives be appraised by looking to the capabilities they provide for individuals rather than only by individual utilities, incomes, or resources (as in commonly used theories). Introduction Capability is not an awfully attractive word. It has a technocratic sound, and to some it might even suggest the image of nuclear war strategists rubbing their hands in pleasure over some contingent plan of heroic barbarity. The term is not much redeemed by the historical Capability Brown praising particular pieces of land – not human beings – on the solid real-estate ground that they ‘had capabilities’. Perhaps a nicer word could have been chosen when some years ago I tried to explore a particular approach to well-being and advantage in terms of a person's ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being.
* Brand new analysis of the concept of disadvantage
* A contribution to the understanding of equality at both a theoretical and practical level
What does it mean to be disadvantaged? Is it possible to compare different disadvantages? What should governments do to move their societies in the direction of equality, where equality is to be understood both in distributional and social terms? Linking rigorous analytical philosophical theory with broad empirical studies, including interviews conducted for the purpose of this book, Wolff and de-Shalit show how taking theory and practice together is essential if the theory is to be rich enough to be applied to the real world, and policy systematic enough to have purpose and justification.
The book is in three parts. Part 1 presents a pluralist analysis of disadvantage, modifying the capability theory of Sen and Nussbaum to produce the 'genuine opportunity for secure functioning' view. This emphasises risk and insecurity as a central component of disadvantage. Part 2 shows how to identify the least advantaged in society even on a pluralist view. The authors suggest that disadvantage 'clusters' in the sense that some people are disadvantaged in several different respects. Thus identifying the least advantaged is not as problematic as it appears to be. Conversely, a society which has 'declustered disadvantaged' - in the sense that no group lacks secure functioning on a range of functionings - has made considerable progress in the direction of equality. Part 3 explores how to decluster disadvantage, by paying special attention to 'corrosive disadvantages' - those disadvantages which cause further disadvantages - and 'fertile functionings' - those which are likely to secure other functionings.
In sum this books presents a refreshing new analysis of disadvantage, and puts forward proposals to help governments improve the lives of the least advantaged in their societies, thereby moving in the direction of equality.
Martha C. Nussbaum's Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2000, hereafter WHD) remains an eloquent, rigorous and passionate statement of her views on human capabilities. It goes further than her earlier work in relating these to the ethics and politics of development. It applies the approach directly and with insight to the predicament faced by women across the developing world, notably in two chapters on religion and care. This chapter critically discusses Nussbaum's capabilities approach and compares it with the needs perspective developed in the earlier book by Len Doyal and myself, A Theory of Human Need (1991, hereafter THN). Though there are remarkable similarities between the two, both were written independently. When completing our book, published in 1991, we were unaware of Nussbaum's earliest article on this theme, Nature, function and capability: Aristotle on political distribution, published in 1988, while her subsequent work was written in ignorance of our own contribution.
The case is made for implementing national accounts of well-being to help policy makers and individuals make better decisions. Well-being is defined as people's evaluations of their lives, including concepts such as life satisfaction and happiness, and is similar to the concept of 'utility' in economics. Measures of well-being in organizations, states, and nations can provide people with useful information. Importantly, accounts of well-being can help decision makers in business and government formulate better policies and regulations in order to enhance societal quality of life. Decision makers seek to implement policies and regulations that increase the quality of life, and the well-being measures are one useful way to assess the impact of policies as well as to inform debates about potential policies that address specific current societal issues. This book reviews the limitations of information gained from economic and social indicators, and shows how the well-being measures complement this information. Examples of using well-being for policy are given in four areas: health, the environment, work and the economy, and social life. Within each of these areas, examples are described of issues where well-being measures can provide policy-relevant information. Common objections to using the well-being measures for policy purposes are refuted. The well-being measures that are in place throughout the world are reviewed, and future steps in extending these surveys are described. Well-being measures can complement existing economic and social indicators, and are not designed to replace them.
Aristotle’s account of human needs is valuable because it describes the connections between logical, metaphysical, physical, human and ethical necessities. But Aristotle does not fully draw out the implications of the account of necessity for needs and virtue. The proper Aristotelian conclusion is that, far from being an inferior activity fit only for slaves, meeting needs is the first part of Aristotelian virtue.
This paper aims to present a theoretical survey of the capability approach in an interdisciplinary and accessible way. It focuses on the main conceptual and theoretical aspects of the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and others. The capability approach is a broad normative framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual well-being and social arrangements, the design of policies, and proposals about social change in society. Its main characteristics are its highly interdisciplinary character, and the focus on the plural or multidimensional aspects of well-being. The approach highlights the difference between means and ends, and between substantive freedoms (capabilities) and outcomes (achieved functionings).
What does it mean to be disadvantaged? Is it possible to compare different disadvantages? What should governments do to move their societies in the direction of equality, where equality is to be understood both in distributional and social terms? Linking rigorous analytical philosophical theory with broad empirical studies, including interviews conducted for the purpose of this book, Wolff and de-Shalit show how taking theory and practice together is essential if the theory is to be rich enough to be applied to the real world, and policy systematic enough to have purpose and justification. The book is in three parts. Part 1 presents a pluralist analysis of disadvantage, modifying the capability theory of Sen and Nussbaum to produce the 'genuine opportunity for secure functioning' view. This emphasises risk and insecurity as a central component of disadvantage. Part 2 shows how to identify the least advantaged in society even on a pluralist view. The authors suggest that disadvantage 'clusters' in the sense that some people are disadvantaged in several different respects. Thus identifying the least advantaged is not as problematic as it appears to be. Conversely, a society which has 'declustered disadvantaged' - in the sense that no group lacks secure functioning on a range of functionings - has made considerable progress in the direction of equality. Part 3 explores how to decluster disadvantage, by paying special attention to 'corrosive disadvantages' - those disadvantages which cause further disadvantages - and 'fertile functionings' - those which are likely to secure other functionings. In sum this books presents a refreshing new analysis of disadvantage, and puts forward proposals to help governments improve the lives of the least advantaged in their societies, thereby moving in the direction of equality. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/0199278261/toc.html
Written for anyone beginning a research project, this introductory book takes you through the process of analysing your data from start to finish. It presents an easy-to-use model for coding data in order to break it down into parts, and then to reassemble it to create a meaningful picture of the phenomenon under study. Full of useful advice, the book guides the researcher through the last difficult integrating phase of qualitative analysis.
Meeting needs: studies in moral, political, and legal philosophy
- D Braybrooke
Braybrooke, D.1987. Meeting needs: Studies in moral, political, and legal philosophy. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.