Capabilities Equality Basic Issues and Problems [Paperback]

The capabilities approach to equality, developed by Amartyr Sen and Martha Nussbaum, seeks to answer the question: what is a proper measure of a person's condition for the purposes of determining what we owe each other, as a matter of justice?

While the capabilities theory has avoided many of the conceptual difficulties that have undermined competing accounts of egalitarian justice, recent criticisms have raised questions regarding the focus, structure and justification of the theory. In this volume, leading scholars present new and original essays that address these controversies.

1. Distributive Justice and Basic Capability Equality: Good Enough Is Not Good Enough

Richard Arneson

2. Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice

Martha C. Nussbaum

3. A Sufficientarian Approach? A Note 

Alexander Kaufman

II. A Clearly Differentiated Approach?

4. Capability vs. Opportunity for Well-being

Peter Vallentyne

5. Capabilities and Gender Inequality

Timothy Hinton

6. What Goods do to (and for) People: Duality and Ambiguity in Sens Capability Approach?

Alexander Kaufman

III. Issues in Implementation.

7. Public Debate and Value Construction in Sen's Approach

Sabina Alkire

8. Sen and Deliberative Democracy 

David Crocker

9. Attending to Nature: Capabilities and the Environment 

Victoria Kamsler

10. Disability, Capability, and Thresholds for Distributive Justice

David Wasserman

Contributors