Capability in Graduate School

This entry concerns capability in higher education. One of the themes present in this blog is a sense of powerlessness in a group which should feel empowered. The dirty little secret of higher ed is that it is incredibly hierarchical and oppressive. The last few entries have led me to completely read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed for the first time – I am almost finished with the first chapter. Graduate students must be careful where they tread considering the myriad of political minefields which exist in their departments. Once graduate students leave for faculty positions, do they become “sub-oppressors”? Of course not all, but a substantial number do indeed fall in to this existential reality which Freire so elegantly discusses. Using Gizem’s metaphor – does the squirrel become the oppressor?
Here is another issue which should concern all graduate students – jobs. Are you fully informed concerning this issue? Presumably you are in graduate school to acquire a job but have any of you asked for full information: where new graduates work, what is the position, who was their advisor and so forth. This type of inquiry would certainly increase your capability.
In one of the first blog entries, growing a garden was used as a metaphor. I am in the process of beginning one out of an area composed of grass and weeds. The land itself is extremely fertile but of course the vegetables will not grow unless the weeds and grass are removed. It is a process of trying to ensure the capability of the vegetables to grow, beginning with the selection of where to place the garden (needs to be well drained, lots of sunlight). Once my daughter and I have eliminated the weeds and grass, we must spread the mulch and then plant. This is rural Maine so I must think about how to keep out all of the critters (impossible), the short growing season and gardening organically. Gardening is quite Deweyian in that it involves problem solving which constantly changes. For example, I know that my garden here will involve different issues than my garden in Southern California although I am planting some of the same vegetables. But the process of solving the problems remains similar. This brings me to CA – increasing capability needs to be viewed as a process which is not stagnant. In the current macrosystem I do not believe CA is achievable on a societal level, but that does not imply it cannot be successful within small theaters of activity.

Thesis – Antithesis
Human mind has an amazing capability to encode, store and retrieve information in memory. However, what I find more fascinating is the way we think and construct this knowledge through cognitive processes. Cognition is not necessarily cumulative, as most people assume. It is more than accumulation of ideas and generating new ones out of these ideas, it also involves very complex processes where one piece of information can survive by negating the other. If blogs in particular, and internet as a scale free network in general, represents how we think, this blog would include not only cumulative flow of ideas, but also marginal nodes, oppositions, or even negations. In that case, we cannot only talk about what capability approach IS, we will also need to discuss what capability approach is NOT.
“CA is all about open dialogue, education and political rights.”
First of all, Sen’s capability approach is not an overarching theory – as the names implies, it is a framework/approach to understand human development; it functions as a basic foundation for research, social policy, and legislation. Theories have basic premises that are applicable and generalizable to make predictions about certain phenomena. Although capability approach offers a new approach to understand (and measure) poverty and human development, it does not provide a systematic conceptualization about the mechanisms through which they occur or the ways they are maintained. This does not necessarily mean that our discussions are atheoretical – obviously, our arguments are Deweyian and almost all posts in this blog are somehow related to American pragmatism. Taken together, we are talking about capability approach from a pragmatist perspective in general. I think we need to acknowledge this first.
In that case, potential misconceptions may occur about what capability approach is. Reducing capability approach to provision, availability or accessibility of political and educational rights in society is dangerous. These so-called instrumental freedoms are necessary but not sufficient to achieve human development and capability. Freedoms depend on social and economic arrangements as well as political and civil rights while social institutions also contribute to enhance and guarantee the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change, rather than passive recipients of dispensed benefits. In that case, freedoms, as principal means of development, are expanded and maintained in a bottom-up (i.e. human beings are active agents of change) and top-down processes (i.e. social policy, and institutions are involved), simultaneously. Therefore, open dialogue or educational/political and civil rights are only pieces of the big picture, whereas the frame and the background are forgotten if one only focuses on instrumental freedoms.
One particular example comes from Gulen movement which offers a ‘moderate Islam’ model integrated with traditional Sufi values http://www.fethullahgulen.org/. The basic premises of the movement include a) pluralism and tolerance to multiculturalism, b) interfaith and interreligious open dialogue, c) priority of higher education especially for women and the economically disadvantaged groups, and d) freedom of speech. The movement applies these principles by organizing national and international conferences, workshops, and seminars, offering scholarships and fellowships for higher education, establishing schools all around the world (from Kenya to Russia, from Turkey, Germany to USA), and having mass media to disseminate the ideas of the movement through TV/radio channels, newspapers, websites, and blogs worldwide. At first sight, the movement with its principles, activities, and organizational structure seems to fit what capability approach offers as means of development. However, a closer look at the Gulen movement reveals close sectarian ties within the community, massive psychological control over the followers, economic and social dependence on leaders – all implying subtle authoritarianism hidden behind the mask of ‘dialogue.’ Going back to the arguments we made about women wearing ‘burka’ – the extent to which these women were ‘free’ in this movement to choose to be veiled is questionable. On one hand, the premises fall under capability approach, on other hand the followers may have the ‘pedogogy of the oppressed’ without being aware of it. You may think this is an argument that is out of the tangents of the class discussion and your daily life – unfortunately it is not! I am talking about a massive, cross-cultural, fundamental Islamist movement that has hundreds of schools worldwide. In Columbus only, they hold 3 schools, and in OSU, they have approximately 100 graduate students under their scholarship. The flyers you see on bulletin boards in OSU informing you about ‘seminars on veiled women’ or ‘Sufi poetry’ come either from ‘Students For Dialogue’ or from ‘Scioto Education Foundation’ – both are active organizations associated with the religious sect. I am talking about a huge political, religious and business organization that owns many international brands in the market, including Godiva. This movement gained its power particularly from its emphasis on freedom of speech and open dialogue. My key point is that utilizing democratic rights does not necessarily create democratic movements – as this example illustrates (i.e. sect has a hierarchical structure that reinforces authoritarianism). This is what capability approach is NOT. It also shows how it can go wrong in political arena once it is reduced to simply instrumental freedoms without participatory democracy…

“CA is almost a new ‘welfare state’ approach to achieve social equality.”
I have to admit that I read this misconception several times in a variety of articles in the literature. Although Sen offers a whole chapter in his book to argue about how capability approach is NOT utilitarian or it is NOT pure welfarism, this reductionist approach to CA is still prevalent. One particular reason could be that the instrumental freedoms Sen is talking about coincide with what welfare states are ‘supposed’ to provide to their citizens. For instance, the concept of ‘social wage’ suggests that employees ‘wage’ does not only refer to certain level of payment or economic income, but it also includes certain benefits or rights that do not necessarily have material value (such as status or prestige of the profession, legal protection by law etc.). Even though ‘social wage’ may parallel what CA offers for human development (such as civil and participatory rights for citizens), it still implies a ‘top-down’ approach where state and institutions allocate resources to the citizens, and ‘provide’ or ‘give’ social and political rights. In CA, the process is obviously more reciprocal; it includes both top-down and bottom-up processes. Institutions are expected to ensure basic democratic and social rights whereas individuals are active agents in society. In addition, CA is much broader than traditional welfarism and integrates multifaceted and multidimensional change in various ecosystems, rather than economy or politics itself.

“CA and Sen’s ideas are close to Neo-Marxism.”
I think this is one of the most common misunderstandings of CA by the academic audience. There are definitely Marxist academicians and followers of Sen who took some basic premises of CA and integrated them with their own ideas. However, in its origin, I argue that Sen’s CA has nothing to do with Marxism. I almost felt like he is very cautious about not being labeled as a Marxist. It is also interesting that Sen offers an approach that is very ambitious to transform the society and it definitely has political consequences, but is timid about addressing the mechanism behind it. One example is the language Sen uses throughout his book, Development as Freedom. He uses terms such as ‘developing countries’ , ‘social exclusion’ or ‘human development’, but he NEVER uses the terms ‘third world countries’, ‘cultural imperialism’ or ‘post-colonialism.’ Let me just pick ‘developing country’ as an example. This is a politically-constructed term, utilized by World Bank and IMF especially after ‘90s to refer to countries whose economies are moving towards ‘achieving’ an economic/political/social state as strong as industrialized countries. Keep in mind, these countries are not identified as ‘underdeveloped’ which is another WB category referring to poor countries. The discourse behind this term is ‘developmentalism.’ – a really hot topic in political sociology as a Post-Fordist ideology. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmentalism)
This discourse stems from the idea that highly industrialized countries (i.e. US, Western European countries) have ‘achieved’ social, political, and economic development and are at peak of capitalism. The strategies they utilized to cherish this high industrialization serves as ‘model’ for other countries. It is almost like saying that ‘If they implement our strategies in their own countries, they will develop in the same way.’ To put it even more simply, developmentalism offers a one-size-fits-all model, almost a pattern, for these countries. The rules are implemented by World Bank and IMF who provide monetary founds to developing counties as long as they propose ‘developmental goals’ that fit this agenda. The problem with developmentalism was that it was an imposed model that fell short to address the needs of ‘third world countries.’ Think about the great economic crisis that hit Asian economy in late ‘90s. The developmentalist discourse before the crisis was suggesting that ‘Asia tigers’ (i.e. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore etc.) were ‘miracle economies’ who were the fastest growing economies in Asia, and they succeeded to become highly industrialized countries. However, the crisis struck and revealed that economic and social development of ‘Asian Tigers’ did not change the fact that they were dependent on imperialist countries to survive in the global economy – they were not self-reliant at all. This was a crisis showing that developmentalist model simply failed! It was 1998 when the model and its applicability were being questioned in World Bank. Such a coincidence – on the same year, Sen was awarded with Nobel Prize in economics with his CA!
It is not surprising that UN accepted CA as a foundation for Human Development Indices and also for Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/). CA filled in the existing gap in developmentalism and made it more acceptable for ‘developing countries.’ In the past, World Bank would provide funding to nation states to make investments in industrial economy (i.e. develop agricultural machinery, open factories etc.) and development was considered only in economic realm, geared towards increasing production, promoting new consumption patterns, and participation in international trade. However, this model was shattered down in the global economy where economic development was not enough for ‘developing countries’ to survive (i.e. Latin American countries). The solution was found in Sen’s CA which addressed the issue of development as a broader phenomenon. Sen argued over and over that development is inevitably related to freedom and democracy, in addition to economic and social growth. Now, in that discourse, World Bank provides micro credits/loans to the poor people in developing countries to achieve their ‘potential.’ The developmentalist discourse in that model still persists, it even gets stronger with the use of CA. Sen’s approach empowers masses to work towards a ‘universal golden standard.’ Again, it is not a coincidence that he devoted a whole chapter on universalism of certain rights and to Adam Smith to defend Capitalistic system. Sen is obviously pro-capitalist, but he wants morality, social equality, and participatory democracy to survive in that system. His goal is not to change infrastructure of the existing system or achieve revolution, but to provide reforms to keep the system going. Therefore, social classes, stratification or class conflict are never mentioned in this approach. Have you seen one single word on caste system in India and arguments about how this related to allocation of information?
Another example, he argues over and over again that famines occur not due to shortage of food, but due to limited access to information about resources, and he draws attention to the totalitarian regimes. I find this argument very convincing, but unfortunately missing. Obviously, countries do not exist in a vacuum as if they are detached from the global economy. I think famines occurred because the imperial powers oppressing and exploiting the resources of these countries ‘needed’ famines to maximize their profit at that time. The imperial power would, of course, need an authoritarian regime to achieve these goals – in that case, unfreedom is the instrument of oppression, not the end of it. Therefore, the famines occur as an inevitable consequence of a more macro level problem, the imperialism itself. The poverty itself, then, can be attributed to the dynamics of ‘new imperialism’ – exploiting the resources of a country not through coercive marital affairs or invasion of the territory, but through political, economic, social, and cultural means.
Taken together, Sen does not care about changing the mechanisms that cause and maintain unfreedoms (i.e. never talks about cultural imperialism). Therefore, CA is not more than a new approach to developmentalism. It would be unfair to call Sen a Marxist. Ironically, Marx talked a lot about social reforms (vs. revolution) in his manuscripts and cautioned against them since they interfere with the process moving towards revolution (see Chapter 1 in the link) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm
Marx is obviously a modernist; he cherishes Bourgeoisie as a transformative, generative and productive social class who abolished the rule of aristocracy. He also cherishes accomplishments of capitalist system for its own sake (Interestingly enough, Sen mentions these points as well while he quotes Marx). BUT, for Marx, we need bourgeois and capitalist system as part of dialectic materialism to move towards revolution for proletariat. The instrument of change is class consciousness of the proletariat, the oppressed class in the capitalistic system. I think this implies one of the misconceptions about Sen’s CA. Obtaining information in a democratic society and education can bring consciousness about oppression and exploitation. However, in CA, this does not translate into being conscious of one’s own suffering associated with his/her social class. Marx would call Sen a bourgeois socialist, someone who tries to provide rights to the oppressed classes to maintain the integrity of the system, but inevitably block the ongoing process towards revolution. (See bourgeois socialism in Chapter 3) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm
You may wonder why I went on and on arguing about this. It is because in class discussions I remember people talking about how much Freire and Sen overlap. I disagree strongly with this idea – Freire is very much into bringing foundational change to the system rather than reforming it! I would say he is close to Marx, rather than Sen. Arguing that his ideas parallel CA would be trying to fit him in a small box with SBH-like assumptions.
I am aware that this is an extremely long post – almost a paper. I was very hesitant to write it, thinking that there is something wrong with me that I think about negating ideas all the time. Possibly, I am brainwashed by these sociology electives I took in college and the effects of them still remain. This is what I believe: ‘Everything in life is political.’ The fact that it is only 5 of us in this class is political. We meet in outdoor locations for classes - this is political. Even the coffee you drink is political – have you ever thought why in Caribou, Starbucks or other cafes in US, you can never find Middle Eastern coffee even if this region is where coffee originated from before it was introduced to Greeks and was scattered around Europe? Have you ever thought why we drink so much coffee with sugar in academia? Anyways, as I said, I am brainwashed. I cannot read CA with an apolitical lens even if Sen tried really hard on this! Hopefully, Nussbaum will be different…

Freedom and unfreedom,

Maybe we should be writing a paper about freedom in acaemia,

From Gizem,

Confusionism: constant fusion of ideas
A squirrel of enthusiasm jumps from one idea stone to another and suddenly stops in front of a huge oak tree with attractive leaves of curiosity. She looks around, really quick, to see if the area is safe from potential ‘invaders’ – the troublesome creatures of desire, the sirens of ambition and obedience, the animals of brutal coercion, the devoted guardians of dogmatism, and the fearful human beings whose throats are threatened with new ideas. They all want conformity, she thinks, therefore I need to hide to survive. She runs in with hope, and also with despair. She runs in with hunger, finding the deliciousness of fresh nuts of knowledge. No, it is unfair to say she is greedy, this is just pure self-indulgence after years of deprivation from freedom. She feeds herself with it, overly ambitions, overly fast – not even leaving a second to digest any of it. She wants the impossible, she would absorb the sunshine hidden in the nutshell if she were allowed to. She would know the value of it, and would never – ever – lose it to the blind invaders.
At that present moment of relief, her mind opens up to sense how her existence has gained a new meaning, rather than a dull survival in midst of dark authoritarianism.
***
Acadreamia is an iron cage sometimes. It is almost a sin to write creatively and use allegories, or metaphors. Instead, we have to worship the ground rules of objectivity with subtle judgments hidden inside. Papers we write need to be as ‘structured’ as possible with no active voice or subjectivity. We are allowed to be ‘innovative’ as long as we are not controversial. The journal articles flow with nicely organized intro-methods-results-discussion structures, but life out there we refer does not have that order. We call it ‘error’ or ‘nuisance’ when it diverges from our so-called reality, nature calls it an irresistible and a constant change. We lie scientifically, fearing the chaos in our brains. We want to have control over everything, first on experimental designs and methodology, but then on our lives and on each other. Surprise is not welcome, uncertainty is never tolerable. Our creative minds, however, are full of new ideas. How come could we think through aggregated numbers or percentages, or ‘research-suggests-that’ patterns? Once artificiality is internalized, we find ourselves trapped in the iron cage of convention. If you have ever authored a paper, you know what I am talking about. If not, you will know, soon!
It is another scene of cynicism that I was hesitant to blog, feeling hopeless that any change can happen. However, I realized that this blog is a Deweyian/Michaelian experiment in which I have the freedom to be authentic. So, I would like to try something different – I will post my stories, sometimes fairy tales, and ideas in a combined manner. After four years in grad school, I am tired of pretending to be ‘philosophical’. I do believe that science is a creative enterprise as in art, and it is an agent of social change, rather than static numbers to outline facts of an artificially constructed world…
***

Travis has asked Glassman!!!! to Blog!!!! so you have something to go off of. Okay. I have posted the beginnings of two papers from the blog on the wiki pages (although the Intro paper is hard to find for some reason. You have to actually click on from mglassman1 or whatever). But let's blog baby! And I am thinking this will be transferred to the wiki Intro paper in some form by somebody commenting on it.

Let's talk about Nussbaum a little bit because I believe she gives us an entry point into the second section of the paper, one it is suggested should be basically a very easy to understand outline of the major points of CA and how it relates to human development.

Amartya Sen developed the Capability Approach (CA) as a counter point to neo-classical economic models which determine success through aggregate measurements of material wealth (such as Gross Domestic Product) ( ). The emphasis in these neo-classical models is almost completely on progress through competition (using aggregate measurements for within and especially between society comparisons – so special attention must be paid to positivist measurements of the society as a whole). Neo-classical/comparison models often have little space for individual human dignity, and philosophically may actually see an emphasis on the individual as an impediment to social progress (the few must be sacrificed for the greater good). Sen offers a number of insights countering the neo-classical perspective in general, and the use of aggregate measurements to determine well being in particular, but perhaps the most important in terms of an education model are, 1) understanding of the health of a society through individual accounts of well being rather than society wide accounts; 2) most human tragedy is the result of poor information and lack of ability to use it good information even when you have it – if people are offered good information in positive circumstances they will make good decisions for their individual lives and their communities (nobody should be forced to rely on decision making of others in the service of the greater good; 3) it is the larger society’s responsibility to provide the basic building blocks allowing individuals to be capable of 1 and 2.
Sen challenges societies to create a level playing field. No subgroup should be able to claim privileges in either resources of decision making. The health of any society must be judged by its weakest link. If there are members of society with depressed levels of well being it doesn’t matter how well the society is doing as a whole, this is an unhealthy (and immoral) condition. The key to well being for any population is access to information and the capability to use it to meet their needs and desires (individuals must not only have the skills to obtain good information but also the social, emotional, and physical wherewithal to follow through on any actions this information engenders). Sen came to this realization studying famines and realizing that no famine ever occurred because of a lack of food – it was always the result of a lack of information about who had food and where and how it is distributed. This allows the more powerful to horde available food to increase their wealth while the less powerful starve ( ). Friere makes the argument that the more powerful in society use control of information, through both active (e.g. control of media) and passive (e.g. poor education) restriction to limit and control human actions, behavior and belief system – an echo of George Mead’s thesis on social control ( ).

Sen’s thesis on capability argues that it is society’s responsibility to make sure all its members have clean water, housing, decent levels of education (allowing access to information), and opportunities to maintain their health (1999). He makes no determinations about where life trajectories should lead – only that they should have the capabilities through on their own decisions, free and unfettered. Each person makes their own choices based on their own needs and desires. Sen also does not specifically define what functionings are necessary for well being, suggesting a dynamic interplay between functionings and capabilities is different societies.

Martha Nussbaum’s perspective on a Capability Approach developed out of the work of Sen and others at the United Nations ( ). Nussbaum’s work while similar to Sen’s differs on a couple of points that make her ideas a more direct and natural fit with education theorists such as Dewey and Friere. First, while Sen believes society’s must take an inductive approach to understanding well being he still, for the most part, has an economist’s generalized idea of how actions impact society as a whole. Nussbaum is more concerned with the individual per se and focuses more on issues such as human dignity and what it means to be a fully functioning human being. This leads to a second difference with Sen - Nussbaum’s theory is explicitly developmental (Nussbaum discusses the development of capabilities rather than the development of the individual per se. Still it is representative of development and/or progress that has important and many times obvious bridges with teaching and learning). Third, while the underpinnings of Sen’s ideas are taken primarily in economics theory and history, Nussbaum (per her humanities background) tries to establish a strong basis for her ideas in philosophy. Historically educational theory (though often not practice) has had close ties with philosophy, especially philosophy of mind (Menand 2001), and indeed Dewey did not distinguish between the two. Fourth, while the ideas behind both Sen and Nussbaum’s work are motivated by issues face by oppressed and deprived populations, Nussbaum incorporates a feminist perspective, recognizing females in society as a relevant, oppressed subgroup. I believe the addition of an overtly feminist perspective opens CA up to understanding and affecting a number of different subgroups that are too often left out of discussions of oppression and marginalization. Nussbaum’s feminist perspective is more forthright about the need for universal toolkit of functionings that lead to true human capabilities with dignity. Nussbaum is not willing to say each society make can its own decisions about functionings based on its own traditions and needs because too often women and other marginalized subgroups (e.g. lower castes, indigenous populations) get left out of the dignity equation – not only do women and other marginalized subgroups not realize their capabilities, but they internalize their society’s claims that they are not worthy of the same functionings – and therefore the same dignity - as the men/privileged of their society.

From Travis

Title: Democracy and Freedom of Information
Most of the following thoughts came from: Walton 2007… not sure where I stumbled across it.

“Democracy represents the ideal of a government legitimated by the will of the people.” (Walton, 2007)
Central to Sen’s understanding of freedom is the participation in a democratic environment. This democracy is to include more or less the rational discourse of citizens, groups of citizens, and the government that is representing them. In this article Walton discusses discourse in democracy and I think that the article touches on many things that Sen would agree with.
Walton pulls on Dahl (no idea who that is) regarding public spheres when describing how public opinion is formed – “The public sphere gathers information and processes it through various institutional, cognitive, and technically mediated filters to produce a set of preferences for a certain type of society.” He goes on to say that this public sphere is not a physical location, but rather made up of any and all locations, physical or virtual, where ideas and feelings can be exchanged openly. The diversity of individuals involved in discourse enables a public conception of the common good as amorphous (shapeless – ya, I looked it up) and changing. Walton even goes on to say that the internet has enabled more people to have a voice in public affairs through blogging, which has shaped discourse in new and innovative ways. He concludes blogging thoughts with: a pitfall of blogging is the participation of so many voices which creates a cacophony where it is difficult to sort ‘truth’ (let us say evidence) from opinion. In addition, to participate in the public sphere responsibly individuals are required to stay, at least to some degree, aware of the current affairs, social issues, and government policies that are being discussed.
This led me to consider how the disenfranchised could participate in such a process. Now, mind you, I am still not able to see how CA allows me to see individuals and groups of people without a voice (who NEED? A voice) without seeing that situation from a deficit model [i.e., they do not have a voice and are in need of a voice]. But lets play along that I have a CA understanding of bringing a ‘voice’ to people.
First, those who are without a voice are possibly not even aware that they are able to have one. How is that bridge crossed in a nonhierarchical manner? That appfrica article we read ended by saying that many farmers in Africa DID NOT make use of the application that had been offered them in order to determine a fair price for their wares – why did they not act on this information? Did they reject the very notion that they may have been receiving unfair prices unbeknownst to them? How can they be persuaded of its importance? Regarding voting, or even gathering to share ideas, how can individuals who have never done this been persuaded of its importance? Mitch was a lone voice (well, plus one, Daria) during our “share what you think needs changed in the department meeting” we had with Julie. Graduate students were given a choice to dialogue with one another about changes they might want – and we didn’t. Only one person even bothered to speak up lone-wolf style, only to be shot down. In our case we were made aware that we had a voice, and we chose not to exercise it. That was a group of individuals who are USED to having a voice. Why would be expect a different response from groups/individuals who may never have felt like they had a voice in the first place?
Second, …ok so I am tired. I also don’t know where this post Is supposed to be heading, but hey, I’m participating. … I was thinking along the lines of giving freedom to those will find it to be a new experience – a process needs to be designed where those without a voice are 1)given a voice, and 2) taught how to express that voice in a constructive manner. Seeing dialogue as a means of education and social action could significantly impact the way such a process is constructed. Thoughts?

From Margeret,

I am posting this comment from Margeret, it is to Daria's post, but it is too long for a comment so I am making it a separate post. I am doing this because I want to comment on it - all the way here from AERA in Denver

As I was reading Daria’s post for the ten capabilities proposed by Nussbaum I was presented with similar thoughts. I like the idea of focus groups and I am not all that familiar with how they are set up or for that matter how they are even carried out. Anyhow, I did some internet surfing to try and sort some things out. The first thing that comes to mind when reviewing Nussbaum’s capabilities, was a program that incorporates similarities of psychotherapy. So I did some investigating and here are my thoughts.
Nussbaum proposes ten additional capabilities that are perceived to him as being necessary and supported by all democracies. However, I have a couple of points to make regarding these. Deprivations can occur from a variety of means and in many cases individuals may not have the ability to recognize that they are lacking functional capabilities. Now my concerns with Nussbaum’s 10 additional capabilities is that they may be considered important by some, but not all individuals. I saw something on tv last night and so I was able to find a link as evidence of this so maybe my post was rejected for a reason. (http://www.vh1.com/shows/jessica_simpson_the_price_of_beauty/episode.jhtml?episodeID=166391) It’s the show where Jessica Simpson travels around learning beauty regimns across the world. Anyhow, They also meet with an exceptionally poor woman who lives in a favella, but has chosen plastic surgery over a better place to live for herself and her child. She comments this which made me think even more about this class – “The mother chooses this and she’s baffled but Jessica say “This doesn’t mean that the mother is a bad mother for choosing plastic surgery over providing food and shelter to her kids, it may just be that she doesn’t know any better.” And no I was flipping through the channels, I don’t watch this normally! Therefore, by establishing specific capabilities like he has done, he is not allowing the individual the “freedom” to acknowledge what basic and mental needs are necessary for he/she to maximize their abilities and determine the path of their own life rather than having it determined for them which is the paradigm that is currently in place with decisions being made by higher authority.
Now, after researching psychotherapy for quite a long time, I realized that a program approach with this outline perhaps within focus groups could allow for quite a few things. First let me explain what I learned about psychotherapy. There are 13 different approaches but the one that struck me the most was the medical non-medical model approach. The medical model works from a deficit approach where you view the individual as lacking something or having problems. Aside from this the non-medical approach allows individuals to become more aware of their capacity for self-direction and development. This increases the awareness of individuals to not only assess their current capabilities but better understand what factors and how they might be able to increase their capacity to function. The ten factors for Nussbaum are acknowledged indirectly as the individual gains awareness and eventually realizes their potential. The realization of one’s potential comes only when basic and mental needs are fulfilled.
What I believe Nussbaum is proposing is that these 10 capabilities make personal growth possible and that these basic capabilities are both necessary and critical for satisfying lower order necessities making self-actualization possible so that personal growth can occur. Maslow believes self-actualization is growth motivated rather than deficiency motivated. Therefore, the individual is not working from a deficit model.
So I agree that there is a set of basic capabilities that have to be available in order for this personal growth to take place. However, I think his proposed idea would lend more support if he were to give the individual the freedom for determining what resources are more important in allowing the individual to determine what lower deficiency needs are to be met in order for self-actualization to occur. Lower deficiency needs are part of the hierarchy triangle of needs as proposed by Maslow. Now in our first paper prior to meeting the first time, it states that Nussbaum does not believe there is a hierarchy to these needs, but Maslow’s approach does. A person must acknowledge what deficient needs exist and need to be met. It appears that his approach is similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He states that in order for higher level needs to be met the lower level needs must not only be met but maintained. Under this approach, in order for self-actualization to occur the individual must not only achieve the needs of previous levels but master them. Therefore, it defines a concrete set of levels that are dependent upon mastery of specific needs defined in previous levels.
My thing is that I believe that human needs are non-hierarchical. Human experience, whether it be influenced by norms and expectations of other individuals or societies and can be circumstantial and its effects varying by individual. Moreover, specific individuals and communities should be given the freedom to assess what needs and capabilities must be met in order for growth of the individual is not identifying deficient needs that are believed as making them incapable. Instead, humans have an inherent capacity to maximize potential and so the functional capabilities and freedoms come from increasing the individuals sense of their own well being. They merely are not granted capabilities you could give an individual as Nussbaum suggests. They arise from communication and dialogue, changes in behavior, which facilitate improvements allowing individuals to reach their full potential.

I'm Breaking Out While Trying Not to Freak Out

I am going to expand my number-loving, quantitatively focused brain and try my hand at qualitative research methods. I am also going to try to look at this proposed research through the lens of someone who understands the Capability Approach. Michael asked us to think of how we would apply all of the things we have read to a research project-this is my first [hopefully not too weak] attempt. Bear with me, I have a feeling it's going to be long and cumbersome. I am trying to combine focus groups and the capability approach. Wish me luck...

The Capability Approach emphasizes 1) functional capabilities/substantive freedoms, 2) human beings have the capacity to function in important ways if they wish, and 3) human beings can be deprived in many ways-ignorance, lack of financial resources, etc (I really like 2 & 3). In addition, Nussbaum adds to this approach giving ten capabilities that should be supported by all democracies.

1. Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one's life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
2. Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.
3. Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a "truly human" way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one's own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one's mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.
5. Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one's emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.)
6. Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one's life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious observance.)
7. Affiliation.
   1. Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other humans, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.)
   2. Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails provisions of non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin and species.
8. Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.
9. Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over one's Environment.
    1. Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association.
    2. Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.
    
    
    Thanks, Wikipedia.
    
    
    What's this have to do with anything? I want to work with sick kids and their families. Help make their lives a little easier, keep their system from getting too far out of whack, enable them to maintain the 10 capabilities that are a given to all people in a democracy. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of research in this area of therapy, so I'm thinking of doing a focus group with the families of sick kids to find out what they feel they need to protect their capabilities. Focus groups generate information important to the advancement of programs, communities, and organizations. When you look at focus groups, they seem to match up pretty well with what we have talked about in class regarding the CA. For example:
    Focus groups (as compared to quantitive and popular survey methods] involve:
    1) Insight not Rules-it is the production of insight; you get not only the content but also emotions, ironies, contradictions and tensions. In other words, we get the meaning behind the facts.
    2) Social not Individual-we combine multiple individual perspectives to see how they fit together
    3) Flexibile not Standardized-using an interview guide [by a competent moderator] helps the group relax, open up, think deeply, and consider alternatives
    4) Words not Numbers-a frightening concept for a girl like me; themes/patterns/perspectives are utilized for analysis

I also love this from the Sen book:

"Unintended consequences dominate actual history-if the most important things that happen are not intended [and not brought about through purposive action], then reasoned attempts at what we are pursuing what we want may appear to be rather pointless."

While this immediately makes me think of love and the natural course it takes [though so many try to force it], I think it also applies to the benefit of focus groups. When the investigator takes a back seat and lets the participants guide the discussion, valuable pieces of information will inevitably come up to further guide the investigation.

So that was me thinking out loud on a blog for a few hours. Natasha has my brain headed in the dissertation direction. Feel free to comment.

I am going to post on the discussion we had yesterday and then perhaps individuals will comment on it. I'm not sure if this belongs in the introduction paper or the poverty paper or parts in both. We shall see where the idea goes.

The original discussion revolved around Sen's use of Adam Smith and the moral implications that are almost always forgotten in capitalism (e.g. social exchange theory) so that the actual idea devolves into Malthusianism and/or social Darwinism (they are very connected). I was surprised to find that Adam Smith wrote his book on moral sentiments before he wrote "The Wealth of Nations." I have been trying to understand what this means and the role that the social mirror plays in any market place - and how it related to redefining the market place in terms of capabilities rather than abilities - especially when it comes to human capital.

I think it is important to remember that Smith was initially a moral philosopher, and many of his ideas spring from his moral stance. He also was an empiricist in the tradition of John Locke. His attitude towards human morality is that we came to it through our own empirical observations - it is not something that we know and understand innately. Smith was essentially a behaviorist - at least in the idea that we learn what we observe. What we observe others in pain or in difficulty we begin to see ourselves in them. I believe there is a certain "There but for the Grace of God go I" aspect to his theory. Smith talks about sympathy, but it is not that kind of "feeling sorry for another" sympath, but the aforementioned sympathy. This causes us to care about justice for others. I believe this is a very important part of his thinking and one that Sen thinks must be incorporated if we are going to have a society based in the market place.

Later Smith would turn to economics. There is some argument that "Wealth of Nations" is totally separate from his moral philosophy but I don't think that is really possible. Smith though has become very much a utilitarian in the mode of the philosopher Bentham. Smith's idea is that we are going to work in our own self-interest in order to achieve the greatest level of happiness. This for Smith is as much a part of human nature as the social mirror that he described seventeen years earlier. The question is should society do anything to circumvent this self-interested. This is a very important question for Smith because again he is a moral philosopher first and foremost. Smith's answer is no because even though people do things in their self-interest that is not necessarily bad for others around them. Meaning if a baker makes bread and sells it so he can make money to achieve his pleasure the act actually helps people because he is making life better for the person who makes meat for sandwiches, the person who makes mustard, but especially the person who wants to eat the sandwich especially.

What keeps self-interest from flying out of control. I think in this case you have to consider the social mirror. Part of our own happiness is determined by the need to believe there is justice, that there is a level playing field. I think Sen would say that this is why say a deficit model is so dangerous. You are bringing a Malthusian argument into the fray - the idea that those who are suffering are doing so because of their own deficiencies, whether they be organic, family oriented, ecologically oriented, or based on their own rational choices. Other suffer not because the world is unjust but because they have somehow failed on their own in the race to the top. This allows us to ignore their plight, to say these people are not like us, they do no represent a social mirror, and therefore we do not have to feel bad about their lack of justice. We can even give these poor, deficient human beings charity - but to consider their plight that these people are in the situation they are in because of injustice - an injustice that you benefit from - and you should be devoting your time and energy to a more just society - a deficit model allows us to escape from this. This is why giving the dollar to the homeless man, or judging the woman for making rational choices leading to having ten children, does not lead us to a better society, and we should not concentrate on fixing what it wrong with individuals.

CA is really about abandoning the modern welfare state - and I would say our education initiatives - in favor of creating a level playing field. If there is no level playing field we must see those who struggle or who are somehow hurt as being part of our mirror. I want to offer an example from watching the news this morning. They are talking about standardized tests and an initiative to make them federal in nature. It made me think - what is the purpose of standardized tests. Is is simply to set up a deficit model - that those who do not do well are deficient somehow and we must figure out how to fix this?

CA and the fundamental attribution error

Upon numerous requests from Dr. Glassman I rented the movie Precious this weekend. The dramatic storyline and visuals presented in the movie helped me better understand the unfreedoms experienced by impoverished segments of the American population. The movie forced me to reconsider my position from last week that information is just as readily available to the less fortunate (e.g. the woman with 10 children must have known about the available birth control options) as it is for those who are more privileged. The privileged majority (myself) included blame those who struggle for their misfortunes failing to acknowledge the external factors which may contribute to their situation (mainly the lack of capabilities afforded them). This can be explained within a deficit model but it also reminds me of a core concept within social psychology; the fundamental attribution error (FAE). The FAE explains the tendency for individuals to over-value dispositional factors for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational factors for those behaviors. Last Tuesday Dr. Serovich provided a text book example of the FAE when she suggested that my lack of initiative to take independent study may explain my deficit of applied research skills. Her lack of effortful adjustment (see explanations for FAE in the provided link) draws parallels to how most individuals view marginalized populations in their society. Of utmost concern to the Capability Approach is how it will overcome the collective attribution error that seems to stem from the psychology of its citizens. We might think about considering the FAE and similar psychological concepts in the Capability paper.

I tried posting this as a comment on the self-efficacy post but it wouldn't take. Let's see if it works now

There are two issues as we introduce the idea of CA that need to be reconciled. The first is the issue of self-efficacy and the need to believe not only are you capable of development but that you actually have the freedom to develop along the trajectory you wish to develop. And the second is the issue of capability as a whole, and how capability is not an aggregate way of looking at the world, but an individual way in which each individual makes his or her own choice. On Friday I had an hour long conversation - well you could call it argument - with a colleague about the development of schools. I made the argument that the focus on the establishment of schools should be local. All that the larger institutions should do is to provide the resources that allow for a general capability and that the communities be allowed to develop their own schools out of these capabilities. My colleague argued that while you should definitely give a voice to the local community there is also a necessity to bring some level of control back to the district level, back to the institutions. Her fear, and I think it is a good one, is that local control will lead to a concretization of what is dysfunctional about a community. They will never be able to grow. Let us say you have a specific community which forces women to wear a burka. If you allow local organizations to develop and run schools completely independently are you simply reinforcing the oppressive nature of a community towards some elements of its population?
At the same time if I come in and tell you there are certain ways that your community must be what does that do to freedom. And how would that work in terms of self-efficacy? Meaning if we tell individuals they must not have schools where females are forced to wear burkas what does that mean to the population of women who make the free choice to wear burkas and are forced not to (something that is happening in France right now.)
I believe there are three key points which we need to make and think about how they relate to the issue of human development all together. The first, and perhaps most important, is the issue of information. One of the keys for Sen and CA in general is the ability not only to access information but also to use it as a tool in developing a life trajectory. This gets to Travis' idea on using Friere as well. His whole idea of teaching literacy is not that you have it as a skill in and of itself, but that you have it as a tool. The reading involves the access of information while the dialogue it is looking to foster involves the use of information. This is why we are not just looking to develop bonding social capital within the community, but synergistic social capital in which the community trusts and incorporates the information it gets from the world around them (which in an of itself is a necessity). There is an integral link between information and human development that for some reason traditoinal theories of human development simply don't tap into. Information is almost seen as something separate. And I think this is something new that CA brings to the study of human development - actually though it really does reflect Dewey in some ways.
The second issue is that CA is more of an abductive theory than a deductive theory, and we have to look at human development abductively. For the most part theories of human development take a deductive approach, and this is how they are translated either into education or into interventions. We set the premise and then we attempt to develop hypothesis where those premises can be used to make the lives of individuals better. It is, in essence, a perspective based on constraints. So we assume that when we remove our own constraints the community will replace them with their own deductive constraints. Individuals must act in a certain way because these are the premises we set up in terms of what makes your life happy, or worthwhile, or puts it on a positive trajectory. But what if we are able to start establishing an approach to human development that was more about novelty than constraints. Communities would initially fear this, there is no doubt, but CA definitely brings us closer to this.
Third is the idea that there are universal values. The values are process oriented rather than product oriented. It is part of the Aristotelian approach of CA which Sen refers to but can never really buy into. But as we read Nussbaum more and more we will get an idea of what this means.

Self Efficacy

The post I just wrote below made me think of something I had not thought of before, and perhaps this can be the tie that Travis was looking for in the Introductory article (better than Bronfenbrenner). What role does Bandura's ideas on self-efficacy play in CA. I mean we develop a model where capability is the underlying concern for human development, but it is also true - if Bandura is right - that children learn from the positive reinforcement they observe in their parents. Instead of judging that woman with ten children what if you gave her a micro loan to open up a business and offered her childcare and helping in establishing that business. Now there would still be many commodities she did not have in her life but what would this mean not only for her own children but also the other young females in the neighborhood who came to her Italian Ices stand? How would it lead to increased levels of self-efficacy? Most of us would tend to give up on this woman with ten children, but does CA see her as an opportunity?


I am supposed to be working on a conference paper which I am supposed to deliver next week, but I choose freedom!!!

Poverty and Women

The Captivability Approach probably speaks to the issue of poverty and women more than most ways of thinking about human development. I have been thinking about the example that Maggie raised about the mother with ten children, that situation she was in, and how society and individuals within society judge her. We ask of course "why does that woman have ten children." This will come up again in our reading and our discussions, but many international approaches to poverty separate out women as a class and really focus on gender differences. This is because women are so much more likely to live in poverty than males, and are marginalized within a society, community, or neighborhood (even those that are already marginalized) than males. This is true in the United States as well - women are much more likely to live in poverty. And yet we don't really separate out women as their own group facing their own particular problems, really in a qualitatively different situation. Why is this? When we do separte out females in human development it is often to suggest some types of innate differences - that women use one part of their brain more than men - and it is usually during childhood. But we don't separate out women in terms of the capabilities society gives them in their own development, and how this leads to them so much more easily slipping into poverty (and because women almost always are taking care of children, how it relates to children slipping in to poverty.)

Let's think about this woman with the ten children again. It is almost automatic to consider her situation as the result of some type of deficit. How come she didn't know better? How could she let this happen to herself? Why doesn't she take better care of the children she has? You know what I almost never hear anyone talk about - why males have so many children. I think back to the Sen book and the way marginalized populations in the United States have so much lower mortality than even the most impoverished nations in the rest of the world To what extent does the capability of not being able to live and long and sustained life play in to the decisions of the woman. Consider a parent having a conversation with a fourteen year old daughter. The daughter asks whethere she should delay have sex. The parent says yes, but that even if you don't delay you must take precautions against getting pregnant (also STDs, but perhaps pregnancy is more of an issue in these conversations). The daughter asks why it is so important to avoid getting pregnant - as fourteen year olds sometimes do (and it makes sense. After all if biologically you can get pregnant what is the logic to not getting pregnant?). The parent says that because getting pregnant at a young age can drastically change the trajectory of your life, that you will not be able to do the things you want to do, you will not be able to accomplish the goals you want to accomplish. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and there is time to have a child later. But now let us say you are having the same conversation with a fourteen year old girl from one of the poor neighborhoods that Sen talks about. She asks you why she shouldn't get pregnant. What are you going to say to her. Her life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world. The schooling gives her little if any chance for literacy, and even if it did she might not have the capability of going on with her education. She does not have a life of good food and good wine to look forward to because there aren't even decent restaurants in her neighborhood. She cannot present herself in public because the streets are too dangerous and she is fearful of being harassed if she does not have a protector. And she feels she has little if any impact on the world around her She has to stay inside her small apartment shut away from the world. She has almost no capabilities. What argument are you going to give this fourteen year old girl that she should go against her own strongest biological impulses and delay sex and/or pregnancy? It is the poverty of capabilities that leads to the later poverty we so easily judge her for.

This poverty of capabilities is not even speaking to the oppression she feels as a woman both within the larger society of the United States, within her neighborhood, and within her own family. She is labeled as a caretaker who has few rights and liberties almost from the beginning.

Okay, so now you are saying what could be done about this? How about if you started a small women's cooperative in a local neighborhood that offer micro loans and helps start up businesses right in the local ecology One woman opens up a successful green grocer, another opens a thriving Italian Ices stand, and yet a third open a coffee shop. A woman opens a twenty four hour childcare center. But what would it mean in terms of capabilities to do this. And what would it mean in terms of human development. Think about Bandura and the issue of self-efficacy.

Environment as experience vs. environment as ideology

This thought stems from a dialouge between Dr. Glassman and Travis this morning. Travis I don't remember what you asked but Dr. G, responded with well not all resources hold the highest level of importance for all populations and all socities. So some clean water would be important and for others medical support would be more important than clean water. So I was thinking and this was another "doodle" idea of mine for something yet entirely different last quarter. The ideas that we have serve as motivators for our beliefs, actions, and consequences. Experience and observation serve as concrete evidence, and how do you argue against evidence?

Human Development

Okay, here is a beginning at least for a general introductory piece on CA. I am looking for whoever it interested to add some stuff at the end.

Study of human development often focuses on attributes and abilities of individuals. We tend, at least in the United States, to understand humans as they are, as individuals, in comparison to other individuals. There is often a push and pull between those who look to emphasize context more ( ) and those who believe in a more intrinsic development ( ). There are developmental perspectives more concerned with the human in interaction with their own genetic structures ( ), with the environment ( ), with other humans ( ), with interconnected systems of activity ( ), but more often than not the critical analysis comes down to what the human is able to do at a given point in time - Are they able to decode symbols? Are they able understand and codify the space around them? Are they able to understand what another is thinking? Are they able to overcome barriers? Are they able to succeed at a given task based on age, and/or social context, and/or individual history, and/or social history? In this paper we offer a different perspective on human development - perhaps the equivalent of taking a painting we have known and appreciated our entire lives and turning it upside down (or perhaps right side up). We introduce the Capability Approach (CA) of Amartya Sen as a qualitatively different way of looking at human development. Sen initiated CA initially as a way of understanding developmental economics. His ideas suggest that in understanding human development it would be better to focus on the different capabilities provided by and through the proximal social system. It is these capabilities that allow humans to flourish and fully function, rather than on single, measurable attributes that can be used for purposes of comparison. The idea of a person being capable to flourish in the context of particular needs and life circumstances, and that this capability is based on a basket of "goods" or "commodities" is central to Sen's approach. This basket of goods mixes utilitarian needs with substantive values, but always comes back to any human being to find and follow their own trajectory, their own pattern of development.

We attempt to take some of Sen's core ideas, and those of some of his closest collaborators, and apply them to the way we study and understand human development in everyday life. Some of the concepts we look to bring to the forefront are the importance of individual comparison as opposed to aggregate comparisons. The roles that life context and situation play in understanding individual capability and its relationship to human functioning. The interconnected nature of capabilities and the ways in which attempts to establish or enhance single abilities can actually be detrimental to capabilities. The inter relationship between freedom and development.

What Google trends say about Sen

Every once in a while, I check Google labs and see what they have new and interesting. One of my favorites is google trends, where you search for a specific concept, person or keyword and find out the trends that this word has been searched online. What I really like about this is that it also gives you the peak points of search and news deadlines about this at that time.
So, here is something interesting, check this out: http://trends.google.com/trends?q=amartya+sen&date=all&geo=all&ctab=0&sort=0&sa=N

This graph shows the frequency of searches for Amartya Sen in Google (upper level), and also the frequency that he appeared in the news (lower level). (BTW, keep in mind that he won Nobel prize in economics in 1998.). Obviously, the searches have ups and downs over time until today, but the peak is late 2003, then a sharp decline in 2004. Interestingly, the lower level in the graph ( the frequency he appeared in the news) does not necessarily correspond to the public concern to his approach – it is way less than total searches on his name. In other words, it took media for a while to take him seriously whereas the internet users already ‘knew’ him. One possibility is that he is Indian and this region was the one he was searched most (Maybe an ingroup bias for Indians). However, when you look at the languages, you will see that it was not Hindi or English that had the most hits, but Italian and Spanish websites. It seems like google trends show how Sen became ‘globalized’ in 2000s, first in India, and then in Europe.
You may ask: Why bother posting this here?

Well, I think it shows that we can ‘google’ how ideas diffuse in the www and we have access to this information as lay people. Information is not restricted to researchers (i.e. demographers), but to everyone.

Homelessness as lack of capability in an ecological systems framework

I started to think about CA from Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. I was reading an empirical paper comparing parenting practices of homeless mothers and housed mothers (Koblinsky, Morgan & Anderson, 1997 – cannot give a hyperlink, not open access!). It was a pretty dull, boring, and conventional paper, but I was struck by their comparisons of physical environment of these children (homeless shelter vs. home). The children of homeless mothers in shelters, compared to the housed, poor mothers, had significantly less resources for learning stimulation (i.e. fewer toys, chaotic environment noise etc.), also fewer resources for academic and language stimulation (i.e. books). This emphasis on the physical environment suggests a broader understanding of poverty – these families do not only lack housing (instrumental goods), but they also lack the resources associated with regular housing (substantive goods). For example, being housed may mean belonging to a certain community, and even having social support via neighbors. They also lack structure in home environment with toys and books for children. This makes me think there are levels of poverty – on one hand, families may be poor and inadequate resources, and housed, on another hand they may be unstable moving from one shelter to another. The key is, as Sen argues, they do not only have low levels of income, but they also suffer from social exclusion and deprivation. They are deprived in the sense that they do not have basic functionings – i.e. basic needs for learning, connecting and relating to others. For instance, a family in a homeless shelter lacks privacy in that context where the physical environment is shared by many families/adults. They are also isolated from society, almost become socially invisible by surviving in shelters, they are outside of our reach, and we do not interact with them in our daily lives. This makes me think that CA and provision of basic functionings are pretty much multilayered in the ecological contexts of the disadvantaged populations. In the macro level, the current social policy restricts shelter stays to 30 days at most, exacerbating the instability of the families. In the exolevel, the shelter staff is overinvolved in parenting practices of these women, taking it for granted that they ‘cannot’ parent adequately. In the mesolevel, the child-mom interaction is limited via other factors i.e. mom seeking a job and has many stressors to deal with on top of parenting. Taken together, the experience of the homeless child in the microsystem is lack of capabilities we observe, not only in physical environment, but also in educational, cognitive and social development.

Appfrica

This article is particularly relavent to the Capability Approach and Daria's interest in applications. Unfortunatley I cannot be credited for my title's play on words :(

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/12/africa.apps/index.html

Deprivation vs. Attribution in Defining Poverty

Sen (1999) makes an important turn in the way that the condition of poverty is defined and understood, and sets up an important difference between the meaning of poverty in the United States and in the United Nations and affiliated organizations. In the United States we tend to define poverty both from a utilitarian perspective and along a continuum of a single attribute that can be easily aggregated (the two tend to often go together). Poverty is utilitarian because it makes the assumption that wealth is tied to happiness. Those who have less wealth are necessarily less happy or context, less able to meet their material needs. Poverty is something that must be addressed from the perspective of material wealth, in particular increase in income, and all policy that is meant to address poverty issues is at its base driven by increasing income (e.g. provide better education so that those in poverty will be able to get better jobs, provide health care assistance to businesses so that they will be able to hire more workers). Interventions are viewed solely from an instrumental perspective - what will thise intervention do to increase the likelihood that the individual will be able to increase material wealth. One of the dangers in defining poverty along the lines of a single attribute is that it becomes part of the definition of the individual. That is a person in poverty is a person who does not have enough material wealth to achieve a level of happiness. It is very easy then to make this attribute a characteristic rather than a condition of the individual - it becomes who they are and something about the indvidual that can be "fixed." A second danger in defining poverty in this way is that the single attribute becomes a continuum along which you place individuals in order to determine their level of poverty. Comparisons between both societies and individuals become absolute where a person with a higher level of material wealth is considered to be in better condition vis a vis poverty than a person with a lower level of material wealth, and all judgments are made on this basis.

What is never taken into account as issues such as freedom, individual liberties, and individual differences. Most interesting of the three in the United States is individual liberties, because such a premium is put on this issue in public discourse, and it is very much what Rawls ( ) would describe as a "public good." To the contrary, usually when individual liberties are discussed in the context of poverty it is about taking away liberties "for their own good." Those who have less material wealth must be watched over and guided in the direction of greater wealth. Inherent in this position is the idea that any person who has lack of material wealth as a characteristic has in some way "failed" in society (a Malthusian position, but one that is either overtly or covertly taken across the political spectrum). A second issue almost never mentioned in the more utilitarian definition of poverty is freedom - in particular the way that limits of freedom are both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Those in poverty are often considered to have the same freedom as those who are not in poverty - if there is a lack of freedom it is in some way based on personal choice or personal actions.

Sen offers a counter to this utilitarian vision of poverty. He suggests that poverty is based far more on deprivation, unfreedom, the inability to achieve critical capabilities because of social circumstances, than on any one single attribute.

Hey All,

We are starting with the truly experimental part of this - trying to write papers on the web. The way this is going to work is I am going to make blog posts related to specific paper - beginning sections of them. Choose the paper you are most interested in (try and limit to one because I'm hoping to get a lot of work out of you guys) and beging commenting on it. It would be great if everybody commented, but devote your original ideas and most of your energy to just one of the papers (but follow along with all of them and offer interesting perspectives when you can). I will at various time try and put everything together in a single piece that looks something like a paper and send it around to the actual authors. Then hopefully authors will post future sections (whoever they are).

Right now I would like to start three papers

The Hyperlinks/ZPD paper I talked about with Maggie

The poverty paper that I already started with Gizem

A paper that just introduces the idea of CA to American audiences, especially those who study human development

Hyperlinks, the Zone of Proximal Development, and Freedom: A Capability Approach to Reading

Reading has become one of the flashpoints of our modern educational system. While reading has always been important as a skill, it is only recently that it has been separated from the larger curriculum and given precedence over curriculum content and considered primarily in terms of its instrumental worth (Sen 1999). Aggregate measurements of reading skills have come to dominate discussions of educational policy ( ) and and school value. Taking a decidedly utilitarian perspective (Arrow....) it is assumed that reading skills will eventually lead to higher levels of competitiveness for both the student and the society and raise income levels on an individual scale and GDP on a national scale. Emphasis has been placed on instruction and testing of reading abilities. Value of both instruction/instructor (overtly) and the student (covertly) is determined and reified through this testing process.

L.S. Vygotsky ( ) argued against using the type of direct testing often used for reading as a tool for determining the abilities of children. He argued that direct testing determined how well a child could perform at a given moment, but it missed the far more important information about how well a child could master the activity in more dynamic (and from Vygotsky's larger theoretical approach context relevant) learning conditions. Vygotsky referred to this "space" between how the child performed during a decontextualized "on-demand" test and a learning situation where the child was motivated, comfortable with the learning process, and the goal was mastery of task The Zone of Proximal Development. Three quarters of a century later the economist Amartya Sen added another idea that we believe is relevant both to the teaching of reading and Vygotsky's idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (at least as it has been used and interpreted in the United States - Glassman 2003). Sen (1999) makes the argument that rather than attempting to develop specific, measurable abilities that are easily measured and compared, we as a society should be more concerned with the development of capabilities that enable individuals to move towards what Aristotle referred to as a flourishing of the human condition. Sen often refers to literacy as a key capability, but we go further in this paper attempting to understand what literacy as a capability means and how this might affect the way that we teach and understand reading. At the core of Sen's Capability Approach (CA) is the idea of freedom - the feeling of capability is tied directly to an individual's sense of freedom in their lives. We make the argument that if you remove freedom from the development of literacy that the learner never really sees and understands it as a capability that has both substantive and instrumental worth in their lives, but as a task that is required of them, what Sen calls an unfreedom.

The Zone of Proximal Development and CA both have implications for reading and literacy -but they both have flaws as well. The difficulty with The Zone of Proximal Development is the emphasis that is put on the role of the mentor or teacher. The teacher in a ZPD scenario serves as both as facilitator and guide. The development of the child is both dependent and to a certain extent controlled by the mentor who determines direction and goals of the developmental process. This might actually have a level of efficacy when the child and the mentor share the same culture, understanding of what mediated artefacts are important, and social goals. The mentor is preparing the child for the expectations of society and the child understands and is motivated by this. But the same process can have profound consequences is the child and mentor do not share the same culture, the same experience. The Zone of Proximal Development can become a Zone of Unfreedom where development becomes drudgery. The difficulty with CA is in actually providing an environment and the tools necessary for a child to feel a sense of freedom and at the same time a willingness to develop the types of capabilities that is recognized as enhancing (rather than diminishing) those freedoms.

We believe that the concepts of ZPD and CA can be brought together, and work together in a way that is revolutionary for the child and the educational establishment as a whole, by using some of the new cyber technologies that offer a new and different type of freedom in heterogenous societies - in particular the tool of hyperlinks.

Relative to the first class

Glassman you'll find it exciting to know that I reflect upon Sen quite often now! Anyhow I was in my tutoring session last night and afterwards I was filling out my paperwork on the daily activities for the day. The gals that run the program always are interested in talking about the lives of these children and figure out how I handle my group because I have not only the youngest children in the program but the most at one time as well. The things that I pay particular attention to now are motivators that I have somewhat extracted from some of Sen's ideas. I look for a variety of ways to maximize the reading skills that we are working on.

That is not the reason for this post. The reason for this post was to give some incite to communities that many of us are not familiar with and really only have certain perceptions about. I was sitting with one of the leaders last night and was discussing neighborhood resources. I brought up a particular example of grocery stores and our discussion relating to resourcing of informational resources and availability of resources like grocery stores and etc. I explained the idea you brought up in class about the lack of food items and healthy food options that more privelaged communities have. She provided some interesting feedback. She told me that it makes sense because she grew up in an African American neighborhood and she recalls that her mother was never able to shop more towards the city, but rather had to use more convenient and proximal resources. She said it wasn't that they didn't have the money they didn't have the transportation to get there. Therefore, they were stuck with the only option of the one or two corner markets that were near them. She said what you often find there is old food, higher priced items, limited selections, and few fresh alternatives. For example, she said you would never find fresh salad bars like you would find at the more conventional grocery stores. She merely said those alternatives are not available to them. I found this very interesting because despite what we discuss it's difficult to really relate to this until you hear someone talk about these things from a personal experience. She said what you see then is that families are forced to have a limited number of alternatives and that this further limits the opportunities that parents can provide to their children. Just thought I would share!!!

What would SEN Say????

I couldn't resist I promised the class during one of your coffee runs to post this!

Health Care - Saturday Night Live - Apr 10- Tina Fey - Video - NBC.com

Census not a socialist plot to spy on the American Public - Saturday Night Live - Obama Census Cold Open - Video - NBC.com

Capability Approach/classroom education

I am participating not as a class member, but rather as a friend/follower and would like to thank everyone for opening up the blog.
The major difficulty I see in capability approach is moving beyond our own authoritarian tendencies. For example, I now live in a rural state in upper New England with a total population of 1.3 million people. As in many rural states, significant pockets of poverty exist with individuals who proudly do not "fit" in to the status quo. I was shocked one day when reading the local newspaper and saw one of the communities held a "hillbilly day". I went to class the next day and asked my students about this and they explained to me that the identification as a "hillbilly" was a snub to mainstream society who frequently looks down upon them. When you drive around and live in rural areas, you find a completely different culture than what exists in urban and suburban America. Returning to our personal authoritarian tendencies - how many of us do make judgements concerning those who live in poor, rural areas? And as a result of marginalizing the rural poor, end up completely ignoring their existence or worse just feeling superior to those ignorant hillbillies? This phenomena is occurring on all levels of the ecological system - from the macrosystem to the microsystem.

Education policy - this is soooo messed up. I could rant about national standards, race to the top, the reauthorization of ESEA, but will use some self-restraint. Instead, I would like to address University teaching. I teach undergraduates in early childhood education (birth to age 8) at a small public liberal arts university in Maine. I agree that education itself can be quite boring and non-motivating - in a large part because of authoritarian education policy (getting back to CA). Here is an example of what I think everyone is talking about from two experiences I have had this year. During fall semester there was a group of students in my introductory early childhood class who continually used their computers during class to social network. Drove me crazy, but in all honesty the students would not have been social networking had felt more connected to the class material - my fault. For the past two weeks, the students this semester have had their computers in class but working on an adult version of the Project Approach. The students are engaged, not much social networking if any, and will be presenting their culminating projects this next Friday. My role in their projects has almost been non-existent. In fact, I feel unnecessary as they have taken over their own learning. This is what education should look like.

If I ruled the world

Related to Daria's post just below click on this link,

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/03/if-i-ruled-the-world-8/

Clearly we are on the verge on some really big change in how we understand education, intelligence and information. If this a good thing? Real my comment to Daria's earlier post, and hopefully before the end of the weekend I will also have one up about Therapy.

Who are we becoming? The one thing I am certain of is that academia is pretty much clueless about all of this. What does that say about us?

Six Hours in at BnN I Found this Gem....

Clearly, I am becoming a blogaholic. I spent 5 hours at my lovely Barnes and Noble doing work for Natasha, cruised the magazine section on my way out, and came across this article. I won't date a guy that uses a flip phone, and apparently kids prefer smart phones. I do love the similarity.

Because my brain is tired, I just copied and pasted some snippets. The article is long, but I felt it tied in to a lot of what Maggie was talking about with her kids and learning via the internet, as well as our talk on teacher's getting replaced by technology.

*TeacherMates-"The programs are synced with the reading and math curricula used in the school -- right down to the same spelling words each week...During the time her class spends with TeacherMates each day, Flowers [teacher] can devote more focused time and attention to small groups of students. TeacherMate is the brainchild of a bearded technology lawyer turned social entrepreneur from Evanston, Illinois, named Seth Weinberger, who punctuates his verbal volleys with waving hands and liberal profanity. He says he's on year 15 of a 30-year personal life plan to transform schooling in America using technology." His program is Innovations for Learning-here's their blog. Side note*When I applied to PhD school, I wanted to focus on video game research-thank you, Weinberger for this research direction.

*Whereas Weinberger wants to improve teaching practices at existing schools, Kim focuses overwhelmingly on empowering kids to teach themselves. He sees technology as a liberating force, helping kids in rich and poor countries alike bypass schools, with all their waste, bureaucracy, and failures, entirely. "Why does education need to be so structured? What are we so afraid of?" he asks. "The more you expect from a kid, the smarter they're going to get."

*The Internet is a many-to-many environment, which is in the early stages of having a major impact on education. It involves a fairly major change in the concept of what education is, which is one of the reasons we use the term 'learning' as distinct from 'education.' It's student-centered and student-empowered.

*"The challenge of putting such ideas into practice -- and getting the kids into the educational driver's seat -- is so daunting it's almost laughable. Still, when you've seen a tiny child eagerly embracing a device that lets her write, draw, figure out math, and eventually find an answer to any question she might ask, it's hard not to feel the excitement of the moment, or its revolutionary potential. We're talking about leapfrogging over massive infrastructure limitations to unleash what Kim calls "the only real renewable resource" -- the inventive spark of 1 billion children. "They're creative, these children," he says, "no matter where they are."

Enjoy, sorry for the general copy/paste method, my brain is fried but I wanted to share the article with you guys. Off to Target to buy wedding gifts and other oddities I don't really need. I am also starving.

Blogging and Therapy...

Apparently we aren't the only ones at The Ohio State University who are looking at blogs. Right on our Research website, front page news is the work that Anderson-Butcher is doing on Teen Bloggers and Risky Behavior [look at that, my very first hyperlink]. She found that most teens are blogging about 'positive behaviors' as opposed to 'risky behaviors.' Positive behaviors included, playing video games (65%), watching television (45%), doing homework (40%) and browsing the internet (29%). First of all, I'm just going to go ahead and throw out the idea that if you are Blogging online, then you are browsing the internet...so we should just go ahead and throw out that one. If you want to keep it, then who is to say what they are doing is a positive activity? Maybe they are all Googling the cure for cancer, but more than likely it's Facebooking, fantasy sporting, chatting, or porn hunting. Not saying there is anything completely negative with any of the above activities, but can we really call it positive? Let's take a look at the top two-video games and watching television. That's really great. Over 50% of the posts involved sedentary activities that are at times associated with marijuana use. 65% reported being bored...where is the activity? They said that these teens are bored between the hours of 3-6pm, at times when [according to the study] teens are most at risk for alcohol use or having sex. Fortunately, "They're filling their time with this social networking. So that's definitely a positive." How?! With obesity rates on the rise and school performance dwindling, how can we encourage sedentary activities between 3-6? That's prime after school activity time. What is going on with these selected bloggers that they are home between these hours and not participating in school activities? We should encourage activeness! And as for the likelihood to drink and have sex during these hours-yes, I can for sure see the sex happening [but as far as I know, if it's consensual, not jailbait, and you use protection, it's just a lovely form of cardio], but who is going to get hammered minutes before dear old Mom and Dad roll in to make dinner?

Okay, second rant...They offer up the idea that social workers [I'll go ahead and take it a step up the ladder and think about their ideas in terms of family therapists] should blog as a tool to build relationships with teens on their caseloads. They also encourage texting your clients to offer 'support' between sessions [Keep in mind, this study included a social worker as an author]. One of the golden rules of good, healthy therapy is to have boundaries. This is why office phone lines were invented-privacy! Giving your client a cell phone number to reach you at breaks those boundaries, and while some clients could respect that it's a 'for emergencies only' thing-most can't. That sense of immediate response only encourages the client to text the therapist for every little thing, mountains out of molehills and whatnot. Blogging feels like a decent idea, but the risk of confidentiality being violated seems too great. Solution? If you really want to embrace technology, go with a happy medium-create a work email. Set guidelines-maybe it'll take up to 24 hours to respond, or you won't answer on the weekends, etc., but it does allow for an easier flow of information between sessions. Important*for your legal safety, make sure you add a statement at the end that let's them know that email is NOT a secure form of communication and you can't guarantee confidentiality. I'd try to refrain from using last names too.

So kudos, OSU, you did blog research-personally, I think it's lacking, but I'm guessing there was a dearth of research. There, I blogged. And if you made it all the way to the end, then you deserve to be entertained. My family is super conservative, loves Jesus, and takes Easter very seriously. The second two were true. Anywho, family games are a big deal and this year was no exception. The initial games are really just warm-ups to the Big Show, the SuperBowl of games if you will-the Balloon Pop Game. Yes, we line up youngest to oldest and throw darts at a board of 61 balloons. Why 61? Well, there's 10 of us, that's 6 turns each~and the extra balloon? It says you get an extra turn. Booya. Each balloon is filled with a rhyme. You do what the rhyme says and you collect your prize. Four balloons contain [and yes I got this one] "A tisket a tasket, you won a basket." If this were a normal Easter, it'd be filled with Jelly Beans and Catholic Guilt~however, ours are filled with toys and lottery tickets. I won 15 dollars. Take that. Other balloons contain mini-games, including Deal or No Deal, Blind Man's Jar, Dip Your Hand in Gel, Yuck, and of course, everyone's favorite, Bobbing in Jello for Plastic Creatures Worth Selected Dollar Amounts. There is only one tub of Jello that three kids get to stick their faces in. The backwash gets a little much by the third person. The video is my lovely sister. Note my aunt saying, "always with your mouth" and the three foot long snake that she scores [it was worth 2$]. It took Jesus three days to rise. It took my Gram four days to make the Jello needed for this game.