I want to talk about the Capability Approach (CA) in general and what it means in terms of human development. Hopefully some of you have gotten to watch the video of Sen. The reason I find CA so interesting is because it switches our perspective of human development - away from the manner in which it has been considered my entire academic life. And it also makes me question why I considered human development in this manner.

Up until this point I have considered and studied human development as basically an individual phenomenon. Not so much that it is determined by individual attributes, although there are some avenues of research that make this argument, but as an individual responsibility. When I say responsibility I don't mean it in the traditional sense, like if you take out a car you are responsible for what happened to it. I mean responsibility in the sense that it is best understood as something an individual does, and if something does happen or does not happen in the developmental process we have to look at what is going on with the individual. Even in more socio-cultural theories what we are looking at is the individual's relationship with the society around them. This I think has allowed us to ignore some of the more dramatic social problems.
It is rarely asked, given everything else being perfect, or at least okay, does the individual even have the capability to develop. And what do we mean by development? Does it mean reaching a certain end point, achieving a specific ability? And who is making this decision about what it means to develop.

I have been struggling over the last couple of weeks to come up with a metaphor for the questions I am struggling with in the context of CA and would really like help from you guys in developing it, because this is such a different way of thinking about human development, and one that we are not used to, I'm not sure we can really understand it without placing it in the context of some familiar, everyday activity. I have been thinking of the metaphor of gardening. I want to grow a wonderful tomato plant. So what do I do. Well perhaps I think genetic material is important so I make sure I choose good seeds, or at least have a really good understanding of the line of tomato plants leading up to this line of seeds, its strength and weaknesses. I understand the importance of the surrounding plants, cross pollination, so I surround the plant with other strong plants. I have heard playing music for the plants helps them grow so I make sure to use this new technique. I make sure to weed on a daily basis. I try and do everything I can for this plant.

What is missing from this great planting and why might it fail. I did not take into account that it was on the wrong side of the fence and would not be getting enough sunshine. I made sure it was near a water source, but I did not take into account how pure the water was or even meets minimum standards for this plant. I forgot that animals come around and eat from available gardens and did not build in some way to protect it. Despite the effort I put into the tomato plant it never actually had the capability to flourish. Was I starting from the wrong place?