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.