Public service reform in the shape of collaborative governance is consistently promoted by statutory actors in Scotland and other high-income countries to help develop high-quality and efficient public services, responsive to peoples needs, but this notion contains a number of weaknesses. This chapter explores the potential of the capabilities approach (CA), conversion factors in particular, to achieve a more effective model for conceptualizing, driving and evaluating how public services operate, drawing on empirical work conducted by What Works Scotland. It argues that the CA provides an ethical framework for evaluating the role and function of public services in safeguarding peoples well-being and social justice, especially for those with fewest resources. Employing data from two research projects in areas of multiple deprivation, the impact of public service interventions is evaluated in terms of conversion factors, and how these shape outcomes for citizens and communities. The concept of structural conversion factors is an innovative response to criticism of the CA, and the chapter argues that this modification allows it to better confront the drivers of social injustice.

This chapter provides a conceptual exploration about the validity of people’s subjectivity in policy making. Featuring the capability approach in development and self-determination theory in psychology, it examines a fundamental question: whether full internalization can be made in externally deprived conditions, as the capability approach assumes, or whether it cannot, as self-determination theory assumes. For this investigation, this chapter (1) makes a comparative analysis between central capabilities in the capability approach and the basic psychological needs in self-determination theory to confirm the similarity in needs requirement; (2) examines the type of goods required for the need satisfaction and the way of assessing them in both approaches; and (3) discusses the feasibility of justice in internalization vis-à-vis adaptive preferences.

Since the late 1990s, anthropologists have increasingly turned their attention to ‘happiness’ and ‘well-being’, a field of study long dominated by moral philosophers, social psychologists, and welfare economists. This chapter reviews anthropological approaches to happiness and well-being, and their engagement with ideas from virtue ethics, value theory, and capabilities approaches to development. Across a range of ethnographic cases in which the concepts have been applied as well as from which analogous concepts have been drawn, we highlight the analytical tension between (a) a search for objective measures that can be used to guide efforts aimed at increasing well-being and reducing global inequities and (b) the exploration of cultural worlds in which different peoples conceive of and pursue ‘the good life’ in varied and sometimes incommensurate ways. This multidisciplinary analytical field has been productive for anthropological theory, but scepticism remains around the implications of its evaluative impulses and ambitions.

This chapter introduces human exceptionalism, explores various attempts to distinguish humans from other animals, and reviews a variety of ethical positions about human relations with other animals.

Much of the existing literature on the philosophical antecedents of the capabilities approach focuses narrowly on well-known figures — such as Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and J. S. Mill — in ‘Western’ philosophy and political economy. This chapter is chiefly concerned with influences on the works of Amartya Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum and the intellectual climate from which their works on capability emerged. It traces these to traditions — including those of Greek tragedy, Stoic and Buddhist thought — as well as particular influences on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works from twentieth-century India, including the works of Rabindranath Tagore. In both these ways, this contribution makes a strong case for expanding the literature on the predecessors of, and influences on, contemporary work on the capabilities approach well beyond the ‘Western’ tradition of philosophy, and encourages researchers to consider the extent to which the roots of the capabilities approach can be found in ‘non-Western’ traditions and ideas which have been relatively neglected in the literature on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works on capabilities. In making this case, the chapter also reiterates some differences between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s views.

Prominent theories of justice conjoin the capabilities approach and a doctrine of ‘political liberalism’. The latter maintains that the exercise of state power is morally legitimate only if it is justifiable by appeal to principles that all reasonable citizens can accept, each from her own evaluative perspective. As standardly interpreted, political liberalism rules out selecting state policies on perfectionist grounds. The political perfectionist holds that it is morally mandatory for the state to promote certain activities and conditions on the ground that they are intrinsically valuable. The claim then is that reasonable citizens will differ widely in their beliefs about these intrinsic value matters, so a state that chooses its policies by appeal to perfectionist judgements will be morally illegitimate. This chapter canvasses recent debate on this issue, and suggests that the marriage of the capabilities approach and political liberalism is ill-advised. Political liberalism should be dropped, whether or not one adheres to the capabilities approach. A modest, common-sense perfectionism cohabits harmoniously with the capabilities approach.

This chapter examines whether the CSR concept and its emerging legal framework can become an allocative device allocating responsibility for certain aspects of development to business and channelling business conduct on development issues. CSR is a concept which often captures dimensions of the relationship between business and society in context. On the one hand, it covers aspects which focus on the mitigation of corporate impacts on a range of issues including environment, health, labour, human rights and corruption. On the other hand, it also covers the ability of corporations to contribute constructively to societal objectives in the above areas and beyond. Consequently, in a developing country context, CSR could be invariably linked to some development objectives such as optimal health, well-being, education, jobs etc…, because these objectives form the bedrock of capabilities which the individuals in these societies would like to achieve. Sen’s capabilities conception of development permits the consideration of institutions and frameworks including legal mechanisms geared towards human development objectives. Human development objectives also have a bearing on wider sustainable development goals. The chapter examines examples of emerging legal frameworks to reveal the potential and limitations of this perspective, which indicates how CSR can contribute to development.

This chapter enlarges the boundary of racial justice by considering sexual racism as another form of private racism. Here too racial discrimination affects our private lives. This kind of discrimination concerns perhaps the most private of opportunities. It too is wrong, or so this chapter argues. I show that racism makes it more difficult for those who are not white to find intimacy, where intimacy is the opportunity to be in a romantic or sexual relationship. This chapter shows that racial discrimination, stereotypes, and intersectionality happen in our intimate lives, what I call “sexual racism.” Websites and platforms that steer its users to discriminate on the basis of race facilitate sexual racism. Because they are public accommodations, we should prohibit them from doing so. This is one way to address racism in our intimate lives.