Human Development and Capabilities

Re-imagining the university of the twenty-first century

Alejandra Boni, Melanie Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415536325
• eBook ISBN: 9781135118112
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Globally, universities are the subject of public debate and disagreement about their private benefits or public good, and the key policy vehicle for driving human capital development for competitive knowledge economies. Yet what is increasingly lost in the disagreements about who should pay for university education is a more expansive imaginary which risks being lost in reductionist contemporary education policy. This is compounded by the influences on practices of students as consumers, of a university education as a private benefit and not a public good, of human capital outcomes over other graduate qualities, and of unfettered markets in education. Policy reductionism comes from a narrow vision of the activities, products, and objectives of the University and a blinkered vision of what is a knowledge society.

Human Development and Capabilities, therefore, imaginatively applies a theoretical framework to universities as institutions and social practices from human development and the capability approach, attempting to show how universities might advance equalities rather than necessarily widen them, and how they can contribute to a sustainable and democratic society. Picking through the capability approach for human development, in relation to Universities, this book highlights and explores three main ideas:

• theoretical insights to advance thinking about human development and higher education
• Policy implications for the responsibilities and potential contributions of universities in a period of significant global change
• Operationalising a New Imaginary

This fresh take on the work and purpose of the University is essential reading for anyone interested in university education, capability approach and human development; particularly postgraduates, University policy makers, researchers and academics in the field of higher education.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Human development, capabilities and universities of the twenty-first century

Alejandra Boni and Melanie Walker

Various answers are offered nowadays concerning the appropriate role, goals and performance indicators for universities. We have found competing visions dominated, however, by a focus on economic competitiveness and efficiency. The Council of the European Union (2007), the OECD (2007), the World Bank (2002) are examples of this perspective, which, as Naidoo (2003: 250) suggests, is ‘the perception of higher education as an industry for enhancing national competitiveness and as a lucrative service that can be sold in the global marketplace’. This vision has arguably eclipsed the social and cultural objectives of higher education captured in these overlapping ideas: a public good (benefiting the public at large; for example, by educating doctors for public service or by enhancing democratic life and human rights); a social good (making diverse contributions to others and to future persons beyond one’s own interests; for example, through service learning in communities or regional development); and a commitment to the common good and associational life. Such non-market goods go beyond and subsume market benefits, but without excluding benefits such as the formation of human capital investments in one’s future, economic opportunities and income (Sen 1999 and see McMahon 2009).

The view of the university that we therefore propose in this book resonates with public, social and common-good values and ideals but it is also based explicitly and distinctively on the principles of the human development approach (Haq 1999). It is different from the prevailing reductionist view of higher education as a business whose product is increased revenues and profit, but notwithstanding the challenges presented by the current conjuncture of global politics and inequalities, our perspective is neither utopian nor naive. Universities everywhere have the potential to act for reproductive or transformative ends. There are numerous official documents signed by university leaders that support the validity of such a proposal. For example, the preamble of the Magna Charta of European Universities,¹ prepared in 1988, and several other international declarations like the World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Vision and Action, signed in 1998,² and the Talloires Declaration of 2005.³ Along the same lines we find interesting work carried out by several universities which, in recent years, have been promoting university social responsibility policies that involve university learning, research, social outreach and governance (i.e. AUJSAL 2009).

Besides international declarations, many academic studies of higher education have elaborated and defended this expansive perspective on what a university might and should be. Among them, we note the liberal visions of Nussbaum (1997); Kezar et al.’s (2005) model of a higher education institution for the public good or Brennan (2002) on the transformative university. We can add to this a small but growing literature exploring higher education from a human capabilities perspective (e.g. Walker 2006, 2009; Flores-Crespo 2007; Boni and Gasper 2012; Boni et al. 2012; Walker 2012a). The common point of all these authors is that the university should not be distant from the tremendous problems the world faces nowadays – environmental challenges, social injustices, armed conflicts, intolerance, abuses of and lack of respect for human rights – and that it should have an active role, engaged in local and global spaces, to foster and support a just and sustainable society.

However, we do not want to simplify the complex debate on what should be the role of a university. We acknowledge the great diversity among higher education institutions all around the world, under pressure from recent processes of massification, privatization, and public expenditure reduction. We want to stress the ethical perspective of a university both in its micro-dimension (the university seen as an organization together with all its immediate stakeholders), and in its relationship with its wider partners at the local, national and global levels. We argue in this chapter that the human development framework and, inside this, the capability approach (CA) can valuably contribute to define and characterize what a good university might be, and can stimulate new avenues to reach it.

Human development and the capability approach

The human development approach arises from a tradition in humanist social philosophy and humanist economics (e.g. Haq 1999; Nussbaum 2000; Gasper 2009). It stresses: (1) a plurality of values, not only the values of economic utility as expressed and promoted within markets; (2) a human-wide concern and solidarity, as in human rights philosophy – the field of reference is all humans, wheresoever in the world, and in particular all those affected by one’s actions; and (3) it recognizes the normality and centrality of interconnections – side effects of markets mean that market calculation is insufficient even if we only use a value of economic utility. Human development thinking contains thus a concern not only for an increase in people’s skills (human resource development) or the so-called ‘human sectors’ (e.g. nutrition, health, education). It rests on a broad and plural conception of human well-being, and sees development as the promotion and advance of well-being. The United Nations Development Programme’s standard definition of the core dimensions of human development includes: empowerment, meaning the expansion of capabilities (ability to attain valued ends), expansion of valued functionings (attained valued ends), and participation (sharing in specifying priorities); equity in distribution of basic capabilities, and, security and sustainability of people’s valued attainments and opportunities. Penz et al.’s (2011) synthesis of work on human development ethics slightly extends this list by highlighting human rights and cultural freedom. Arguably, these were already largely subsumed within the UNDP formulation within the range of valued ends to be promoted, equitably distributed, sustained and secured, but are now further highlighted (Boni and Gasper 2012).

Intertwined with the human development approach is the concept of capabilities or the real possibilities and opportunities of leading a life which a person has reason to value (Sen 1999). Human capability formation is human development; human development demands human capabilities. Capabilities refer to different combinations of functions which can be achieved, whereas functions are ‘the different things that a person can value doing or being’ (Sen 1999: 3). These beings and doings together constitute what makes a person’s life valuable. The distinction between achieved functionings and capabilities is between the realized and the effectively possible; in other words, between achievements on the one hand and freedoms or valuable options from which one can choose on the other (Robeyns 2005). In other words, capabilities are the freedom to enjoy valuable functionings. Capabilities are specific positive freedoms – the freedom to do or be what one values. Freedom thus plays a substantive role in development. Freedom is an end in itself, and not only a means for another type of utility. Thus, for a society to develop, the main sources of freedom deprivations must be reduced and eliminated.

In higher education, both capability – potential and opportunity – and functioning – being able to exercise valued capabilities – may be important. For example, it would not be enough for students to value a capability for voice but be prevented from exercising their voice in learning contexts through particular educational and social arrangements which value some identities more than others. If we cannot observe the functioning of voice, we may wish to ask questions both about the underlying capability but also about teaching and learning conditions. Functioning directs our attention to individuals, and also to pedagogical relations and social arrangements which may enable or constrain learning and participation. As Sen (1999: xi–xii) emphasizes, there is ‘a deep complementarity between individual agency and social arrangements … [and] the force of social influences on the extent and reach of individual freedom’.

One interesting aspect of the CA is that it focuses primarily on the opportunities aspect instead of stressing the results and products of the interventions (Crocker 2008). It is in that process where the CA takes into account social inequalities generated by diversity, and where equality does not mean equal income, but equal human capabilities (Sen 1999). However, Sen explains that while capability is important for evaluating the opportunity aspect of freedom, it cannot deal fully with the process aspect of freedom, since capabilities are individual advantages, which do not tell us enough about the fairness of the processes involved in capability formation. He writes as follows:

Freedom is valuable for at least two distinct reasons. First, more freedom gives us more opportunity to achieve those things that we value, and have reason to value. This aspect of freedom is concerned primarily with our ability to achieve, rather than the process through which that achievement comes about. Second, the process through which things happen may also be of importance in assessing freedom.

(Sen 1999: 336)

Thus, if we wish to develop a theory of justice in higher education we would need to pay attention to both process and opportunity aspects of freedom.

Another central concept in the CA is agency, defined as the ability to act according to what one values or – in Sen’s (1985: 206) words – ‘what a person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as important’.

Consequently, ‘people who enjoy high levels of agency are engaged in actions that are congruent with their values’ (Alkire 2007: 3) and this becomes an essential aspect in the effective realization of human development and human capabilities. Two elements of agency are especially important to enhance capabilities and pursue human development goals: reflexivity and responsibility. On one side, critical reflexivity and Freire’s conscious awareness of being an agent become relevant in the framework of collective action. In this regard, deliberation and reflective dialogue become core elements for developing agency because ‘not just any behaviour that an agent “emits” is an agency achievement’ (Crocker 2008: 11). There must be a certain reflection and conscious deliberation of the reasons and values upholding agency: ‘what is needed is not merely freedom and power to act, but also freedom and power to question and reassess the prevailing norms and values’ (Drèze and Sen 2002 cited in Crocker 2008: 11). The second element is the responsibility towards others. Ballet et al. (2007) propose to broaden Sen’s concept of agency by considering responsibility as a constitutive characteristic of the person at the same level as freedom. This has important consequences as it generates a distinction between weak and strong agency. While weak agency would refer solely to developing individual goals and capabilities, strong agency would include the exercise of responsibility towards others’ capabilities and society as a whole. Agency becomes strong agency when it aims to expand freedom of others within a network of social interactions where commitment and responsibility take place (Peris et al. 2012).

In this review of the main elements of the CA, we refer regularly to the contributions of Nussbaum (2000), who presents a list of ‘ten central human functional capabilities’ for a truly human life. These are the core requirements for a decent life and they represent a minimal agreement on social justice. Central to a CA is the conviction that a society that does not guarantee the active cultivation of these central capabilities, cannot be considered a just society, whatever its level of affluence. There is an extremely interesting debate on the appropriateness of making a list of the core capabilities. Sen has always refused to do that as he considers that dialogue and public debate are the only way to legitimate the capabilities that must be prioritized in each particular situation. Nussbaum on her side considers that there is a solid philosophical basis for elaborating a proposal of core capabilities and, moreover, she states that proposing a list entails political benefits as it provides a reference for the design and evaluation of public policies (Lozano et al. 2012). What we need to acknowledge is both ways of approaching capabilities theory have been extremely useful and complementary in educational fields as we can see in several chapters of this book (by Bozalek, Crosbie and Spreafico).

Higher education through the lenses of human development and capabilities

Human development values, capabilities, agency, all are key concepts to re-imagine a different vision of the university, beyond the goal to prepare people as part of a workforce. While education can enhance human capital, people benefit from education in ways that exceed its role in human capital for commodity production. If we pursue Sen’s argument that ultimately what matters ‘is what freedom does a person have’, then a human capital model does not do well. Even acknowledging the importance of a job to social inclusion prospects – and the obverse, unemployment to social exclusion – an educational focus on employability and jobs tells us nothing about the quality of work, or whether or not people are treated fairly and with dignity at work.

Capabilities implies a larger scope of benefits from education, which include enhancing the well-being and freedom of individuals and peoples, improving economic production and influencing social change. This point has been captured by Nussbaum in her recent book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs Humanities:

Cultivated capacities for critical thinking and reflection are crucial in keeping democracies alive and wide awake. The ability to think well about a wide range of cultures, groups and nations in the context of the global economy and of the history of many national and group interactions is crucial in order to enable democracies to deal responsibly with the problems we currently face as members of an interdependent world. And the ability to imagine the experience of another – a capacity almost all human beings possess in some form – needs to be greatly enhanced and refined if we are to have any hope of sustaining decent institutions across the many divisions that any modern society contains.

(Nussbaum 2010: 10)

Using Sen’s and Nussbaum’s inspiration, there have been several contributions to re-imagining the spheres of university work: pedagogy and curriculum, research, social engagement, as well as internal governance and even the physical environment of the institutions. For instance, Walker (2012a) discusses what could be a professional committed to social justice, what she calls a ‘public-good professional’. On curriculum, Nussbaum’s proposal of the three capabilities for democratic citizenship (2006) has inspired several contributions. For instance, Boni et al. (2012) used them to think of a cosmopolitan curriculum; Gasper and George (2010) link those three capabilities with a sustainable future, while Walker (2012b) explains dimensions for curriculum design.

The CA, complemented and made more robust by critical pedagogies, has been useful to rethink the pedagogical process. Both critical pedagogy and capabilities have concerns with the voices of those who have to struggle to be heard and included. Both have concerns with human flourishing and how equality and social arrangements have to change. Critical pedagogy is better at showing how powerin-process works pedagogically, and that education may be oppressive as well as transformative. Critical pedagogy is sharper at dealing with contextual dynamics of language, discourse and power. Critical pedagogy has a clearer conceptualization of collective as well as individual agency so that individual critical thinking is linked to increasing social criticality. (Examples of the link between critical pedagogies and the CA can be found in the chapters by Deprez and Wood and Peris et al.). However, the CA, while broadly oriented to justice through its emphasis on capability (potential to function) does not prescribe one version of the good life but allows for plurality in choosing a life we have reason to value. The importance of capability over functioning is emphasized – not a single idea of human flourishing but plural and diverse possibilities, a concern with facilitating choices, not ‘dragooning...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: human development, capabilities and universities of the twenty-first century
• PART I Theoretical insights
• PART II Policy implications
• PART III Operationalizing a new imaginary
• Index