1st Edition

Human Rights and the Capabilities Approach An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Edited By Diane Elson, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Polly Vizard Copyright 2012
    144 Pages
    by Routledge

    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    Among several contesting views about the purpose of development and how progress should be evaluated, human rights and capabilities (or human development) stand out as two approaches that are concerned first and foremost with the well-being of individuals, their freedom, dignity and empowerment. These two approaches contrast sharply with the dominant development frameworks that emphasize economic growth as the essential objective. Though human rights and capabilities share these common commitment to human priorities, they are distinct concepts and fields that have developed separately. The aim of this volume is to explore the relationship between them in order to enhance the understanding of both as theoretical paradigms, as public policy frameworks and as approaches to development.

    The book includes contributions from some of the leading scholars in the two fields of capabilities approach and human rights. It covers the essential aspects of this relationship: addressing the complementarities between human rights and capabilities as theoretical concepts; how the concept of capabilities can contribute to resolving some key theoretical issues in human rights; how the social science analysis and methods of the capabilities approach can clarify human rights concepts and strengthen human rights advocacy; and how human rights norms can strengthen public policy and mobilize collective action to demand greater accountability in placing human priorities first in public policy. Human Rights and the Capabilities Approach raises many questions for further inter-disciplinary conversation and further research.

    This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and has been expanded with two additional articles from this journal and a new foreword by Professor Amartya Sen.

    Foreword Amartya Sen  Chapter 1. Introduction: The Capability approach and human rights Polly Vizard, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Diane Elson  Chapter 2. Capabilities, Entitlements, Rights: Supplementation and Critique Martha Nussbaum  Chapter 3. Responsible Pluralism, Capabilities and Human Rights Jay Drydyck  Chapter 4. Economics and Human Rights: A Non-Conversation Sanjay Reddy  Chapter 5. The Metrics of Human Rights:Complementarities of the Human Development and Capabilities Approach Sakiko Fukuda-Parr  Chapter 6. ‘Operationalising’ the capability approach as a basis for equality and human rights monitoring in 21st century Britain Tania Burchardt and Polly Vizard  Chapter 7. Millennium Development Goals and human rights: Far away, so close? Simone Cecchini and Francesco Notti  Chapter 8. Right to information and local governance institutions: An exploration P.B. Anand  Chapter 9. Financial Regulation, Capabilities and human Rights in the US Financial Crisis: the Case of Housing Radhika Balakrishnan, Diane Elson, and James Heintz  Chapter 10. Towards a Human Rights Accountability Index Philip Alston  Chapter 11. Poverty and Human Rights: Building on the Capability Approach Siddiqur Rahman Osmani

    Biography

    Diane Elson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK. She has been Visiting Professor at Carleton, Ruhr and Rutgers Universities. She is a former Vice-President of the International Association for Feminist Economics, and has published widely on gender and development.

    Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York, USA. She was Director of UNDP Human Development Reports 1995-2004 and has published widely on human development and human rights.

    Polly Vizard is Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), London School of Economics, UK. Her research interests include poverty, equality and inequality, human rights and the capability approach. Her recent work includes commissioned research for the British Equality and Human Rights Commission, and research on public attitudes towards rights.