Enhancing Capabilities

"The volume suggests a capability perspective for evaluating welfare and educational policies. Capabilities are conceptualized as people's freedom to choose and conduct a life they have reason to value. The contributions analyze what social institutions - in particular in the field of education and welfare - may provide in order to enhance capabilities in particular for most vulnerable people. The capabilities approach to social justice does not primarily outline a transcendental philosophical theory of justice but rather a perspective which opens up a conceptual foundation for empirical social research in real life situations. Focusing on the freedoms to achieve actual livings that individuals can have reason to value, the capabilities approach promises to be a fruitful perspective for developing and justifying evaluative metrics for assessing welfare and educational policies. While the potentials and limits of the capabilities approach have been intensively discussed on general and conceptual levels, the role of organizations and institutions for enhancing capabilities is still a blind spot. As inequalities of capabilities are not merely macro-structural phenomena but also located in different institutional forms at various scales, this volume aims at analyzing the complex and often ambivalent role of institutions and policies in promoting or impeding the life prospects of individuals."--Publisher's website.