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  • Creating Capabilities

  • The Human Development Approach
  • By: Martha C. Nussbaum
  • Narrated by: Naomi Jacobson
  • Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)
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Creating Capabilities

By: Martha C. Nussbaum
Narrated by: Naomi Jacobson
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Summary

If a country's Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world's billions of individuals are really managing?

In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past 25 years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them?

The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how - by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy - we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives.

©2011 Martha C. Nussbaum (P)2012 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

“This small book provides a strong foundation for beginning to think about how economic growth and individual flourishing might coincide.” ( Publishers Weekly)
“A remarkably lucid and scintillating account of the the human development approach seen from the perspective of one of its major architects.” (Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics)
“A marvelous achievement: beautifully written and accessible.” (Jonathan Wolff, University College London)

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Key text for researchers & students of development

Creating Capabilities is a key text in relation to development and international aid. Nussbaum elaborates on the capabilities approach and the core elements of the approach. She considers and addresses critics of the approach. Nussbaum explains how her views coalesce with those of Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist and another key proponent of the capabilities approach, and where they differ. The book is well set out and structured, using the life story of an Indian woman to work through key arguments and elements associated with this approach, as well as attention to each of the proposed 10 core capabilities.



I was surprised at how enjoyable having a key non-fiction text read to me would be... it certainly got digested a lot more quickly than the hard copy version which has been unread on my desk for a couple of years!

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