Human Development and the Capability Approach: The Role of Empowerment and Participation

In this chapter, Frediani, Clark and Biggeri bring together two different streams of work in international development—the capability approach (as developed by Amartya Sen) and participatory approaches (particularly variants inspired by Paulo Freire). It is argued that there is a deep complementarity between these two streams of work, and an effort is made to consider previous work that addresses this complementarity. On the one hand, participatory methods and tools can democratise the application of the capability approach and human development perspective more generally; on the other hand, Sen’s capability approach can provide a comprehensive framework to guide and safeguard the transformative roots of the participatory approach. This chapter first explores the similarities, criticisms and complementarities between the capability approach and participatory methodologies. Then it examines in more detail the role of participation in the current literature on human development and capabilities. The last section of this chapter describes the structure, content and purpose of the book.