CAPABILITY APPROACH

Amartya Sen postulates that "humanity should be able to face reality a little
more" (Sen 2010: 40) and, therefore, "development can be seen as a process of
expanding real freedoms of which people enjoy "(Sen 1999). : 3). These
substantial freedoms are known as "capacity". Sen's capacity approach "is a
broad regulatory framework for assessing and assessing individual well-being
and social provisions, defining policies and proposals for social change in
society" (Robeyns 2005a, p.94). In the inequality with Reexamined, Amartya
Sen writes: "A person's ability to achieve performance that has reasons for
giving value provides a general approach to the evaluation of social provisions,
and this produces a particular way of looking at the assessment of equality and
inequality" (1992: 5).

"Capabilities" and "Functionings" are two key concepts of the capacity

approach.

 Capabilities refer to the "real opportunities" that people have to perform

various valuable operations (Sen 1993). When assessments are made,
the quality, quantity and diversity of available opportunities are also
important (Crocker David 1998).
 Functionings are different things that a person can do or be. These
could include ways of being, such as sleeping, being literate, being happy
and being a researcher; as well as acts of doing, like going to the theater,
taking care of me, writing a book, cooking and looking out the window.
So, for example, living in a house that is resistant to heat and humidity
(in a cold climate) is an operation; and the real opportunity that a person
must live in a warm and moisture proof home is the capacity of such
operation (Robeyns 2016).
The key idea of the Capability Approach is that social agreements should aim
to expand people's capacities, their freedom to promote or reach valuable
beings and actions. An essential proof of development is whether people have
more freedom today than in the past. An inequality test is whether people's
ability series are the same or not.

Human beings and their abilities are final concerns of the Capability Approach
(Alkire 2002). Sen (2009) supports a change in the assessments of well-being,
quality of life, disadvantage and inequality, from the space of "resources" and
"preferences" to the space of "capabilities" (Sen 2009). The relational ontology
(Smith and Seward 2009) of the Capability Approach incorporates a relational
conception of people and their capacities within the social. Therefore, people
are seen as socially located entities and their capabilities are understood as
social forms. As such, the Capability Approach requires a broad information
approach to include both the person and the context (Clark 2008).

The Capability Approach makes two fundamental normative assertions.

 First, the human being and his quality of life must be at the center of
any evaluation of society or social life.
 A second statement is that people's quality of life is assessed better by
focusing on their abilities and not on the income or resources they have.

In other words, the Capability Approach can be seen as a broad normative

proposal that concerns about development, well-being and justice, such as
poverty and inequality, should be evaluated in relation to people's abilities (Sen
1980, 1992, 1999a, 1999c, 2009). In fact, the initial motivation behind the
Capability Approach was to provide a better space for assessing well-being than
alternative spaces such as products / resources or spaces of utility /
happiness (Sen 2017).
Relevant features to the Capability Approach for quality life.

1. Amplitude: all beings and doings intrinsically appreciated:

Instead of focusing only on material functions, or only on subjective states, the

Capability Approach potentially includes all the results of intrinsic importance:
"any result rooted in the life that one leads instead of if it derives from other
objectives, it claims to be directly relevant to its standard of living ".

2. Applicability:

The choice of capacity as a focal space still allows for considerable diversity in
terms of the types of measures that can be adopted. Because of its conceptual
breadth, the Capability Approach can be used to inform extreme poverty and
deprivation measures, as well as to investigate well-being and wealth situations
and to study inequalities in different spaces. Similarly, the approach could also
focus on what are often referred to as "developed" or "developing" countries or
regions, or could try to identify common variables that could be used for
comparisons. Once again, we stress that the different applications of the
approach will give rise to different focal variables and concrete methods of
measurement.

3. Suitable for exploration using different types of data and analysis:

Capabilities can be analysed and represented using a large number of data

types, methods and techniques. The identification of a space does not exclude
the possibility of using different indicators, including subjective indicators and
resources, to better understand the quality of life. Capabilities can also be
analysed using quantitative, qualitative, participatory and subjective data and
using administrative, census, survey and institutional data.
 4. Result and process:

The capacity approach considers human beings as active agents, directing their
lives and acting as agents that promote wider social goals and objectives. Thus,
freedom and practical reason are central concepts. Its integration into
measurement could take place at two levels.
 Freedom of personal process. These include a person's ability to act on
their own values rather than under duress in different domains.
 Freedom of systemic processes, such as the voice, democratic practice
and freedom of association.