Preference formation and choices being made: a need for analysis?

A further need for clarification regards the question whether preference formation and choices from the capability set matter analytically. Although in recognition of varying tastes and preferences of choice, the CA is certainly lesser interested in preference formation (why do people like/ prefer one lifestyle above the other)73/74, and, although concerned with social choice theory (that is, it aims to enhance real effective opportunities of value to choose from), is lesser interested on the actual choice being made from the capability set. Although some authors argue that the actual decision making process, which is subject to preference formations, social influences, personal history and psychology, should be incorporated in an evaluative exercise to judge individual advantage and/ or social arrangements (Robeyns, 2003a)75, it is perfectly justifiable, under the liberal notion of the CA and in reference to the process freedom of the agent, to shun or minimise analysis on this mid-step between capability

73 _{This doesn‟t hold true in regards to value-formation. It is indeed important to analyse and discuss the}

underlying values for the capability set formation (in order to avoid that evil or harmful functioning possibilities are incorporated). In fact, value judgements are eminent in the selection of capabilities, and the process itself should be made as open and public as possible. After all, it is capabilities people value and have reason to value in which the CA is interested in. This point will find further discussion in the subsequent chapter 5/Part I.

74 _{This viewpoint is opposite from the introductory statement about me as the author of this text, in which}

I illuminated my preference formation, though not my value formation (left out due to lengths limitations of this thesis).

75 _{In this regards please be also referred to the growing literature on quality of life studies, cross-cultural}

psychology, consumer preference and behaviour studies (especially the growing literature on the relations between psychology and behavioural economics) (Alkire, 2007: 12).

space and achieved functioning levels (unless socio-environmental factors inhibit the exercise of ones valued agency, as stated before). Although this point might be open for discussion and is context dependent76, I would nevertheless argue that, from a normative perspective, any choice from the capability space is justifiable, if the set consists merely of positive functionings of value, which excludes, as normatively demanded, evil or harmful functioning possibilities (and indeed, the gathered functionings of value in Part II for Mozambique are actually thought of being “positive/ valuable” throughout). It would certainly undermine some of the core strengths of the CA, such as its positive attitude towards people as empowered agents, its respect for autonomy, freedom and ethical individualism, and/or its emphasis that only functionings of value should be used, which are purely non-evil/ non-harmful (to avoid the usage of the word benevolent), if the actual choice from the capability set would matter. So an agent in possession of sufficient process freedom granted with the opportunity freedom to access a hospital (which incidentally will feature as one chosen indicator (G7f) in the re-estimation of poverty in chapter 4 and 5/Part II for Mozambique) for routine examination for instance, who chooses not to go for check-up, won‟t be asked or judged in regards for his reasons of choice, though shall be reminded of her individual and social responsibility (depending of her status in the family (as a possible household head) her neglect of individual responsibility equals an infraction of her social responsibility).

This above point is particularly important for evaluations of development projects funded by external donors. If agency freedom and individual responsibility is

76 _{Sen himself actually proposed to focus in specific evaluations on the exact circumstances of a choice,}

which includes a description of individual responsibility. This is what Sen called “situated evaluation”, in certain cases important to achieve his positional objective postulate. As an example he refers to situations of active harm (murder) (Sen 2000a in Alkire, 2005: 123). However, it was also Sen who warned of overambitious empiricism: “The Scylla of empirical overambitiousness threatens as much the Charybris

taken seriously, decisions of people who receive financial and other assistance have to be taken sincerely into account. It is a distinct feature of contemporary funding schemes that assistance, if not attached to formal conditionalities, is nevertheless somehow adhered to a form of moral conditionality (as development aid is in light of the well- known domestic revenue problem77 always scarce, those rare funds provided are morally impinged to be used most effectively78). While any form of accountability is stringent important to ensure that resources are used to unfold their full potential, the relevant (ethical) question is which standards for evaluation count, etic notions from external donors or emic realities of aid recipients. In acknowledgment that this is a thin line and reason for discussion, this thesis stresses greatly the importance to place the last first, that is, to respect the reasons of aid and policy recipients for their actions, even though they might not always appear “logic” in the eyes of the donor or other externals. This way of reasoning is especially in line with the notion of sustainability and that poverty is (partly) constituent of being voiceless. This demand goes hand in hand though with the call to recipients to adhere to individual and social responsibility, wherefore Sen‟s recommendation to direct funding (and policy) flows at women as particular responsible agents is warranted (a point which shall enjoy further discussion in 6.1/Part I and 3.1.2/Part II).

77 _{The “domestic revenue problem” states that revenues produced in the “west” are morally thought of to}

be used for fixing issues and problems domestically, as opposed to give it away for charity or meeting aid commitments. This psychological feature has been identified as among the reasons why most industrialised nations do not fulfil their self-obliged target of providing 0.7% of their GDP for development aid and assistance (the average country effort of the OECD/DAC countries in 2008 was 0.47% (OECD, 2009)).

78 _{Some commentators are certainly harsher in their assessment of the same situation than I am. Fisher et}

al. states for instance that “there remains a pervasive tendency for donors in the West to „expect that the recipient of their philanthropy will be duly appreciative‟” (1981: 368 in Carr, McAuliffe, MacLachlan, 1998: 189).

4.5 Individualism

A further concern regards the CA‟s focus on the individual. While most of Sen‟s empirical work has highlighted distributional disadvantages and inequalities within the household and the society at large79, it just appears consequent that the CA concentrates on the individual as the normative unit of his framework. Subsequently, as Robeyns (2005a: 107) points out, criticism emerged that the CA is too individualistic, that it operates with the notion of atomised individuals detached of their social environment80/81. I would certainly argue in line with Robeyns, that due to the innate diversity of human beings and empirical found inequalities it is only fair to place the individual in the centre of an evaluation. It is thus possible to claim the CA ethical individualist within an ontology that “recognizes the connections between people, their social relations, and their social embedment” (Robeyns, 2005a: 108). This is to be distinguished from methodological and ontological individualism. Methodological individualism postulates “that everything can be explained by reference to individuals and their properties only” (Robeyns, 2005a: 108); ontological ~ states in contrast that “only individuals and their properties exist, and that all social entities and properties can be identified by reducing them to individuals and their properties” (Robeyns, 2005a: 108).

Both latter claims in regard to the CA are certainly incorrect, as it pays sufficient attention to social-environmental conversion factors, which firstly determine how well

79 _{Another worth recalling experience in the life of Amartya Sen has been the famine in Bengal in 1943,}

which caused the death of 2-3 million. Sen himself did not recognise any significant signs of this catastrophe in his proximate living circles in Santiniketan, as the famine only hit those vulnerable strata at the bottom of society: “I had been struck by its thoroughly class-dependent character. (I knew of no one in my school or among my friends and relations whose family had experienced the slightest problem during the entire famine; it was not a famine that afflicted even the lower middle classes - only people much further down the economic ladder, such as landless rural labourers.)” (http 5). This experience has been crucial for his subsequent writings on inequality and vulnerability.

80 _{Robeyns states that most of these discussions take place at seminars and conferences.} 81

commodities can be converted into functionings, and secondly have an influence on choices being made. Ethical individualism doesn‟t exclude moreover that decisions can be made collectively in groups (for instance the family or community), neither does it deny that ethical and ontological trade-offs appear, for instance when the child opts to leave the household to fulfil one‟s own agency, which can be perceived by family members and friends as an act of abandonment indeed.

A further question in regard to ethical individualism is of how individual well- being should be evaluated in light of an accomplishment of a group. Medieval cathedrals in Europe for instance are enjoyed collectively as a social good of positive value (an achievement only possible with an collective effort), however, the toll on individual well-being for those workers who built them had been enormous, for which reason contemporary architecture is more modest (Alkire and Deneulin, 2009b: ch.2). Another point of ambiguity concerns time and a generation‟s legacy. The environmental debate on the effects of the current generation‟s well-being on the cost of its most vulnerable and least responsible members, as well as for the next generation, is characterised by an enormous amount of ambiguity in regard to ethical individualism82 (Alkire and Deneulin, 2009b: ch.2).

While the CA cannot answer all these ambiguities which are ontologically so important, it ultimately refers to a demand of responsibility individuals should show as deliberated agents. After all, it might be indeed worth questioning whether the alternative, an ethical collectivism, would produce so much better results or lesser ambiguities.

As of this, the CA can be certainly labelled a people-centred approach, which ethically focuses on the agent as an individual, a normative demand which faces severe

82

This debate makes the proposition to extend social evaluations beyond one‟s own utility even the more compelling.

complications of being methodologically translated though. Demanding public policy and social programmes has in turn the role to “expand the realm of human agency and freedom, both as an end in itself and as a means of further expansion of freedom” (Drèze and Sen 2002: 6). Being a framework which is people-centred and liberal at the same time is surely a balance act. Empirical applications of the CA are thus required to be tailor made to take these seemingly opposite poles into account.