Who secures women's capabilities in Martha Nussbaum's quest for social justice?

• Author: Basu, Amrita
• Position: The Works of Martha C. Nussbaum: Feminism and Liberalism; History, Identity and Sexuality; Gender and Development

Among the many issues that feminists have debated, three stand out for their urgency and significance: the relationship of theory to practice, universalism to particularism, and the transnational to the local and national. Feminism as theory continues to have a complicated and vexed relationship to women's activism. Even women who engage in struggles that observers might term feminist do not necessarily share feminist identities or participate in women's movements. Similarly, feminists continue to be troubled by universalism. Although certain forms of universalism are integral to most feminisms, Western feminist universalism has been presumptuous in condemning non-Western practices with scant understanding of the cultural and historical contexts which give them meaning. Feminist movements in the global South have sometimes been undermined by Western funded projects which have narrowed the agendas and constituencies of women's movements and by hegemonic Western feminists' appropriation of local discourses. As I elaborate below, I believe that debates about global feminisms have influenced Nussbaum's work and its reception.

I begin by describing the key tenets of the human capabilities approach and show how it represents an advance over human rights. I then place capabilities in the context of women's movements transnationally. I assess the different ways in which national states and transnational organizations impede and support the recognition of capabilities. I argue that social movements have a critical role to play in determining and realizing capabilities.

Capabilities represent a clear and deliberate advance over human rights in addressing relations between universalism and particularism, theory and practice, and transnationalism and nationalism. (1) Human rights advocates primarily focus on civil and political rights and have traditionally neglected rights within the private domain of the family. By contrast, Nussbaum rejects the view that civil, political, economic, and social rights should be attained sequentially and argues that capabilities are interdependent: the recognition of one of them requires the recognition of others. In Frontiers of Justice she states,

[C]apabilities cover the terrain occupied by both the so-called first-generation rights (political and civil liberties) and the socalled second generation rights (economic and social rights). And they play a similar role, providing an account of extremely important fundamental entitlements that can be used as a basis both for constitutional thought within a nation and for thinking about universal justice. (2) Nussbaum identifies ten basic capabilities which, if realized, would enable people to achieve human dignity. They include literacy, liberty of conscience, political participation, freedom from physical violence, engaging in economic transactions, and developing the senses and practical reason. (3) She argues that justice demands that ali citizens should achieve the thresholds that the capabilities approach specifies.

Human rights advocates have tended to ignore the role of the state in addressing socio-economic inequalities. By contrast, Nussbaum identifies a key role for the nation-state in realizing capabilities and recognizes the futility of rights and of equality of opportunity when people lack the resources to make meaningful choices. She develops an outcome-oriented approach which supports substantial freedoms. She argues that the radical potential of liberalism lies in forging links between individual freedom and state responsibility.

In contrast to traditional human rights perspectives, feminism influences Nussbaum's conception of key capabilities. "Senses, Imagination, and Thought," encompass" Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think and to reason... [and]to use the imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing expressive works and events of one's own choice, (religious, literary, musical, etc)." (4) "Emotions" concern the ability "to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves ...." (5) Another capability entails "Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities." (6) Feminism expresses a consciousness of and resistance to gender inequality which can be manifest in everyday life as well as in episodic fashion, in culture and the arts, and in the private and public domains. What Mary Katzenstein terms the "discursive dimensions" of feminism are integral to capabilities,v As I elaborate below, feminism figures more in Nussbaum's conception than in her discussion of the enactment of capabilities.

The most controversial aspect of Nussbaum's approach is her unabashed universalism. She argues that the capabilities approach is designed for each and every citizen, in each and every nation. (8) In her words,

The body that labors is in a sense the same body all over the world, and its needs for food and nutrition and health care are the same .... Similarly the body that gets beaten is in a sense the same all over the world, concrete though the circumstances of domestic violence are in each society. (9) Nussbaum argues that individuals and governments have moral obligations to promote justice for people outside their own borders, and thus feminist philosophy should increasingly focus on the urgent needs of women in developing countries. (10) Her universalism is linked to her rejection of double standards towards gender inequality in the global North and South. She forcefully denies that privacy is or should be less valued in India than in the United States where matters of gender inequality are at stake. (11) Nussbaum's universalism also leads her to set a high standard for states in creating the conditions under which capabilities can be recognized.

The value of universalism, however, cannot be determined simply by evaluating its philosophical premises. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta points out, universalism embodies the historical project of imperialism. (12) It has tended to presume rather than to demonstrate a commonality of interests, needs, and ideas. Its claim to special authority has exempted it from scrutiny and contestation. This is not to say, Mehta notes, that universalism is inevitably ethnocentric, but rather that it has been associated historically with one set of cultural practices. (13) The challenge that confronts universalist approaches then is to engage the political. Placing the capabilities approach within the context of social movements illuminates how political actors have deliberated, debated, rejected, and embraced capabilities.

The difficult questions concerning capabilities emerge in translating abstract philosophical conceptions into the messy world of politics. Are all capabilities equally important in all societies? Do they mean the same thing everywhere? Do different groups understand a particular capability the same way within a single society? Take, for example, the question of education as a central capability. There are enormous differences cross-nationally about what it means to be an educated person. Does it refer to being literate or well educated? To reading a newspaper, reading a third grade textbook, or exercising citizenship rights? How do the illiterate and uneducated regard education and what form of education do they value? As these questions suggest, exploring who will enforce capabilities inevitably necessitates reconsidering the very meaning and importance of capabilities in particular contexts.

I argue that social movements give concrete meaning to capabilities. Social movements often give voice to those who are formally voiceless. They express conceptions of capabilities that states neglect and deny. The social movements in which women have participated can be capabilities in and of themselves, catalysts for women's appreciating capabilities, or pressure groups on the state to recognize capabilities. Women's movements often seek to influence constitutional provisions for equality with respect to gender and sexual orientation, force states to deliver capabilities, make universal capabilities contextually meaningful, develop local arenas in which capabilities can be realized, and create possibilities for self-realization and dignity outside and beyond state control. Even conservative social movements which oppose gender equality, as many do, deliberate with their own constituencies and with the larger society and negotiate with the state. Such contestation and deliberation are indispensable both to formulating and implementing capabilities.

Attention to social movements helps to name the processes by which states are galvanized into recognizing capabilities. Social movements have often made states support capabilities and influenced their decisions about which capabilities to recognize. Authoritarian states are unlikely to support capabilities precisely because they repress social movements. Differences in the character of states call for different social movement strategies in interpreting and enforcing capabilities. All of these questions bear on the issue of universalism.

1. THE CONTEXT

   Nussbaum published her influential book Sex...