The Capability Approach, Empowerment and Participation: Concepts, Methods and Applications, Hardcover

This book explores the linkages between Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and participatory forms of development - especially those associated with critical pedagogy and empowerment from the bottom-up. It shows how the capability approach and the participatory movement can complement and reinforce each other helping to ensure that democratic principles are respected and become the foundation for sustainable human development. The Capability Approach provides guiding principles for protecting the transformative roots of participation (safeguarding ownership, accountability and empowerment), while participation delivers vital methods for making the Capability Approach operational. Divided into three overlapping parts that focus on concepts, methods and applications, this work draws on diverse fieldwork experiences to unpack power relations, address adaptive preferences, explore individual and collective agency, consider new partnerships for development, and develop innovative concepts.

David Alexander Clark is Affiliated Lecturer in the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Mario Biggeri is Associate Professor in Development Economics at the Department of Economics and Management at the University of Florence, Italy.

Alexandre Apsan Frediani is Associate Professor in the Bartlett Development Planning Unit at University College London, UK.