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Capability Approach as a Framework for Research on Children's Well-Being

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Handbook of Child Well-Being

Abstract

Within contemporary childhood studies, interest is focusing increasingly on the well-being of children in the here and now. However, the theoretical conceptualization and the operationalization of well-being confront research on childhood with fundamental and methodological challenges. This chapter pursues the assumption that the capability approach – particularly in the form proposed by Martha Nussbaum – offers a theoretically promising framework for studying the well-being of children. This chapter gives an overview of international empirical childhood studies using the capability approach and discusses its potentials and future directions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We shall summarize this list here: (1) Life: Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length. (2) Bodily health: Being able to have good health. (3) Bodily integrity: Being able to avoid unnecessary pain and experience joy; to have one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign. (4) Senses, imagination, and thought: Being able to use one’s senses to imagine, think, and reason. (5) Emotions: Being able to have attachments to things and people, to love, to grieve, to experience longing and gratitude. (6) Practical reason: Being able to form a conception of the good and engage in critical reflection about planning one’s life. (7) Affiliation: Being able to live with and toward others; to enter various forms of familial and social relationships and have the social bases of self-respect. (8) Other species: Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. (9) Play: Being able to laugh, to play, and enjoy recreational activities. (10) Control over one’s environment: Being able to exercise both political and material control (Nussbaum 2000).

  2. 2.

    A collective word for the poor and developing countries of Africa, Asia and South America.

  3. 3.

    The highly commendable literature survey from Volkert and Schneider (2012) offers a very well commented overview of empirical CA studies on children and the aged in affluent countries.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Stefanie Albus for stimulating discussions and valuable comments on this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Educational Sciences, Goethe University, Grüneburgplatz 1, 60323, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Prof. Susann Fegter

  2. Institute of Social Work, Education and Sports Science, University of Vechta, Vechta, Germany

    Martina Richter

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  1. Prof. Susann Fegter
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Correspondence to Susann Fegter .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Asher Ben-Arieh

  2. Research Institute of Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Ferran Casas

  3. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ivar Frønes

  4. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Jill E. Korbin

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Fegter, S., Richter, M. (2014). Capability Approach as a Framework for Research on Children's Well-Being. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_151

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