Introduction

Abstract

Ideals and beliefs depict in people’s imagination the perfect human being one wishes to be. People’s intents, upon developing capabilities, are guided by ideals, the ideal human being they wish to become, which often conflicts with the reality they are entitled to. The essence of this book is to highlight social norms as the main entitlement failures that prevent one from becoming such an ideal human being, by showing that social norms are the main obstacles to the development of capabilities. To do so, this book develops and implements an innovative tool, exchange-entitlement mapping, or E-mapping (Sen 1981), in an attempt to contribute to the research on human development and the Capability Approach (CA), which considers poverty as the deprivation of human capabilities. In particular, this tool enables us to look at the economic and social opportunities available for a particular group of individuals sharing a common identity to develop human capabilities. While doing so, one research objective here is to identify the channels through which economic events affect individual well-being and collective well-being.