The Four Walls of My Freedom Read Online Free PDF

had to be important to anyone who cared about fairness and justice in society generally. Suddenly, I saw that we were not just the victims of bad luck — rather we had something fundamental in common with the oppressed groups in Sen’s research. Surely this was something worth exploring and writing about.
    Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in 1998 for his work in combining the disciplines of economics and philosophy. He advocated dispensing with the usual measures of assessing poverty, such as household income and GDP , believing they offered insufficient insight into the real causes of human misery and injustice. He began to explore poverty through the lens of the choices or freedoms that individuals have within circumstances of deprivation. The key idea of the Capability Approach is that social arrangements should expand people’s capabilities, or their freedom to promote whatever activities and lifestyle they value. Sen argues that the central concern of having a decent and valued life worth living is that of freedom. It is not money and it is not “accomplishments.” The approach examines the range of possibilities for human flourishing within a given set of circumstances, especially circumstances involving adversity.
    An example that Sen often uses to illustrate his Capability Approach is that of two starving people. One is in the last stages of a hunger strike, the other a victim of a prolonged drought. Measured without benefit of Sen’s approach, these two individuals appear identical. It is Sen’s approach that offers us insight into their very different options or possible choices for action to alleviate their suffering. Sen calls this their “capability space.” In his Nobel Prize–winning autobiography, Sen wrote: “The approach explored sees individual advantage not merely as opulence or utility, but primarily in terms of the lives people manage to live and the freedom they have to choose the kind of life they have reason to value. The basic idea here is to pay attention to the actual ‘capabilities’ that people end up having. These capabilities depend both on our physical and mental characteristics as well as on social opportunities and influences (and can thus serve as the basis not only of assessment of personal advantage, but also of efficiency and equity of social policies).” 1
    Significantly, Sen uses the word equity rather than equality — an important distinction for those concerned with disability. The word equality applied to people with handicapping conditions has often led to abandonment, such as the child in a mainstream school with no support services because extra help would be unequal treatment. It seems to me that equity is a much more helpful aspiration — one that encompasses the recognition of capacity and resilience on the part of vulnerable individuals, as well as those who love and support them. This approach shifts attention away from the medical model of disability to a view of personal freedom and the choices that one has, given the effects of impairment on those available choices. Effectively, the disability experience is positioned alongside gender and age as just one aspect of human diversity.
    For me, Sen’s Capability Approach represents a lens through which I can assess the value of my life, and understand my choices in relation to programs, services and policies that have affected us throughout my son’s life. Sen speaks of the “freedom to live the life you value and have reason to value.” I had a life mapped out for myself before Nicholas was born, a life that I imagined I valued. The circumstances of our family life with Nicholas forced me to reconsider my values and my reasons for holding those values. In his body of work, Sen is responding to the horror of extreme poverty and famine. I have never been hungry. I live in a beautiful home and in many regards have led a highly privileged adult life.