Document Type : Original Research Paper
Authors
1 Professor in Political Science, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
2 PhD in Political Thought, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The capability approach has been the subject of increasingly enthusiastic enquiry in development studies and welfare economics over the last three decades. Although Amartya Sen's capability approach was born in the field of economics, it extended very soon to the humanities and to other social sciences. This approach has been applied in many areas and a practical version has been created. In spite of its development within social and political sciences, few efforts to extend it to the citizenship area have been made. This paper attempts to provide an answer to the question whether the capability approach includes elements sufficient for formulating a citizenship hypothesis. On the basis that every citizenship tradition encompasses two dimensions of right and responsibility, if these two concepts are embodied in the capability approach in such a way as to explain the relationship between individual and society, then we can claim that the capability approach has the potential of extending to the field of citizenship. We show that this approach, with its emphasis on elements like "moral right" and "committed responsibility", encompasses sufficient features for the development of "citizenship of capability".
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