Violence in Sudan from Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach

VIOLENCE IN SUDAN FROM AMARTYA SEN’S CAPABILITIES APPROACH
Student’s Name
Course
Instructor’s Name
Institution
Location
Date
Violence in Sudan from Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach
           In a quest to understand human development beyond economic development, various authors have developed theories that provide insight into human development and what needs to be done to achieve human development without using human beings as the means to an end. One such author is Amartya Sen, an economics professor and philosopher. Sen has been recognized for his contributions to welfare economics, particularly how they apply to or affect the poorest people in society. Sen, and specifically, his theory of capabilities, will be the focus of this paper. Sen’s capability approach looks into how deprivation affects the wellbeing and development of human beings (Frediani 2007, p.136). Different scholars have built on his theory to understand economic welfare over the years. Others have also applied his theory in other fields to enhance their understanding of human development. In addition to Sen, Sudan will be used as a case study in this paper. Sudan is a diverse country that has always been split into two regions, namely the north and the south (Deng 2011, p.2). However, it has been characterized by ethnic tensions and leadership issues, especially between the two regions. Specific attention will be paid to the history of violence in Sudan and why the north and the south have always conflicted. Then, this paper will explore the fundamental ideas of Sen’s capabilities approach and apply them to the history of violence in Sudan to create a better understanding of violence in Sudan. Sen’s capability approach clarifies how freedom or lack of freedom contributes to violence in Sudan and explains why the people of Sudan often result to violence in pursuit of freedom to achieve a combination of functioning and capabilities to allow them to become whom they want to become.
Theoretical Perspective
           To better understand the history of violence in Sudan through Sen’s capabilities approach, it is important first to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this approach. In his Development as Freedom (1999), Sen theorizes capabilities as freedom and explains that capability is the freedom that an individual has to do and achieve different things that are meaningful to them (Sen 1999, p.75). Specifically, he considers capabilities as a combination of various functionings that encompass people being what they want to be and doing what they want to do. Sen believes that freedom helps in the assessment of progress and in the establishment of the free agency of the people in what he refers to as the evaluative and effectiveness roles of freedom, respectively (p.4). This is the best way of achieving human development.
           Sen’s capabilities approach has been applied in many areas of human development to help understand how freedom or the lack of freedom influences the well-being of human beings at different levels. The capabilities approach is an evaluative approach th...