Comments on: Old research

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:29:32 +0000

Oops. I shouldn’t have forgotten Disadvantage either. I hope Jo isn’t reading this comment string.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:00:34 +0000

Tom, one other book that I also forgot is Jo Wolff’s and Avner De-Shalit’s Disadvantage which uses the capability approach in developign an account of what it means to be disadvantaged, and how to develop policies to combat that. Yet I should add that some of my students, especially the two who are members of a medium-size city Council, where sceptical about the practical value for policy makers.

I seem to have forgotten too much this morning – should not respond to comments before drinking coffee….

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:41:40 +0000

Thank you! That is extremely helpful. As it happens, I am a policy analyst who is struck by the gulf between the factors that I know how to analyze and the concerns that most motivate the members of the community organizations that I am trying to support with my work, and I am wondering whether this approach would have something to offer in bridging that gap. I like reading philosophy, but ultimately I am wondering how to shape an applied research agenda that is politically relevant for low-income communities.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:41:38 +0000

Dave, yes, of course, how could I forgot SAbina’s book?! Yet I should add that many readers find that book rather difficult to read (I myself wrote a very positive book review of her book in Economics and Philosophy soon after it came out, yet I’ve been told by several readers that they found it a rather hard book to read, and I agree.) In addition, I think that for political philosophers who are interested in theories of justice and related discussions, it is not the best starting point. That’s one of the problems with the capability approach – it is very interdisciplinary, and we use it for different puproses and within disciplinary conversations. For each of these, other books or articles are more relevant.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:22:29 +0000

Wouldn’t Sabina Alkire’s book, Valuing Freedoms be a good place to start on the capabiliy apporach.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:11:27 +0000

tom (@26): that is a really hard question. For one thing, it depends on what you need it for. As far as I am concerned, there does not yet exit a good monograph that describes the capability approach from both a range of disciplinary viewpoints, as well as from the different reasons why people want to know more (e.g. abstract philosophical analysis, or empirical research, or real policy development). The book I linked to in the post may contain some intersting chapters for someone doing empirical research, though I haven’t read most chapters, so can’t say this with confidence. For economists intersted in advanced measurement techniques, my late friend Wiebke Kuklys’s book href=”http://www.amazon.com/Amartya-Sens-Capability-Approach-Applications/dp/3540261982” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.amazon.com/Amartya-Sens-Capability-Approach-Applications/dp/3540261982 is probably a very good starting point (disclaimer: I co-authored one chapter with her in that book). For philosophical interests the famous Nussbaum-Sen volume on The Quality of Life is still among the best, and there is also a volume edited by Alexander Kaufman, called ‘Capabilities Equality’. Yet except for Kuklys’s book, these are all edited volumes – implying that it is almost inevitable that there are some stronger and some weaker chapters included, and that it still does not give you a systematic account of what the appraoch is and does. And there are of course Nussbaum’s books, which give her own version of the approach. For practioners, there is very little – and a huge demand (but I know some people from the HDCA href=”http://www.capabilityapproach.com/” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.capabilityapproach.com/ are working on such a volume).

All in all, I think for the time being it is better to stick with a selection of articles and book chapters from these edited volumes.

By: Colin Danby

Colin Danby — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:35:46 +0000

#23 sounds like a little shakedown. You can see the temptation for a journal editor to take advantage of people’s interest in getting published.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:15:38 +0000

So what book would you recommend on the capability approach?

By: harry b

harry b — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:29:15 +0000

Oh, Lee’s experience reminds me that I, and a friend, both had papers accepted for a journal in 1996, when neither of us had tenure. They have never been published (and I wouldn’t want mine to be published now, anyway). Still, nothing like Lee’s experience, except that in 100 years time the gap between his lag and mine will be a very small percentage of the full time we have been waiting.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:15:20 +0000

Incredible.

Lee Sigelman: I think you win the contest for the worst experience (qua time lag, that is – one may also have bad experiences in other dimensions, such as how one is treated by referees or editors). Perhaps the journal no longer exists?

By: Lee Sigelman

Lee Sigelman — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:18:23 +0000

Sometime in the 1970s, I co-authored a minor paper that we immediately submitted to a second (third?)-tier psychology journal. In fairly short order, the paper was accepted and we, being young faculty members, were pleased. The editor gave us two choices: (1) We could remit page charges of $100 or so, in which case the paper would be published within the next couple of issues; or (2) we could forgo page charges, in which case the paper would be put in their queue and published on an “as-soon-as possible” basis. We opted for (2). Now, more than 30 years later, we are still waiting for the paper to appear in print. Do you think we should stop listing this paper as “forthcoming”?

By: magistra

magistra — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:13:19 +0000

A friend of mine had a nasty time with the Pictish Arts Society, with his article coming up after 7-8 years without endnotes.

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:00:44 +0000

One of my friends took 17 years to turn his PhD into a book. It’s quite good, though. A couple of weeks ago I submitted an article for publication which was the end product of a paper that I gave in 1995. 13 years. Ow. On the other hand, I’ve changed my mind several times about the topic since then, found out a whole new lot of stuff, and had it rejected by a couple of [small-minded and short-sighted, natch] other journals, so does that really count?

But that was history, where things more slowly, and (in my bit of it at least) people tend to look out for one another rather than try to trump them. I’ve something else about to come out in Policing and Society, which I’d been slowly working on for about 10 years: last week I found that an article on the same topic has just been published in Criminology and Criminal Justice. A quick nervous skim was enough to show that their approach is different from mine, and their conclusions reassuringly tangential, but I spent about 30 seconds wondering if I’d have to etch “Never bump something to after the RAE deadline again, you fool” on the bathroom mirror.

By: db

db — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:47:25 +0000

I have a chapter forthcoming in a CUP companion volume (though not in philosophy). Although i was only recently signed up to write the chapter, the volume itself was originally commissioned in the late 1980s. It will be published next year.

By: abb1

abb1 — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:03:30 +0000

I used to work for a company that runs an internet-based system for some medical journals to do their peer-reviews and stuff like that. It’s quite complicated, actually, all those convoluted rules they have there; it’s a whole little world of its own.