Overview
The capabilities approach, developed by the economist Amartya Sen and the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, asks not “what is wrong with this person?” or even “what barriers does society impose?” but “what is this person able to do and to be?” It focuses on the capabilities, the real freedoms and opportunities, available to a person, and argues that justice requires ensuring a minimum threshold of capabilities for everyone.
Nussbaum (2006, Frontiers of Justice) specifically addresses disability, including cognitive disability, arguing that traditional theories of justice have failed to account for disabled people. Her list of ten central capabilities, including life, bodily health, bodily integrity, senses/imagination/thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation, play, and control over one’s environment, provides a framework for evaluating whether a person is able to live a flourishing life.
Relationship to autism and neurodivergence
The capabilities approach is particularly useful for autism because it focuses on expanding options rather than normalising the person. Pellicano et al. (2022, Nature Reviews Psychology) applied Nussbaum’s capabilities framework to research on autistic adulthood, arguing that it offers a way to identify where autistic adults thrive and where they struggle without reducing autism to a list of deficits. The approach asks: can this person form relationships? Can they engage in meaningful activity? Do they have control over their environment? These questions are directly relevant to sensory processing, because a person whose sensory environment causes constant pain or overwhelm has diminished capabilities, regardless of whether the “problem” is located in them or in the environment.
The capabilities approach also aligns well with the concept of a prikkelprofiel (stimulus profile): the point is not to fix the person but to understand what they need to function well.
Key sources
- Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Pellicano, E. et al. (2022). A capabilities approach to understanding and supporting autistic adulthood. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1, 624–639.