If a country's Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the perce
ntage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportun
ities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional econom
ic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world's billions of individuals are rea
lly managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominan
t theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic huma
n needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum h
as been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilit
ies Approach.
