Capability-Promoting Policies: Enhancing Individual and Social Development

How can unjust societies be overcome with a better distribution of opportunities to flourish? How can human development be revitalised in countries where social welfare is being questioned? In short, how can human development be fostered in practice? These are some of the important questions asked in this volume through analysis of existing policies and conceptualisations of coherent and systematic strategies for human development policies at the local, national and international level.

International contributors innovatively combine the hitherto unpaired perspectives of the capability approach and the tradition of critical social policy with empirical examples using case studies from South-Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America. The result is a call for a new, feasible approach towards more socially balanced, democratic and innovative capability-promoting policy activities, models and programmes that reduce social and human suffering to promote an enhanced social quality of current societies around the world.

Dr. Xavier Rambla is an Associate Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. He has led research projects on educational reform, education, poverty and social exclusion, educational development and policies addressing early school leaving in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Spain. He has also collaborated in projects on education and social cohesion in Europe, and critical co-educational action-research in several regions in Spain. Dr. Rambla has also worked to connect academic research with professional practice by collaborating as a consultant with some civil society organizations. His current research interests are educational governance and its implications for inequalities and human development.

University of Aarhus

University of Vienna

Australian National University

Anna Gupta is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Royal Holloway, University of London.