ABSTRACT

Amartya Sen’s capability approach is often used in disability research as a normative framework for describing and evaluating the well-being of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, recently, the possibility of going beyond description to the use of the capability approach as an explanatory tool has been raised. However, to allow the use of the capability approach in this way requires grounding it in an appropriate research paradigm. In this paper, critical realism is adopted for this purpose. It is argued that critical realism can provide the ontology needed to justify finding explanations for the way that people with disabilities achieve their valued capabilities. The assumption here is that there are real, emergent structures and mechanisms that underlie empirical capabilities; and that these structures and mechanisms are related to people’s agency, as described by critical realism’s conception of the relationship between structure and agency.

摘要

Amartya Sen 的能力方法经常在残疾研究中用作描述和评估残疾人福利的规范框架。然而，近来，已经提出了超越能力描述而将能力方法用作解释工具的可能性。然而，允许以这种方式使用能力方法需要将其置于适当的研究范式中。在本文中，为此目的采用了批判现实主义。有人认为，批判现实主义可以提供必要的本体论，以证明为残疾人实现其有价值的能力的方式寻找解释是合理的。这里的假设是存在真实的、涌现的结构和机制作为经验能力的基础；