This book is a result of the first Cambridge Capability Conference (CCC) held in June 2016. It is a testimony to the vitality of the approach to tackle emerging human development challenges. This conference was the start of a new phase of capability conferences in Cambridge. From the early Cambridge and Pavia Capability Conferences in the first half of the 2000s and the creation of the Human Development and Capability Association, the literature on the capability approach (CA) has seen a prolific expansion. While the impressive intellectual stature of the founding figures of the CA, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, has been a decisive factor in the multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary expansion of the approach, it is important to acknowledge that much of the proliferation has also been due to the development of a large community of capability scholars spread all over the world.
Cambridge, both the University and the city, is home to many people working on the CA and has been an integral part of this history. It has provided a vibrant and stimulating environment for the delivery of lectures, convening of conferences, writing of PhD theses and undertaking of research on human development from a capability perspective. In fact, one of the best-kept Cambridge secrets is that for more than thirty-five years, the University has benefited from lectures on the CA offered by Gay Meeks. Gentle and reserved, she does not like to talk about her own achievements, a rare virtue nowadays, some might say. Yet, she is extremely influential not only due to the elegance of her writing, but also because of her generosity in lecturing to generations of students. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that many of us would not have learnt to understand and value the CA if we had not had the opportunity to sit in on her authoritative and stimulating lectures.
This book is first and foremost a record of our gratitude and admiration for Meeks who was invited to be the first keynote speaker of this conference series where we try to recreate the intellectually challenging environment of her lectures and the intimate intellectual atmosphere of the early Capability Conferences.
Meeks started her academic life getting a first in her BA at ‘the other place’ (the University of Oxford) in philosophy, politics and economics in 1971, followed by her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1975. During her PhD days she worked as a tutor in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. When she finished, she became an ESRC postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Economics and a Calouste Gulbenkian research fellow at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge. From 1978 to 1980 she was a lecturer in economics for St Anne's College, Oxford (yes, that college of Michael Sandel's 50p story!), a junior dean and joint warden of St Anne's-Balliol Graduate Centre. From 1985 to 1994 she was a fellow and director of studies in economics for Robinson College, in Cambridge. That overlapped with her appointment as a research associate from 1984 to 2001 at the Department of Applied Economics, Cambridge. During the twenty-two years, from 1986 to 2008, she was an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Economics in Cambridge. In 2001, she resumed her fellowship at Robinson College that continued until 2009. Since 2001, she has been appointed senior research associate, first in the Faculty of Economics, now in POLIS.
For so many of us, Meeks was the lecturer of an intriguing and challenging paper called ‘Philosophical Issues in Economics’. This paper was given as part of the MPhil in economics until 2008 and from then on in the MPhil in development studies in Cambridge. This paper introduced the CA and provided a critical view of normative economics, a different kind of development based on principles broader than utilitarianism can offer, at least in its narrower forms.
The paper has also been an exemplar in academic excellence: from her meticulous notes, usually revised and amended, Meeks would not simply offer the key concepts to understand complex methodological debates, but also provide an impressive list of scholars who had already discussed the topics, accompanied by questions through which her students could develop their own thinking. If one felt intimidated by reading the ‘giants’ of economics and philosophy, Meeks would offer sets of tailored questions that would induce and empower her students to think critically about core issues for the understanding of economics as a moral science. This is not a minor achievement. One did not simply read Sen's ‘Rational Fools’. One was invited to think about it. One was also invited to consider others’ arguments and points of view (the mark of a good essay!), never forgetting, of course, as she would repeat two to three times during the academic year, that ‘Sen was the hero’ of the paper.
One would ‘learn by doing’ that in order to be a good academic one would have to confront opposing views, stimulating values of tolerance and sympathy in the training of future generations of lecturers and professionals in other fields. But that was only half of the story: Meeks has always been an extremely gentle and kind teacher, offering generous office hours for seeing students, who would bring their ideas, hypotheses, misunderstandings and, yes, delusions (not always in comprehensible English) to her and receive kind and wise ministering.
We are delighted to be able to express our gratitude to Dr Meeks, as well as to all other participants of our first CCC and to the Centre of Development Studies in Cambridge that provided an interdisciplinary home for this forum. Our thanks also go to Doreen Woolfrey, because without her help the conference would not have been possible. We are also very grateful to our editor, Phil Good, who believed in this project when it was only an incipient idea.
