The social welfare function furnishes the primary tool of normative economics: It aggregates the utilities of different agents, by summing them for example. That technique is no longer available when preferences are incomplete since agents then cannot be modeled by utility functions. Agents can however have well-defined utility functions for groups of goods, though they will not know how to weigh the functions for different groups against one another. A policymaker can aggregate these utilities across agents and thus pin down a unique normatively optimal allocation for each group of goods. Government policies are usually debated in this fashion. Rather than solve a global welfare optimization problem, governments and advocates attack each domain of policymaking separately, whether it be education or health. The chapter’s approach illustrates Sen’s criticisms of welfarism.

In this chapter, I focus on the Bengali-language Arshinagar (2015) directed by Aparna Sen, and the Hindi-language Dhadak (2018) written and directed by Shashank Khaitan. Both films are adaptations of Romeo and Juliet that place the play within the context of current socio-political issues of communalism and honour killings in India.

An examination of the work of Shakespeare Schools Foundation (SSF): a UK-based cultural and education charity that introduces the work of Shakespeare to primary- and secondary-aged pupils in a ‘real-world’ active context.

The chapter looks at how SSF encourages engagement with Shakespeare’s text in collaborative teacher/practitioner/pupil partnerships, with a focus on inclusivity and rehearsal room techniques. The focus is on SSF’s flagship programme, the Shakespeare Schools Festival, which engages primary, secondary and SEN schools, and also on other residential partnerships with SEN settings.

Case studies explore how participants’ collaborative abilities and confidence increase, and highlight participation among pupils from diverse settings and disadvantaged backgrounds.

The chapter will consider how SSF’s active approach to Shakespeare contrasts with traditional instruction in the English classroom, and include the challenges faced by SSF in providing its programmes in the current UK education climate.

Much of the existing literature on the philosophical antecedents of the capabilities approach focuses narrowly on well-known figures — such as Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and J. S. Mill — in ‘Western’ philosophy and political economy. This chapter is chiefly concerned with influences on the works of Amartya Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum and the intellectual climate from which their works on capability emerged. It traces these to traditions — including those of Greek tragedy, Stoic and Buddhist thought — as well as particular influences on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works from twentieth-century India, including the works of Rabindranath Tagore. In both these ways, this contribution makes a strong case for expanding the literature on the predecessors of, and influences on, contemporary work on the capabilities approach well beyond the ‘Western’ tradition of philosophy, and encourages researchers to consider the extent to which the roots of the capabilities approach can be found in ‘non-Western’ traditions and ideas which have been relatively neglected in the literature on Sen’s and Nussbaum’s works on capabilities. In making this case, the chapter also reiterates some differences between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s views.

When Amartya Sen defends his capability approach to well-being, he contrasts it with the utility theory advocated by the classical utilitarians, including John Stuart Mill. Yet a closer examination of the two views reveals that they are much more similar than they appear. Each can be interpreted in either a subjective or an objective way. When both are interpreted subjectively the differences between them are slight, and likewise for the objective interpretations. Finally, whatever differences may remain are less important than they might seem, since the two theories are developed by Sen and Mill for different purposes and, in that sense, are not genuine alternatives.

In the framework of a critical illustration of the contemporary history of economics, this chapter recalls the foundations of utilitarianism and the ethics of consequences and provides a survey of research on income inequalities. Then it provides a critical history of welfare economics. It illustrates Sen’s notion of capabilities. It opposes conservative, revolutionary and reformist views on the evolution of capitalism and, finally, discusses a rather unusual topic, the economists’ ethics.