1 Capabilities, Human Capital and Education

In this paper, relationships between human capital and human capabilities are discussed and analyzed. Starting from Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach and his suggestion to broaden, both additionally and cumulatively, the notion of human capital, we firstly characterize capabilities as fuzzy entities, then we propose a closed loop in which complex interactions among investments in human capital, capabilities and modes of economic production and reproduction are intertwined. Hence, it is argued that, given this essential complexity, educational policies have to be designed taking into account their direct and indirect effects on human capabilities. In doing this, a possible practical reference could be United Nations ’ principles for capacity development. Roughly speaking, capacity development is based on civic engagement, participation, autonomous development and fruitfully social interaction. All these principles are perfectly consistent with the Capability Approach’s view of education as something aimed not only to job-oriented skills acquisition, but also to life-oriented ones. Moreover, they suggest how educational policies may be designed in order to increase their impact on human development. Finally, we argue that, for making these principles work, a network architecture of the education system might be needed