ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the normative opening offered by CA to sociology in terms of a promising renewal of the idea of agency. I suggest that any new normative understanding of agency, like the one that Sen and Nussbaum offer, can gain from sociological theory’s recourse to notions similar to capability, namely the agent’s capacity for action. On the other hand, Sen’s CA with its normative/analytical centrepiece being the agent’s capability to make valued choices offers powerful concepts that can enable sociologists to rebuild the core category of agency. Seeing this affinity as an opportunity for reworking the normative dimensions of sociological theory, and drawing on sociology’s accomplishments, I argue that the normative components of Sen’s notion of capabilities are not necessarily locked into an individualist approach to agency, typical of economic thought, but, rather, contain a social core that has been prefigured primarily by Parsons and to a lesser extent by Giddens. I supplant this revision of the concept of agency with arguments from sociology and CA that consider a return to normative conceptions of human flourishing and human freedom drawn from the natural law tradition.
