Les communs de capabilités : des questions à se poser pour mettre en œuvre efficacement une approche radicale et transformative de la transition

Abstract

The collective dynamics of actors seeking to efectively implement a radical and transformative approach to transition cannot avoid questioning the normative and ontological presuppositions of the diferent approaches to transition. In doing so, it is possible for them to defne an ideal type of approach to sustainable development that will motivate and guide their ways of thinking and acting and thus contribute to its operationalization. Based on the capability approach to sustainable development proposed by A. Sen, and on the responses to its incompleteness, we propose to characterize socially sustainable development as this ideal-type of radical and transformative approach to transition. In order to qualify the collective actions that enable its implementation, we draw on the epistemological proximity between the capability approach and the Ostromian approach to the commons to consider the commons as a way to operationalize the capability approach to sustainable development. Crossing the contributions of Sen and Ostrom, we propose the concept of the capability commons both as an ideal-type guiding common action and as an instituting collective action likely to bring it about.