Being, doing and belonging after brain injury: an ethnographic exploration of the capabilities approach

Abstract

The capabilities approach, developed by Sen and Nussbasum, is a way of describing quality of life as a function of what the person is able to be and do. The capabilities approach is used in this paper to fill a distinct gap in the care literature, which has tended to focus on the burden of care, rather than on what the carer actually does. There are various approaches to developing capability sets for specific populations. In this paper a capability set for carers of adults with severe brain injury is arrived at by means of an ethnographic study of five families, carried out over one year. This capability set is further clarified using the heuristic device of ‘ideal types’ of responses to care, from both the perspective of the carer and the adult with brain injury. It is intended that this research may contribute to the development of a focused agenda regarding the capabilities that this community choose to value.