Education as Capability? Outlines of a Multi-perspective Sociology of Education

What is the relation between Bildung and enabling and between Bildung and human flourishing? These are central questions for our task of broadening the research agenda in the sociology of education. We argue that it is insufficient to define Bildung in relation to institutional arrangements. Rather we suggest going beyond a functionalist notion of education which seems to be dominant in the sociology of education. Therefore we put forward a person oriented notion of Bildung. From this notion we derive some critical and emancipatory reflections on Bildung. In order to broaden the scope of sociology of education we utilise an approach which is common in political philosophy and welfare economics but rather neglected in educational research: the Capability Approach in the tradition of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. After a definition of the notion of Bildung and a short overview of some basic ideas of the Capability Approach (CA) we discuss the heuristic potential of a combination of the CA with the human capital approach and a theory of habitus with respect to the sociology of education. Finally we discuss how these approaches might be fruitfully related in educational research.