Understanding feedback relationships between resources, functionings and well-being: A case study of seaweed farming and artisanal processing in Indonesia

Sen’s Capability Approach is one of the most significant theoretical contributions to welfare analysis across a range of disciplines. A part of the literature argues that its conceptual linear flow—from resources to ‘functionings’, which result in well-being—potentially ignores more complex relations with the feedback loops where a single item could be viewed as having a different role by different people, in different contexts. We explore perceptions of existing feedback relationships in interviews with 74 women from nine seaweed farming villages in Indonesia, engaged in two distinct activities: seaweed farming and artisanal seaweed processing. We find that capability sets required for farming and for processing are distinct and in both cases we observe feedback loops. Several factors, notably social networks and transportation (motorbikes), were mentioned in almost all contexts indicating that not all resources are of equal ‘value’ and might yield different levels of well-being.