This paper is a piece of advocacy for the use of wellbeing analysis in social and development policy and practice, drawing on the work of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group (WeD) at the University of Bath, UK. The paper offers a simple definition of wellbeing, and then explores the three basic dimensions that this comprises. It notes some potential hazards in taking wellbeing as focus, and concludes by considering what difference a focus on wellbeing could make to social and development practice.
Key Findings:
- Wellbeing is more usefully understood as a process that comprises material, relational and subjective dimensions. The constellation of these and the dynamics between them vary with history and geography, life cycles and different ways in which time is managed and space is organised.
- Wellbeing may be assessed at both individual and collective level, but its grounding is in the links between them: wellbeing happens in relationship. At its best, a collective project to enhance wellbeing may thus itself become the means through which wellbeing can be experienced.
- There are three main critiques of a wellbeing focus: 1) its preoccupation of affluence; 2) its practical policy application; and 3) its co-option by individualism.
Recommendations:
- Wellbeing is not a panacea: adopting a wellbeing approach will not replace politics. The review of hazards shows that there are serious politics in the ways wellbeing is understood. Calls to re-frame policy in terms of wellbeing come from many different quarters. They seek a change, but the politics of that change need to be investigated, not assumed.
- For the social process conception of wellbeing advocated here the policy implication is clear. Relationship must be at the centre of policy as well as analysis. Promoting the wellbeing of poor and excluded people will thus mean transforming the terms on which they engage with others and others engage with them, at structural as well as more immediate levels.
