Wellbeing in Developing Countries ESRC Research Group

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Wellbeing in Developing Countries ESRC Research
Group
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The Politics and Policy Implications of Wellbeing

• Presentation to Maastricht Graduate School of
  Governance
• 24/01/08
• J. Allister McGregor
• Research Group on Wellbeing in Developing
  Countries
• University of Bath
• j.a.mcgregor_at_bath.ac.uk

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Wellbeing

• On the one hand - evokes warm and fuzzy feeling
  On the other - is embroiled in a struggle for
  hard contemporary political meaning.

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Wellbeing and Difference

• We all seek wellbeing (whether we call it that or
  not)
• What we regard as wellbeing and even how we
  conceive of it is different (between different
  kinds of person and across cultures)
• What we each regard ourselves as having to do to
  achieve wellbeing is different
• (Politicians like to promise that they are going
  to improve it)

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Social Wellbeing

• Our research argues that it is incorrect to
  conceive of wellbeing as individualistic and
  based in ultiltarianism.
• Wellbeing is a profoundly social concept.
• We each conceive of it and achieve it (or not)
  through our relationships to others in society.
• The concept of wellbeing requires us to pay
  special attention to the relationships between
  persons and society
• A key element of these relationships are our
  systems of governance.

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A Definition of Wellbeing

• Wellbeing is a state of being with others
• where human needs are met
• where one can act meaningfully to pursue one's
  goals
• where one is able to enjoy a satisfactory quality
  of life.
• (WeD, 2007)

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A Hybrid Definition of Wellbeing

• Combines elements of both objective and
  subjective approaches
• and
• transcends them by recognizing the role of
  social construction in each.

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Wellbeing Happiness and Wealth

• Happiness is not Wellbeing(being happy while
  starving does not indicate wellbeing)
• Wealth is not Wellbeing(being wealthy but
  unhealthy through over-consumption does not
  indicate wellbeing either)

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Wellbeing Research Methodology

• Six inter-related research components
• Community Profiling
• The Resources and Needs Questionnaire (RANQ)
• Quality of Life (WeDQoL)
• Income and Expenditure Survey and Diaries (IE)
• Process research
• Structures and regimes
• (See http//www.welldev.org.uk/research/methods-to
  obox/toolbox)

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WeD DataTable 1 Number of types of community
included in WeD research, by country

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WeD DataTable 2 Number of households and
persons included in the RANQ, by country
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WeD DataTable 3 No. of households covered by
Income and Expenditure and Overlap with RANQ
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WeD DataTable 4 Number of Persons included in
WeDQoL and Overlap with RANQ
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Wellbeing and Poverty

• Adopting wellbeing as a means of better
  understanding why poverty persists
• Poverty frameworks as a conceptual trap
• The need to recognise that poor peoples lives
  are not defined by their poverty

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Wellbeing and Poverty

• Using the wellbeing to study of why poverty
  persists
• what people do not have
• what they cannot do
• how they perceive of themselves, their quality of
  life and their opportunities.

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Wellbeing and Social Organisation

• The ability of different persons to conceive of,
  to pursue and to achieve wellbeing depends to a
  considerable part on society being organised to
  support these.
• Not all visions of wellbeing and the strategies
  that people may wish to adopt are necessarily
  compatible with each other.

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Governance

• Far from being a fuzzy concept, wellbeing is a
  profoundly political one.
• Wellbeing trade-offs become a central focus of
  political and policy analysis.
• The concept of wellbeing challenges us to
  consider how we are to live together in society.

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Wellbeing Poverty as Conflict

• Poverty, whether experienced in chronic hunger,
  child mortality, or social exclusion is a form of
  violence.
• Poverty results in harms to people.
• Poverty is a consequence of direct or indirect
  conflicts between competing visions of wellbeing
  and the different abilities of people to pursue
  their wellbeing objectives.

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Wellbeing Poverty as Conflict

• Those with least resources and power have little
  chance to achieve wellbeing and mainly struggle
  only to escape illbeing.
• The hidden conflicts of poverty are only one step
  removed from overt conflict and lie at the heart
  of many of the outright conflicts in the
  developing world today.

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Wellbeing Poverty as Conflict

• Poverty and its conflicts are indicators of a
  global order that is both socially and
  politically unsustainable.
• A failure to use increased development funds more
  effectively to tackle poverty and improve
  peoples prospects for wellbeing is a route to
  increasing conflict and is globally
  unsustainable.

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Wellbeing In Thailand

• Rapid development, rapid growth, but poverty
• Political crisis
• Northeast poverty of aspirations - support for
  Thaksins populist policies (liberalism with
  limited safety nets)
• South division and open conflict division
  exacerbated by Thaksins populist policies
  (Buddhist materialism)

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Wellbeing Challenges

• To reframe the objective of international public
  policy as
• the creation of conditions in societies all
  around the world where people are able to
  reasonably pursue wellbeing.

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Wellbeing and Policy

• Thus the purpose of policies and the raison
  detre of agencies that generate and implement
  them is
• to establish the conditions in different
  societies within which wellbeing can be pursued
  reasonably by all people globally.

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Wellbeing Principles

• The promotion of the conditions for the human
  wellbeing provides a central and coherent
  principle to guide analysis of policy choices at
  each level.
• This principle turns our attention to the sources
  of harm that different people experience.

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Wellbeing and Governance

• If we accept that development is about competing
  visions of what constitutes wellbeing then we
  need
• Political systems that are better able to cope
  with this competition of ideas and ideologies.
• Workable systems of governance (at all levels of
  human society from globe to locality) which
  people are able to conceive of as legitimate and
  are able to consent to.

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