Noticeboard

This is the Noticeboard of the WeDNetwork

SCHOOL FOR WELLBEING STUDIES AND RESEARCH
& THAIWELLBEING network

HAPPINESS FOR GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION
Mini Summer School 2-4 August 2010
Faculty of Political Science
Chulalongkorn University

Further details

NEW PUBLICATIONS

Understanding the Diversity of Conceptions of Well-Being and Quality of
Life.  Des Gasper. Journal of Socio-Economics, Volume 39, Issue 3, June 2010, pp. 351-360.'

‘Analysing wellbeing.  A framework for development policy and practice.’ Sarah C. White. Development in Practice, Volume 20, Issue 2, pp 158-172.'

NEWS

In February 2010, The United Nations Commission for Social Development considered the priority theme of ‘social integration’. As a result, a draft resolution on ‘promoting social integration’ was adopted for the first time in history and was recommended to the Economic and Social Council for adoption. Former WeD researcher, Julie Newton, has been involved in discussions that informed the development of the resolution through work exploring the links between wellbeing and social integration.

Key components of the resolution include attention to governments developing systems of social protection that include workers from the informal economy. It advocates a people centred approach at the centre of sustainable development in order to promote social integration and foster social harmony and social cohesion. It specifically encourages governments to develop national frameworks for social development which would include measurements of wellbeing (point 28).

“28. Encourages Governments to continue developing socially inclusive
policies and incorporating them into national development strategies, including
poverty-reduction strategies, and to give due consideration to developing national
evaluation frameworks for social development, including possible benchmarks and
indicators to measure the social integration and well-being of the population”

For more detail see: www.un.org/esa/socdev/csd/2010.html

‘Wellbeing Assessment in Public Policy and Development Practice’ a new one-week intensive course was launched at Bath in February 2010. For more information please see leaflet.

ONGOING RESEARCH ON WELLBEING

Assessing Wellbeing for the Alleviation of Poverty
ESRC/DFID Joint Scheme Phase 2 1st call
August 2010-July 2013.  £500,000. 

Principal Investigator: Sarah C. White, University of Bath (Centre for Development Studies); Co-Investigator: Stanley O. Gaines Jr. Brunel University (Department of Psychology); Research Officer: Shreya Jha; Collaborating NGOs: Hodi (Zambia), Sahamati (Nepal).

This research aims to identify what promotes wellbeing within poor communities in Zambia and Nepal. It will demonstrate how poverty affects wellbeing and how different constellations of wellbeing in turn affect people's movements into and out of poverty.   Drawing on the sociology of development and psychology, it adopts a mixed method, cross-cultural longitudinal approach, with qualitative and quantitative data collection across a two year interval, involving 700 respondents. Statistical tests will assess the validity and reliability of our model of wellbeing.  In-depth case studies will gain a deeper sense of people's own understandings and experience. In particular, the research will test a key hypothesis, that social and personal relationships constitute critical drivers of wellbeing in developing countries. The project is rooted in research-policy engagement.  It is being undertaken with NGOs committed to incorporating wellbeing into their programmes, and will involve a broader programme of communications activities at national and global level.

Current work at Bath also includes:

1. a study of religion and wellbeing in India and Bangladesh funded by DFID (see www.rad.bham.ac.uk/index.php?section=19#mod_90)
2. A collaborative action research project with Oxfam Hong Kong and NGOs in Zambia and Nepal (See WeD working paper 09/50).
3. A collaboration with CAFOD and Tearfund on the development policy implications for the UK of taking human flourishing as policy goal.

Research on combining wellbeing and governance frameworks for analysing conflicts around conservation and poverty reduction in fishing communities in South Asia is being led by Allister McGregor, Institute of Development Studies at Sussex, through a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded pilot project.

Research on children’s wellbeing is being led by Laura Camfield, within Young Lives, a long-term international study investigating the changing nature of child poverty in India, Ethiopia, Peru and Vietnam, and based at Oxford Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford.

Work on the challenges and opportunities of promoting multicultural approaches to the understanding and promotion of wellbeing is being undertaken within Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, led by Neil Thin.