James Copestake, University of Bath.

14 June 2004

Summary
Development organisations face a tension between the consistency and flexibility of their actions. This paper reports on a quest to develop a framework based upon a universal understanding of human wellbeing, but one that is compatible with flexible responses that take into account local variation in the way wellbeing is determined. Section 1 elaborates on the context of this quest, and explains why the argument is developed with particular reference to Peru. Section 2 summarises an initial review of literature on wellbeing and related concepts in Peru (Altamirano, Copestake, Figueroa, & Wright, 2003). This started with discipline-specific studies and ended by arguing in favour of a multi-disciplinary exclusion/inclusion framework to guide development policy and practice. Compared to more fashionable capital asset frameworks this emphasises social processes and relationships as much as states and stocks of resources. Section 3 tests this framework against empirical data from a focus group discussion with social scientists in Central Peru. Section 4 concludes that while the inclusion/exclusion framework provides a strong foundation it needs further refinement. It proposes a simple model to encourage simultaneous analysis of material, social and symbolic dimensions of development activities. The key argument is that this is an improvement over frameworks that encourage these to be treated as separable spheres of activity.