Rethinking wellbeing was inspired by debates about measurements of health, happiness and wellbeing that pay inadequate attention to social structural factors and the economic and cultural contexts in which people live. The critique is as timely now as ever.
In this volume, resulting from an Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia research project, social scientists from diverse standpoints reflect on the nature of wellbeing and on ways of measuring it. In doing so, they highlight how various conventional approaches to wellbeing magnify inequity, injustice and the maldistribution of resources. The project brings together scholars from economics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to rethink wellbeing, to argue for a contextual and nuanced understanding of health and wellbeing, and to highlight the epistemological challenges to this.
Edited by Lenore Manderson, a medical anthropologist, well known also for her work in sociology, social history and public health, this book will be of interest to students and academics from a wide range of disciplines, and will prove invaluable to people working in social policy, community welfare, public health and related fields of government.
