WELL-BEING
Individual,
Community and Social Perspectives
Edited
by John Haworth and Graham Hart
Palgrave Macmillan June 2007
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Preface
Introduction
John Haworth and Graham Hart
PART 1
1 Positive psychology
and the development of well-being
Jane
Henry
2 Individual
development and community empowerment: suggestions from studies on optimal
experience
Antonella Delle Fave
3 Webs of well-being:
the interdependence of personal, relational, organizational and communal
well-being
Isaac Prilleltensky and Ora Prilleltensky
Health, well-being
and social capital
Judith Sixsmith and Margaret
Boneham
Psychology in
the community.
Carolyn Kagan and Amanda
Kilroy
Art, health and
well-being
David Haley and Peter Senior
Sense and solidarities:
politics and human wellbeing: a neo-durkheimian institutional theory
of well-being and its implications for public policy
Perri 6
PART 2
Is wellbeing local or global? a perspective from ecopsychology
John Pickering
Societal inequality,
health, and well-being
Dimitris Ballas, Danny
Dorling and Mary Shaw
A life course
approach to well-being
Stephani Hatch, Felicia
Huppert, Rosemary Abbot, Tim Croudace, George Ploubidis, Mike Wadsworth,
Marcus Richards, and Diana Kuh
Organisational
commitment: a managerial illusion?
Michael White
Well-being,
paid work and personal life.
Suzan Lewis and Christina
Purcell
Work, leisure
and well-being in changing social conditions
John Haworth
14 Friendship,
trust and mutuality
Ray Pahl
INTRODUCTION
John Haworth
and Graham Hart
We are all interested in well-being,
consciously or sub-consciously, as together we create well-being. In
recent years, researchers, educators, policy makers and politicians
have been directly concerned with well-being, which has been viewed
variously as happiness, satisfaction, enjoyment, contentment; and engagement
and fulfilment, or a combination of these, and other, hedonic and eudaimonic
factors. Well-being is also viewed as a process, something we do together,
and as sense making, rather than just a state of being. It is acknowledged
that in life as a whole there will be periods of ill-being, and that
these may add richness to life. It has also been recognised that
well-being and the environment are intimately interconnected. Certainly,
well-being is seen to be complex and multifaceted, and may take different
forms.
The
book has its origins in a series of transdisciplinary seminars on well-being
funded by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council in the
UK.[1] The objective of the seminars was not to replace, but provide
an alternative to, and to complement, the overwhelming harm-based focus
of much social scientific research into health. Well-being offers
a paradigm that allows those in the academic, policy and user fields
to focus on positive outcomes, and how best to realise them. The series,
and related publications, show the importance of societal, environmental,
and individual factors for well-being.[2] Contributors to the seminars,
and others eminent in their field, were commissioned to write in-depth
chapters for the present book. Each chapter is important for well-being
in its own right. Together they present a new dynamic view of well-being,
one which will be crucial for the way in which we will cope with the
21st Century.
In
recent years in the USA there has been a focus on ‘Positive
Psychology’ concerned with factors leading to well-being and positive
individuals ( e.g. Kahneman, Diener & Schwartze, 1999; Special Edition
of the American Psychologist, January 2000: Snyder and Lopez, 2000;
Keyes and Haidt, 2002; Seligman, 2003; Sheldon, 2004; Csikszentmihalyi
and Csikszentmihalyi 2006; website www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu) Positive
psychology is seen as concerned with how normal people
might flourish under benign conditions -- the thriving individual and
the thriving community. Positive Psychology changes the focus of psychology
from preoccupation with repairing the worst things in life to building
the best things in life. In the USA, the field of Positive Psychology
at the subjective level is about positive experience: well-being, optimism,
hope, happiness, and flow. At the individual level it is about the character
strengths--the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal
skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality,
future-mindedness, and genius. At the group level it is about the civic
virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship:
leadership, responsibility, parenting, altruism, civility, moderation,
tolerance, and work ethic.
In
discussing ‘Positive Psychology’, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi
(2000) distinguish between pleasure and enjoyment. They note that ‘Pleasure
is the good feeling that comes from satisfying homeostatic needs such
as hunger, sex, and bodily comfort. Enjoyment on the other hand, refers
to the good feelings people experience when they break through the limits
of homeostasis – when they do something that stretches them beyond
what they were – in an athletic event, an artistic performance, a
good deed, a stimulating conversation. Enjoyment, rather than pleasure,
is what leads to personal growth and long term happiness’. Csikszentmihalyi
and Csikszentmihalyi (2006), in an edited book on what makes life worth
living, highlight the importance of personally meaningful goals, individual
strengths and virtues, and intrinsic motivation and autonomy, in what
makes people happy and life meaningful. Positive emotions and the development
of personal resilience are also important in optimal functioning (Fredrickson,
2006)
A European
positive psychology net work has also been established (www.enpp.org
) This promotes regular conferences and publications (e.g. Linley
and Joseph, 2004; Delle Fave, 2006). In Europe, a World Data Base of Happiness
Research is freely available on the internet at http://www.eur.nl./fsw/research/happiness
The
positive psychology programme is very praiseworthy, and is stimulating
much needed research in many countries. However, it focuses primarily
on individual influences on well-being. The programme could be enhanced
by the study of the influence of social institutions on behaviour and
well-being (eg Jahoda (1982). Prilleltensky (2001, 2006) argues from
extensive studies that wellness is achieved by the simultaneous and
balanced satisfaction of personal, interpersonal and collective needs.
In
the UK, the study of well-being is now a key element in the Economic
and Social Research Council’s Lifecourse, Lifestyle, and Health Thematic
Priority 2000. UK perspectives on well-being and happiness include psychological
(Argyle 2002), psycho-biological (Huppert el al 2005), social (Halpern
2005), and economic approaches (Oswald, 2003, Layard 2003, 2005, New
Economics Foundation : www.neweconomics.org). Layard reviewed evidence
showing that above a certain level, economic growth (GDP) does not increase
overall societal well-being, as people evaluate their income in relation
to changing standards. Research by Wilkinson (1996, 2000) shows that
increase in socio-economic inequalities in developed countries is associated
with health inequality; which is likely to be detrimental to the
well-being of individuals and communities. Doran and Whitehead (2004)
also show from research in the UK that social policies and political
context matter for health. The UK Cabinet Office has produced a report
on Life Satisfaction (Donovan, Halpern and Sargeant, 2002). This found
strong links between work satisfaction and overall life satisfaction,
and also between active leisure activities and overall satisfaction,
concluding that there is a case for government intervention to boost
life satisfaction, by encouraging a more leisured work-life balance.
Another approach emphasises a set of practices, rather than a state
of happiness. For example, Perri (2002) argued that well-being is about
what people recognise, within particular institutions, as a shared life
– a life well lived and worth living together.
The
study of both work and leisure has contributed significantly to the
broader approach to well-being (e.g. Jahoda 1982; Warr 1987, 1999; Csikszentmihalyi
and Le Fevre 1989; Roberts 1999; Taylor 2001, 2002; Haworth 1997; Haworth
and Veal, 2004; Haworth and Lewis, 2005; Iso-Ahola and Mannell, 2004;
Stebbins 2004; Kay 2001, 2006). Warr (1987) in his concept of mental
health from a Western perspective, advocates the measurement of affective
well-being, competence, autonomy, aspiration and integrated functioning.
However, it is the measure of affective well-being which has received
the greatest empirical attention (Warr, 1990). Delle Fave and Massimini
(2003) note that creative activities in leisure, work, and social interaction
can give rise to ‘flow’ or ‘optimal’ experiences. These experiences
foster individual development and an increase in skills in the lifelong
cultivation of specific interests and activities. Taylor (2002) in a
report on the ESRC funded Future of Work programme advocates that a
determined effort is required to assess the purpose of paid work in
all our lives, and the need to negotiate a genuine trade-off between
the needs of job efficiency and leisure. The report considers that class
and occupational differences remain of fundamental importance to any
understanding of the world of work. Arguably, class is also important
in understanding the world of leisure. Critcher and Bramham (2004) state
that ‘Where access to leisure increasingly rests on the capacity to
purchase goods and services in the market, the distribution of income
becomes an important determinant of leisure life chances’. A
recent European Union funded qualitative research project, Transitions,
(www.workliferesearch.org/transitions), examined the transition to parenthood
among employees in changing European workplaces. It found a drive for
more efficiency and an intensification of work across all the countries
studied; a widespread implementation gap between policies to support
the reconciliation of work and family, and actual practice; and persisting
gender differences in work-life responsibilities and experiences. The
study also highlighted the important role in well-being played by managers
and work colleagues. The research showed that the study of well-being
benefits from being located in a life domain.
Many
of the chapters in this book arise from this milieu of research on well-being.
They both develop and challenge existing concepts and approaches. Other
chapters bring fresh perspectives to research on well-being from different
disciplines. In Part 1 of the book the chapters have a primary focus
on individual and community approaches to well-being. They show how
these are inevitably intertwined, and that both homogeneity and diversity
(or what may be termed ‘constrained diversity’) exist in society.
In Part 2 individual and community perspectives are combined with a
societal dimension, set in a global environmental context.
Each chapter in the book is important for its own domain of enquiry,
while reflecting the interconnectedness of domains. Summaries of the
chapters are provided for each part, and presented together. These indicate
not just the desirability, but the necessity for addressing well-being
from individual, community and societal perspectives, in an integrated
manner; not least in tackling increasing social inequalities in societies
(Navarro, 2004).
Considered
together, the chapters show the emergent influence on research into
well-being of the experiential model of consciousness and being proposed
by Merleau-Ponty, (1962) This model emphasises the intertwining of experience
and being, and the importance of both pre-reflexive and reflexive thought
(see Haworth, 1997 chp 7). The chapters also reveal the importance
of recognising ‘constrained diversity’ in the human condition,
and the necessity to consider the implications of this for research
and policy in complex, uncertain situations, with associated unintended
consequences of action. Such an approach to well-being could be used
to implement several types of interventions or enhancements for well-being
(Pawelsky 2006), including empowerment, which is a relatively neglected
approach in positive psychology. The approach would also sit comfortably
with the analysis and call for a Social Policy for the 21st
Century ( Jordan 2006)
The
introduction concludes by summarising several key concepts relating
to well-being identified in the book.
PART 1 INDIVIDUAL AND
COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES ON WELL-BEING
Jane Henry in Chapter
1 on ‘Positive Psychology and the Development of Well-being’ notes
that Positive psychology focuses on the positive side of life,
and that despite an espoused concern with institutions in the sense
of a concern with civic values, for example, the majority of positive
psychology studies to date have focused at the level of the individual.
In her chapter she gives an illustration of some of the positive psychology
research on well-being, positive style and positive experiences. Both
simple and multi-dimensional measures of well-being have been used effectively.
Positive style includes important research into an individual’s natural
talents or strengths, though difficulties are associated with
searching for a universal list of strengths. A positive explanatory
style, such as optimism is generally beneficial, though this may not
always be the case for different personality types. From her research,
Henry advocates that both working to accentuate the positive and to
cope better with the negative have their place. She also notes that
there is some evidence that positive and negative affect are two separate
variables, not a unipolar one; thus reducing negative affect and increasing
positive affect may be separate enterprises.
Research
into the experience of ‘flow’ is recognised as important, though
Henry notes that there are probably many other states of optimal experience
other than flow, notably varieties of contentment and other low arousal
states of satisfaction. These types of experiences have been more thoroughly
examined in spiritual practice than psychology. She considers they deserve
further research.
Henry
discusses her research into what people thought had accounted for any
long term improvement in their own well-being. These studies suggest
that intuitive, physically active and social approaches have been valued
by more people than reflective routes. Henry considers that they challenge
not only the dominance of talking therapy as the favoured route to self-improvement
but the rather individualistic and goal–oriented route to well-being
emphasised by many positive psychologists and other caring professionals.
Antonella Delle Fave
in chapter 2 on ‘Individual development and community empowerment:
suggestions from studies on optimal experience’ emphasizes the role
of individuals as active agents in shaping their cultural environment
and in promoting its complexity. In cultural evolution, psychological
selection is important, with optimal experience playing an important
role, fostering personal growth and cultural empowerment. Cross cultural
research on optimal experience by the author using a questionnaire showed
that the activity categories associated with the most pervasive optimal
experience were productive activities (work or study) and structured
leisure (sports, arts and crafts, hobbies). Social and family interactions
and the use of mass media followed with lower percentages. The findings
also showed that optimal experience comprises a stable cognitive core
(focus of attention, control of the situation) across activity categories,
though wider variations across categories were detected in the values
of affective (e.g. excitement) and motivational (e.g. wishing
to do the activity) variables. While work can be important for
optimal experience, the study showed that none of the blue collar and
white collar participants in the present study (around 200 people) associated
assembly line work or routine office tasks with the most pervasive optimal
experiences.
The
author considers that the extent to which a society provides its members
with long-term meaningful, intrinsically rewarding and engaging activities
can be indicative of a successful cultural transmission, in that it
facilitates the preferential replication of such activities through
psychological selection. The author advocates that information on people’s
perception of opportunities for optimal experiences in the daily domains
is essential to design intervention programs grounded in individual
potential for empowerment. This can facilitate an effective match between
individual needs and values, on the one side, and society development
and integration, on the other side. Also, from a broader perspective,
in order to promote empowerment, the introduction of any cultural information
– be it represented by an artifact, a law, a value, a philosophical
outlook, an educational or organizational strategy – has to take into
account its consequences for the well-being of individuals, of the ecosystem,
and of other societies at the same time.
Isaac and Ora Prilleltensky
in chapter 3 discuss ‘Webs of Well-Being: The Interdependence of Personal,
Relational, Organizational and Communal Well-Being’.
The main premise of the chapter is that what happens in any domain of
well-being – collective, organizational, relational or personal –
affects the others. They argue that to minimise the importance of contextual
factors on well-being has adverse consequences for understanding psychological
processes and efforts at social change.
The
authors present a model of well-being consisting of sites, signs, sources,
strategies and synergy, which captures the interdependence of personal,
relational, organizational and communal well-being. The sites are where
well-being takes place, for example, personal, indicated by signs such
as personal control. A clean environment, freedom from discrimination,
safe neighborhoods, good schools, and employment opportunities are signs
of community well-being. These are communal goods that benefit everyone.
Well-being at the different sites is dependent on a variety of sources.
For example, nurturance and early positve experiences of attachment
influence relational well-being. The fourth S is for strategies.
To promote well-being in each one of the sites of interest -- persons,
relationships, organizations and communities –a plan of action is
needed. Synergy, the fifth S, comes about when an understanding
of sources and strategies is combined. In accord with the concept of
webs, the best results for any one site of wellness come about when
work is done on all fronts at the same time.
The
authors argue that the key to successful strategies is that they must
be specific enough to address each one of the sites, signs, and respective
sources of well-being at the same time. Interventions that concentrate
strictly on personal sites neglect the many resources that organizations
and communities contribute to personal well-being. Paradoxically, strategies
that concentrate exclusively on personal well-being undermine well-being
because they do not support the infrastructure that enhances well-being
itself. The authors believe that this has been a major gap in previous
efforts to sustain individual well-being through strictly psychological
means such as cognitive reframing, positive thinking, information sharing,
and skill building. Individuals cannot significantly alter their level
of well-being in the absence of concordant environmental changes. Conversely,
any strategy that promotes well-being by environmental changes alone
is bound to be limited. The authors consider that there is ample evidence
to suggest that the most promising approaches combine strategies for
personal, organizational, and collective change. It is not one or the
other, but the combination of them all that is the best avenue to seek
higher levels of well-being in these three sites.
Judith Sixsmith and Margaret
Boneham in chapter 4 on ‘Health, Well-being and Social Capital’
examine the concept of social capital focussing on the key components
of participation, trust and reciprocity, and social networks of bonding,
bridging and linking ties. They review qualitative work which has begun
to map out the different processes and mechanisms through which social
capital is fundamental to an understanding of community relations and
has implications for health and well-being.
Social
capital may operate in different ways, reflecting heterogeneous community
groups. Thus any analysis of social capital needs to pay attention to
marginalized groups and how everyday lives are lived in diverse community
contexts. Sixsmith, Boneham and Goldring’s (2001) study of the relationship
between social capital, health and gender in a disadvantaged community,
found that intimate social bonds offered important opportunities for
social support, paralleling Kagan’s (2000) conclusions that,
“The poor neighbourhood may have weak and inward looking networks,
which nevertheless offer strong support in adversity”. However, the
relationship between bridging capital and individual well-being was
more complex with advantages for the community as a whole in the establishment
of bridging ties to professional help but less benefit for individual
community leaders whose expectations were poorly aligned to professional
methods of communication. The lack of accessible bridging and linking
capital to professional advice meant that more inventive ways of perceiving
health and illness were not aired (Sixsmith and Boneham, 2003)
Sixsmith and Boneham`s research also indicates that an understanding
of the relationships between social capital, health and well-being must
involve an appreciation of issues of gender and place.
The
authors note that whilst poverty, discrimination and deprivation may
exert their negative influence through undermining stocks of social
capital, simply bolstering communities stocks of social capital is no
panacea. Indeed, it could be argued that emphasis on the role of social
capital in enhancing health might divert attention away form the more
urgent need to improve health through reducing income inequalities.
They advocate that if the Government is serious about reducing health
inequalities and improving people’s quality of life, there needs to
be a genuine three way partnership between people, local communities
and the Government (DoH, 1999). Social structures that cater for individual
and social well-being need to be strengthened which empower people and
local communities in the face of an increasingly centralising government
agenda. It is only when people, communities and the Government work
equally together that social policy can make a real positive change
in peoples health and well-being.
Carolyn Kagan and Amanda
Kilroy in chapter 5 on ‘Psychology in the community’ outline
the key principles of community psychology, look at how community well-being
is understood, and explore the role of boundary critique as a means
of developing critical awareness about community interventions designed
to enhance well-being. Community psychology is seen as a value
based practice that focuses its attention on those most marginalised
by the social system The underlying principles of a radical community
psychological praxis are seen as: articulation of an explicit value
base (a just society and its underpinning values); use of ecological
metaphor; adoption of a whole systems perspective; interdisciplinary
working; understanding and working with the dialectic relationship between
people and systems; and practices enhancing peoples’ critical consciousness.
The concept of well-being in the community, and of the community, is
multifaceted. It recognises that for people to lead truly flourishing
lives they need to feel they are personally satisfied and developing;
that eudaimonic well-being (personal development and fulfilment) is
as important as hedonic well-being (satisfaction and happiness). At
the same time a community psychological perspective, however,
would suggest that both the hedonic and eudaimonic well-being of people
who are socially excluded, are inseparable from not only their economic
position, the environmental conditions in which they live and the political
and ideological messages that confine them to poverty whilst enjoining
them to break free and better themselves, but also from the human services
that exist to both assist and to regulate them. Yet few attempts have
been made to explore the interconnections.
The
authors and colleagues have been exploring the impact of participation
in the arts on health and well-being from a community psychological
perspective. They have drawn on critical systems thinking (CST) in their
work on evaluation. In this chapter they discuss one aspect of this,
namely, boundary critique. A particular brief was to examine how
participation in arts projects leads to changes in well-being and mental
health and to make recommendations for project improvement. The
evaluations were to involve close collaboration between the artists
and researchers. Early on, a number of boundary disputes became clear.
For example, artists and researchers had different ways of understanding
well-being, which led to an inability to agree how best to conceptualise
well-being and describe it within the evaluation. Artists and researchers
also disagreed about the relative importance of the aesthetic product
and the processes of creation and creativity used within the projects,
which meant that agreement could not be reached about a relevant evaluation
framework. Discussing these boundary disputes just seved to strengthen
the impasse. An Appreciative inquiry (AI) approach, described in the
chapter, was chosen to encourage a deeper and more meaningful means
of communication. The chapter discusses the concept of boundary and
boundary critique, a topic of considerable importance to issues
of communication and negotiation in community well-being.
David Haley in his contribution
to chapter 6 on ‘Art, Health and well-being’ argues that an
expanded dynamic notion of art could provide the creative dialogue needed
to value disparate readings of well-being. He notes that art, freedom
and democracy mean different things to different people and are “essentially
contested”; and that these and other concepts, such as well-being
and health, cannot, therefore be defined in terms of formal, analytical
philosophy. He cites George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in Philosophy
in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought
(1999), who argue ‘… for an experientially responsible philosophy,
one that incorporates results concerning the embodiment of mind, the
cognitive unconscious, and metaphysical thought.’ His text explores
some aspects of art, health and well-being to try to understand how
they may resonate with each other to generate understandings of what
a ‘better quality of life’ might be. Art in its broadest sense is
seen as virtuous ways of making and understanding the world. It recognises
that art can be integral to everyday life, that there is an embodied
need for all organisms to engage with their evolutionary development
and participate in creative processes, and that the environment is part
of our being and identity. Denial of this embodied ecology and these
therapeutic creative activities can be experienced as chronic forms
of personal, community and societal neuroses - an intrinsic lack of
well-being.
Haley
highlights an alternative to rationally based problem based learning,
termed ‘question based learning’. Here the premise is that we don’t
know, and that we have to listen and learn from a situation before acting.
This approach informs a constantly evolving notion of well-being, achieved
as a dynamic creative process. He cites scientists and artists advocating
a form of free exchange of ideas and information fundamental for transforming
culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity
can be liberated.
Peter Senior in his
contribution to this chapter summarises the important part played by
the arts for health and well-being in the UK and elsewhere. He notes
that the arts today can bring many benefits to the healing environment.
They assist recovery by encouraging feelings of well-being and alleviating
stress. They can improve the quality of healthcare environments
by linking art, architecture and interior design. Through
their involvement in the arts the lives of patients, visitors and staff
can be enriched. Closer links between the health services and
the community can be developed through arts and cultural activities.
A wide range of arts activities in Britain’s health service is now
provided by partnerships between the health service and arts organisations
from the State and voluntary sectors, and between artists, healthcare
staff and local communities. Activities include performances
of music, theatre, puppetry, poetry, environmental and decorative arts
schemes, and participatory arts projects for patients, staff and public.
In
1988 Peter Senior established Arts for Health as a national centre,
located in the Faculty of Art and Design at the Manchester Metropolitan
University ( www.mmu.ac.uk/artsforhealth/). Its aim was to unite artists, designers
and health authorities in establishing arts for health projects as an
integral part of the nation’s healthcare culture. He advocates that
just as the purpose of medicine is to restore the human being to a state
of well-being, so the aim of art within healthcare should be to reflect
beauty, harmony and delight in ways that echo that purpose. Research
studies are referenced which indicate the important work done by artists
of all kinds working in health settings to raise awareness of the effect
of the physical and social environment on staff, public and patients.
Perri 6 in chapter 7
on ‘Sense and solidarities: politics and human well-being’ notes
that well-being encompasses a wide range of subjective and objective
measures, and that, typically, it is treated as a variable to be optimised.
The chapter argues that this understanding of well-being is misguided.
It proposes an alternative account which includes the following three
propositions:
Well-being is about what people
will recognise, under particular institutions, as shared life well lived
and worth living together over the life course.
Well-being is achieved as much
by the ways in which people, under different institutions, make sense
of their lives and their social world as it is by material resources.
Well-being is a set of practices,
not a state. Some ill-being may be necessary to wellbeing, understood
as a richer process than mere contentment.
The
author considers that well-being is something that we do together, not
something that we each possess. An adequate account of well-being is
thus seen to require a theory of the range of basic institutions of
social organisation, within which people can make viable sense of their
lives. This chapter uses a neo-Durkheimian institutional approach. It
argues, contrary to post-modern conceptions, that the forms of social
organisation – and hence of well-being – are not indefinitely various.
Rather, there is a limited plurality of basic institutional forms, which
support several hybrids or coalitions. In each form, quite distinct
styles of sense-making and therefore of well-being are to be found.
These basic forms of social organisation are in perpetual conflict with
each other. Each springs up in response to the others. None can be eliminated
from any viable society: attempts to do so will result in the return
of the suppressed form, often in corrupt, illicit or violent forms.
The central challenge for policy and politics of well-being, then, is
to find ways in which the basic commitments of each of the forms can
be articulated in an overarching settlement.
Well-being
is thus seen as plural, complex, even unstable. The author argues that
Social Science can provide understanding of the institutional framework
within which policy makers must work. But it cannot promise, and policy
makers should not demand, any universally valid, apolitical prescriptions.
Social science can provide invaluable tools with which to support –
but never substitute for – political judgment , and it can identify
some pitfalls. It can tell the policy maker what to think about and
how to think about those things, rather than telling them what to think.
One
general maxim is given for policy makers –where all good things do
not go together, where complex trade-offs must be struck between the
four institutional orders that yield different value systems and capabilities
for well-being, each with its own weaknesses and risks, one can reasonably
suggest that policy makers ought to focus on the control of harms –
accepting that there are always trade-offs between different harms –
as a general priority before pursuing benefits.
An
example is given of the practical use of the approach to public policy
implied in the theoretical apparatus. The author suggests that
the “social capital” argument has misread and misconstrued the empirical
literature; and that there is not a sound base of evidence upon which
to make robust assessments of the efficacy of interventions, and the
balance of intended and unintended consequences, for different forms
of social organisation. He advocates that policy makers need to engage
in iterative design, evaluation and redesign, in reaching for accommodations.
PART 2 SOCIETAL PERSPECTIVES
ON WELL-BEING.
The chapters in this section
show the importance of the links between the individual, society and
the environment for well-being, which itself is complex and multifaceted.
Culture, social institutions, and technological developments can influence
well-being in both deleterious and beneficial ways. It is vitally important
that research and analysis is undertaken at this level. Equally the
chapters show that diversity permeates the relationship between the
individual and society, requiring continued investigation in relation
to well-being.
John Pickering in chapter
8 brings a perspective from ecopsychology on well-being. Ecopsycholgy
considers there to be an emotional bond between human beings and the
environment. Well-being means the feeling of having a place in the world,
of being at home in the world, and of living in balance with the trials
of life. Pickering argues that our relationship with the environment
is increasingly violent and destructive. We are beginning to realise
that the effects of our technologised lifestyles are leading to damage
on a global scale that we may not be able to repair. The
unease that this creates is fundamentally detrimental to well-being.
The effects may not be close to the surface of our conscious lives,
but they are important nonetheless. In one sense, “today’s
job” is what it has always been: to seek well-being and to feel whole,
secure in a stable identity. But this is made more difficult when
identity itself is open to indefinite redefinition. Selfhood is constructed
using what the culture around it provides. What we take
our selves to be is in turn taken from what our cultural context defines
a self to be. In the wealthy world selfhood is closely bound to
the variety of lifestyles a rich and abundant culture can offer.
Pickering
considers that a satisfying and sustainable relationship with the natural
world has been, over the history of human kind, the basis of well-being.
This is not a static condition but depends on a healthy balance between
met and unmet needs. Yet advertising creates artificial needs which
are designed to be permanently un-met. They act as an irritant,
undermining our sense of balance between what we have, what we need
and what we want. Much of what threatens well-being arises
from the massive over-consumption required to meet pathological needs
inflamed by media technology.
What
some ecopsychologists have called the ‘All-consuming Self’ is a
narcissistic condition in which selfhood becomes too strongly defined
by possession, having been detached from its more natural supports by
a barrage of consumerist images in the media. If this need to possess
is pathologically inflated, the self/world boundary becomes a moving
frontier of greed. Cultures in which it has taken hold will violently
wrest what they want from the environment and from other cultures. This
violence can be concealed within hyper-reality to some extent, but preconsciously
the news leaks out. Combined with preconscious needs for
self-actualisation that cannot be met, it makes for a powerful degradation
of well-being. Pickering argues that well-being depends on a life in
balance. He advocates that if our way of life is being driven deeply
out of balance by artificial and unsustainable needs, this has to be
addressed if we are to carry out research that is appropriate and useful.
Ballas
et al in chapter 9 on ‘Societal inequality, health and well-being’
consider well-being at the ecological level and investigates the relationship
between happiness and inequality across Britain. The chapter briefly
reviews the theoretical background of happiness research and also considers
its relevance to public policy. It can be argued that societies that
are extremely polarised and divided are less desirable, and less ‘well’
than those which have elements of equity and communitarianism as their
core values and principles. The chapter presents evidence for the recent
widening of the gap between the rich and the poor leading to unprecedented
post-World War II socio-economic polarisation and income inequalities
in Britain. The geographies of income and wealth in Britain also show
spatial dimensions of socio-economic polarisation. Using data from the
British Household Panel Survey the geographical distribution of happiness
in England and Wales shows similarities to the spatial dimensions of
income distribution. The authors consider that, on the basis of the
evidence presented in this chapter, it becomes clearer that public policy
that is aimed at income and wealth re-distribution and societal equality
would probably lead to higher overall levels of happiness and well-being.
Hatch et al in chapter
10 discuss a life course approach to well-being. They see well-being
as characterized by the capacity to actively participate in work and
recreation, create meaningful relationships with others, develop a sense
of autonomy and purpose in life, and to experience positive emotions.
Well-being varies with age, and with personality and age-related attributes
such as educational attainment and health status that are known to be
shaped by early life experience. They cite evidence from the 1946
British birth cohort study and other longitudinal studies, that developmental
factors, the early social environment, early behaviour and temperament
have long-term effects on adult physiological, cognitive and psychosocial
well-being. An active pursuit of well-being over the life course implies
a considerable amount of individual agency, which operates within the
context of social structure that regulates access to fundamental resources
(Link and Phelan 1995). They argue that a life course framework offers
a dynamic model of the interplay over time between the individual and
the environment that can be used to understand the factors that develop
and maintain well-being and successful adaptation over the life course.
They identify several theoretical constructs and processes concerning
well-being that could be operationalised in longitudinal studies;
with one objective being to develop social policy interventions.
Michael White in chapter
11 on ‘Organisational Commitment: A Managerial Illusion?’ examines
one of the main ways in which working life can become more fulfilling:
through a sense of involvement with and commitment to an organisation.
This type of commitment, and the committed experience it can offer,
is in principle available to most working age people, and there is a
widespread belief that it can be effectively fostered by certain kinds
of management practice that are becoming increasingly prevalent. Organisational
commitment (OC) vies with job satisfaction as the leading current indicator
of well-being at work. By being committed, we demand more of ourselves
and express more of our potential. Through our commitments taken
as a whole, we also express the values that we wish to shape our lives.
Our commitments define our selves, and so commitment is closely linked
to two other foci of contemporary desire: personal choice, and identity.
The
chapter examines OC by means of two sample surveys of employed people,
the Employment in Britain survey (EIB) of 1992, and the Working in Britain
survey (WIB) of 2000/1. The surveys were nationally representative of
people in paid work aged 20-60; the information was collected by means
of personal interviews in the employed people’s homes. The surveys
show that while an increased number of employees experienced High Commitment
Management (HCM) practices over the period aimed at increasing OC, the
average level of OC expressed by employees decreased. Some practices
in some companies increased OC, but the response to HCM practices were
variable. A detailed examination of the findings suggest that the managerial
model of OC, whereby the employer can ‘produce’ or ‘generate’
OC by taking certain actions, is misconceived. A model that better
fits the findings is one where employees actively look for what they
can engage with and commit to because it matches their preferences.
What attracts them towards a commitment at one time may attract them
less at a later time, or vice versa. For some people, for example,
the issue of work–life balance can influence OC. The author argues
that in important respects people construct their own well-being, and
one of the ways in which they do so is by choosing commitments which
make them more fully or more actively the people they want to be. The
chapter recognises that HCM practices have some positive effect on OC,
and suggests they may be linked with a ‘diversity policy’ that recognises
the diversity of personal circumstances and values among employees,
which may possibly provide a more nurturing environment for employees’
spontaneous commitments.
Susan Lewis and Christina
Purcell in Chapter 12 focus on ‘Well-being, paid work and personal
life’. Positive well-being is increasingly conceptualised in terms
of the satisfactory integration or harmonisation of work and family
– often referred to as “work-life balance”. The authors draw on
data from an EU Framework Five study, (Transitions) which examined how
young European women and men negotiate motherhood and fatherhood and
work-family boundaries, and how this impacts on their well-being.
This chapter draws on one case study of a finance sector organisation
in the UK, although the discussion of this case is contextualised within
the wider study. The study shows the crucial role played by managers.
Workplace policies and practices are shaped by national and local regulations,
but are also increasingly a matter of daily and informal negotiation
with managers in local organisations. Well-being for parents varied
across departments, highlighting the discretionary application of informal,
trust-based policies. However, even when managers and their working
practices did enhance parents’ flexibility and autonomy over work
and family boundaries, this tended to be undermined by other factors,
particularly long hours and the intensification of work. The study also
showed that social comparison and sense of entitlement are important
in determining expectations and subsequent well-being; and that the
transition to parenthood reinforces traditional gender identity and
roles within couples - women being under more pressure to be carers
and men to be main wage-earners.
The
study showed the important role of context on well-being. Access to
high affordable quality childcare is crucial to attitudes to, and experience
of, employed parenthood, although this concerned mothers rather than
fathers. Finance was also a real issue for the lower paid employees
in the context of high house prices and child care costs. There was
much evidence across all the case studies of an intensification of the
expectations of parenting, which includes aspiration to provide not
only more time and attention but also more material goods. To some extent
the parents’ sense of well-being reflected their expectations of work
and of their ability to attain their aspirations for themselves and
their children – based on consumerism rather than citizenship (Sointu,
2005). However, the finance sector participants were very different
in their expectations and ambitions than the social services participants
in the UK public sector case study.
The
study argues that well-being is complex, multi-faceted, fluctuating
over time and influenced by the many layers of context in which individual’s
lives are embedded, which indicates the need for a multi-layered approach
to policy. Changes in legislation alone are of limited value for enhancing
well-being of new parents without shifts in organisational, family and
community values and practices. The authors advocate a life-course approach
to research into well-being
John Haworth in chapter
13 on ‘Work, leisure and well-being in changing social conditions’
notes that the meanings and concepts of work and leisure are being re-appraised;
and that the relationships between work, leisure, social structure and
well-being have emerged as challenging concerns for researchers, educators
and policy makers. A recent Government report in the UK on ‘Life Satisfaction:
the state of knowledge and implications for government’ cited strong
links between work satisfaction and overall life satisfaction, and also
between active leisure activities and overall satisfaction. Yet many
people feel stressed because of financial difficulties and the dominance
of work, and in such situations leisure is used primarily for recuperation
from work.
Research
into work and leisure has significantly informed the study of well-being.
Jahoda (1982) has made a crucial case for the importance of the social
institution of employment for well-being. She identified five categories
of experience which employment automatically provides. These are: time
structure, social contact, collective effort or purpose, social identity
or status, and regular activity. Jahoda emphasises that in modern society
it is the social institution of employment which is the main provider
of the five categories of experience. She considers that since the Industrial
Revolution employment has shaped the form of our daily lives, our experience
of work and leisure, and our attitudes, values and beliefs. Jahoda regards
dependency on social institutions not as good or bad but as the sine
qua non of human existence.
The
categories of experience identified by Jahoda have been incorporated
in the nine environmental factors proposed by Warr, (1987) as important
for well-being. These features of the environment, such as opportunity
for control, are considered to interact with characteristics of the
person to facilitate or constrain psychological well-being or mental
health. Research by the author and colleagues shows strong associations
between each of the nine factors and measures of mental health. An important
development of the model is the inclusion of the role of enjoyment.
Extensive
research shows that enjoyment in both work and leisure is important
for well-being. Using the experience sampling method, the author
and colleagues found that experiences which are challenging, met with
equal skill and enjoyable (enjoyable ‘flow’ experiences), were associated
with higher levels of well-being, measured by standard questionnaires.
Enjoyable flow experiences come from both work and leisure. It has been
argued that it is not possible to say what is a healthy work life balance,
and that a range of affective experiences should be examined in daily
life.
Taylor
(2002) considers that class and occupational differences remain of fundamental
importance to any understanding of the world of work. Class is also
important in understanding the world of leisure (Critcher and Bramham
(2004).Haworth concludes with the following points: It is important
to monitor the distribution of resources available for work and leisure
in different groups in society. The social and economic institutions
of work and leisure also need to be more in balance. Equally,
in societies characterised by diversity, research is needed into the
experiences and motivations of individuals with varying work and leisure
life-styles, as there is no one correct policy for work and leisure.
Ray Pahl in chapter
14 on ‘Friendship, Trust and Mutuality’ notes that the importance
of friends for well-being has long been understood. He also identifies
the central paradox in the sociological theory of friendship.
On the one hand there are those, such as Simmel and Bauman, who argue
that the institutions and values of market society and consumerism destroy
the conditions in which the true ideal of friendship can flourish.
Yet, on the other hand, Silver argues that it is only under the conditions
of modern society that the distinctive ideal can possibly emerge.
Pahl
considers that if we limit ourselves to ideals and dispositions we are
getting little understanding of the actual empirical reality of the
friendly relationships most people have in their everyday lives. He
draws on research undertaken by Liz Spencer and himself over the past
decade concerned with ‘Rethinking Friendship’. The research design
was rigorously qualitative and at its heart was the exploration and
analysis of the people whom respondents considered ‘were important
to them now’. The research showed the diverse nature of friendship
in Britain today. For example, some of the friendly relationships were
so close that they could be described as being quasi-family. Other
friendships, by contrast, were casual, shallow and short-lived. Certain
kinds of friends – associates, neighbours, ‘fun friends’ - may
fade when people move, or follow different life-course trajectories.
Yet such fun friends can be immensely affectionate and last a life-time.
The research also showed the suffusion of family and non-family forms
of relationship, and distinctive personal communities. Family based
communities were found to have less poor well-being than ‘partner-based’
and ‘professional-based’ personal communities. The author
concludes that not only is friendship essential for our individual and
collective well-being, its disciplined study and exploration can help
us as a society to be more conscious of the processes of which we form
a part. The author suggests that friendship should be studied in schools.
CONCLUSION
Several key concepts relating
to well-being have been identified in the book. These include the following:
Well-being is complex
and multifaceted. It is considered as a state and a process. It is a
contested concept.
Well-being includes
personal, interpersonal, and collective needs, which influence each
other.
Well-being may take
different forms, which may conflict across groups in society, requiring
an overarching settlement. Well-being may also take different forms
over the life-course of an individual.
Well-being is intimately
intertwined with the physical, cultural and technological environment,
and requires a global perspective.
Interventions to
enhance well-being may take different forms. They should be conducted
at individual, community, and societal levels, ideally in concert. Interventions
need to recognise diversity and socio-economic inequalities in society,
and be concerned with the unintended as well as the intended consequences
of action.
NOTES
[1]The co-ordinators
for the seminar series were: Dr John Haworth and Professor Graham Hart;
and Professor Sarah Curtis from the Department of Geography, Queen Mary,
University of London.
[2]Papers from
the seminars, and links to other research on well-being, can be found
at the project website http://www.wellbeing-esrc.com
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