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Reconciling Universal Frameworks and Local Realities in Understanding and Measuring Wellbeing

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The Politics of Wellbeing

Part of the book series: Wellbeing in Politics and Policy ((WPP))

Abstract

Many recent initiatives to measure human wellbeing at national and international levels draw on universalist frameworks that propose what human wellbeing consists of. There is also an important counter tendency in this global movement that sees human wellbeing thinking as a place to explore and express differences in cultural and social identities. There is a need for greater clarity about how we might reconcile universalist and localist approaches to wellbeing and this chapter argues that this may be achieved by distinguishing the different public policy and governance purposes that wellbeing measurement initiatives seek to address. The conclusion discusses the dangers of imposing particular universalist conceptions and assuming away critical differences between competing conceptions of wellbeing and methodologies for assessing it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    J. Allister McGregor

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  1. J. Allister McGregor
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Correspondence to J. Allister McGregor .

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  1. Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

    Ian Bache

  2. Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Penryn, Cornwall, United Kingdom

    Karen Scott

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McGregor, J. (2018). Reconciling Universal Frameworks and Local Realities in Understanding and Measuring Wellbeing. In: Bache, I., Scott, K. (eds) The Politics of Wellbeing . Wellbeing in Politics and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58394-5_9

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