https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters. This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics, risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable.

Are there social limits to adaptation to climate change

Rural development: putting the last first

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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Oneself as Another

Introduction: 1. Theorising wellbeing in international development Ian Gough, J. Allister McGregor and Laura Camfield Part I. Human Needs and Human Wellbeing: 2. Conceptualising human needs and wellbeing Des Gasper 3. Basic psychological needs: a self-determination theory perspective on the promotion of wellness across development and cultures Richard Ryan and Aislinn Sapp 4. Measuring freedoms alongside wellbeing Sabina Alkire 5. Using security to indicate wellbeing Geoff Wood 6. Towards a measure of non-economic wellbeing achievement Mark McGillivray Part II. Resources: From Material to Cultural: 7. Wellbeing, livelihoods and resources in social practice Sarah White and Mark Ellison 8. Livelihoods and resource accessing in the Andes: desencuentros in theory and practice Tony Bebbington, Leonith Hinojosa-Valencia, Diego Munoz and Rafael Enrique Rojas Lizarazu 9. Poverty and exclusion, resources and relationships: theorising the links between economic and social development James Copestake Part III. Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing: 10. Cross-cultural quality of life assessment: approaches and experiences from the health care field Monika Bullinger and Silke Schmidt 11. Researching quality of life in a developing country: lessons from the South African case Valerie Moller 12. The complexity of wellbeing: a life-satisfaction conception and a domains-of-life approach Mariano Rojas Conclusion. Researching Wellbeing: 13. Researching wellbeing across the disciplines: some key intellectual problems and ways forward Philippa Bevan 14. Researching wellbeing: from concepts to methodology J. Allister McGregor.

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Wellbeing in developing countries : from theory to research

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which a social wellbeing approach can offer a useful way of addressing the policy challenge of reconciling poverty and environmental objectives for development policy makers. In order to provide detail from engagement with a specific policy challenge it takes as its illustrative example the global fisheries crisis. This crisis portends not only an environmental disaster but also a catastrophe for human development and for the millions of people directly dependent upon fish resources for their livelihoods and food security. The paper presents the argument for framing the policy problem using a social conception of human wellbeing, suggesting that this approach provides insights which have the potential to improve fisheries policy and governance. By broadening the scope of analysis to consider values, aspirations and motivations and by focusing on the wide range of social relationships that are integral to people achieving their wellbeing, it provides a basis for better understanding the competing interests in fisheries which generate conflict and which often undermine existing policy regimes.

Poverty, sustainability and human wellbeing: A social wellbeing approach to the global fisheries crisis

The capability approach constitutes a significant contribution to social theory but its potential is diminished by its insufficient treatment of the social construction of meaning. Social meanings enable people to make value judgements about what they will do and be, and also to evaluate how satisfied they are about what they are able to achieve. From this viewpoint, a person’s state of wellbeing must be understood as being socially and psychologically co-constituted in specific social and cultural contexts. In this light, the telos of ‘living well’ which is at the heart of Sen’s version of the capability approach is inadequate and must be modified to a telos of ‘living well together’ which includes consideration of the social structures and institutions which enable people to pursue individual freedoms in relation to others. The policy significance of the capability approach can be further strengthened by paying greater consideration to the political economy of policy decision-making processes and the wa...

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The capability approach and the politics of a social conception of wellbeing

From concepts to methodology This volume began by recalling the urgent policy challenges to eliminate extreme poverty in developing countries. The research programme around which this volume has been organised rests on the proposition that the concept of wellbeing is not only academically promising but also can be of practical policy value in both developed and developing worlds. Des Gasper, however, argues in Chapter 2 that if this is the case then two basic challenges must be met. The first is to demonstrate that the label of ‘wellbeing’ can be conceptually useful, or as he puts it ‘appealing’, to both academia and policy. The second is to answer, ‘When will it promote priority to the basic needs of the poorest and under what conditions?’ To achieve this, we contend, requires (a) combining different disciplinary perspectives to advance our understanding of wellbeing and (b) translating this into an agenda for empirical research. These are the topics of sections 14.3 and 14.4 of this chapter. The formal objective of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group at the University of Bath has been to develop a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding the social and cultural construction of wellbeing in developing countries.

Researching wellbeing: from concepts to methodology

The objective of this paper is to better understand the various individual and household factors that influence resilience, that is, people⬢s ability to respond adequately to shocks and stressors. One of our hypotheses is that resilience does not simply reflect the expected effects of quantifiable factors such as level of assets, or even less quantifiable social processes such as people⬢s experience, but is also determined by more subjective dimensions related to people⬢s perceptions of their ability to cope, adapt or transform in the face of adverse events. Data collected over two years in Fiji, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Vietnam confirms the importance of wealth in the recovery process of households affected by shocks and stressors. However our results challenge the idea that within communities, assets are a systematic differentiator in people⬢s response to adverse events. The findings regarding social capital are mixed and call for more research: social capital had a strong positive influence on resilience at the community level, yet our analysis failed to demonstrate any tangible positive correlation at the household level. Finally, the data confirm that, like vulnerability, resilience is at least in part socially constructed, endogenous to individual and groups, and hence contingent on knowledge, attitudes to risk, culture and subjectivity.

J. Allister McGregor

Papers

Wellbeing in developing countries : from theory to research

Poverty, sustainability and human wellbeing: A social wellbeing approach to the global fisheries crisis

The capability approach and the politics of a social conception of wellbeing

Researching wellbeing: from concepts to methodology

Is resilience socially constructed? Empirical evidence from Fiji, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam