This book critically interrogates ‘wellbeing’, a concept that is exploding in popularity across the globe. The collection of essays asks not only how wellbeing can be defined and measured, but what is created and excluded in the process of striving for and articulating wellbeing. The editors propose a narrative framework as a novel and insightful lens through which to analyse wellbeing and understand how the “good life” is sought, experienced and talked about. With case studies from around the world, the contributions explore the tensions and overlaps between various scripts about what it means to live well—historically, socially, culturally, economically, and spiritually. The collection brings together a rich array of disciplinary perspectives, including: sociology, politics, anthropology, history, indigenous studies, religious studies, development studies, paediatric medicine, and gender and sexuality studies. The diversity of chapters make the book accessible and appealing, not only to scholars and students of wellbeing in the health and social science disciplines, but also to a broader public readership intrigued by the rise and impact of a buzzword.
Table of Content
1. Interrogating wellbeing through a narrative frame.- 2. Wellbeing in a world of want.- 3. Secularisation, wellness industries, and nonreligious spiritual health care.- 4. Narratives of health and wellness in the construction of place: The case of Palm.- 5. Narrativising spirituality, wellness, and planetary wellbeing.- 6. Uprooting and grounding: Migrant gardeners, urban food cultivation, and cultural wellbeing.- 7. Living through back-to-back public health crises in Samoa: Mutual narrative creation and research practices.- 8. From sickness unto life: How community and belonging can bolster wellbeing during serious illness and end-of-life care.- 9. ‘Uncle Lou turning over’: Demedicalising wellbeing through the trans-masculine community archives.- 10. Gutpela sindaun: Narratives of wellbeing in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.- 11. The land is life: Contesting food security and development initiatives through gendered narratives of wellbeing in urban and peri-urban Vanuatu.- 12. Answering the call: Narrative of authenticity, identity, and connection in ‘wellness tourism’ advertising.- 13. From magical thinking to being ‘pragmagic’: Narratives of wellbeing in health and social care in England.
About the author
Tarryn Phillips is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of Crime, Justice and Legal Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. Conducting ethnographic research alongside Fijian communities for over a decade, she has published widely on issues of diabetes, health inequality, poverty and nutrition. Her most recent book is an ethnographic novel, with Edward Narain, called Sugar (University of Toronto Press, 2024).
Natalie Araújo is Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. Her work focuses on intersecting issues of structural violence, trauma, agency, and gender in Latin America, the Latin American diaspora, and the Pacific, and within Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities in Australia.
Timothy Willem Jones is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University, Australia. His research focuses on the changing relationship between religion, sexuality, gender and wellbeing in modernity. His publications include the monograph Sexual Politics in the Church of England, 1857-1957, and co-edited volumes Material Religion in Modern Britain, and Love and Romance in Modern Britain, 1917-1970.
John Taylor (Jack) is Associate Professor and Anthropology Program Convenor in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. His publications on tourism include the book Consuming Identity: modernity and tourism in New Zealand and the co-edited book Touring Pacific Cultures.
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