Abstract
'Well-being' is currently in vogue in policy-making circles in the Global North as a way of reconceptualising 'development'. This paper argues that its appearances are misleading. While the normative force of 'well-being' is accepted, what is being offered is a technocratic and reductionist programme which collapses 'well-being' into the statistical relation of a closed set of metrics. It is argued that 'well-being' as defined is a chaotic conception; not a concrete object but an evaluative state, and so such programmes necessarily fail to measure it. Further, it is argued that 'well-being' is already considered within economic development policy and that previous development initiatives would not have changed had well-being frameworks existed alongside them. It is suggested from this that 'well-being' merely provides a new way of describing economic development policy, without altering its fundamental logic or its inherent power relations.
Highlights
“Understanding and improving well-being requires a sound evidence base that can inform policy-makers and citizens alike where, when, and for whom life is getting better.” [Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, (2013a), p.3]
This paper argues that such a move is mistaken, and that the well-being movement shares more in common with existing approaches to economic development than it does with their critique
The paper proceeds as follows: the section will briefly outline the features of well-being measurement frameworks as they currently exist in the Global North, observing that such frameworks necessarily reduce the question of ‘well-being’ to one of mechanical numerical movements and so are structurally identical to existing metrics
Summary
“Understanding and improving well-being requires a sound evidence base that can inform policy-makers and citizens alike where, when, and for whom life is getting better.” [Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, (2013a), p.3]. Rather, ‘well-being’ is a chaotic conception which cannot be meaningfully reduced to a closed set of indicators; and it is an aim which has historically underpinned interventions or justifications for interventions in both domestic and international economic development policy.
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