The toxic effects of subjective wellbeing and potential tonics

Sarah Atkinson

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113098

Abstract

The paper offers a provocation to the geographies of health in relation to one of our governing concepts, that of wellbeing. The paper brings together government survey data from the United Kingdom with other published research into a critical argument that the dominant ways of conceptualising and practising subjective wellbeing have become toxic and harmful to wellbeing outcomes. The paper argues that a ‘hyper-individualised and thwarted self’ and ‘supermarket model’ of social resources for individual wellbeing underpins the contemporary dominant understanding of subjective wellbeing. This approach neglects wider spatial and temporal considerations such as inequality, inter-generationality and sustainability, and the rise of wellbeing as a technology of soft capitalism. The paper discusses the potential for relational approaches from the social sciences to provide a more ‘wholesome tonic’ to current understandings of subjective wellbeing that might rehabilitate its capability to do helpful rather than harmful work and argues for an ethical obligation to sustain critical engagement.

Highlights

This paper offers a provocation to the Geographies of Health in relation to one of our most cherished concepts, that of wellbeing, and the sense of our own wellbeing, referred to here as subjective wellbeing
From MPs to schoolchildren, has taken to attacking each other on social media.” [Williams, 2020]. These data present an important contradiction between the national trends in subjective wellbeing and national figures for other manifes tations of how life is going in the United Kingdom, including aspects encompassed by wellbeing such as mental health and trust, positivity and future prospects
Indirect toxic effects arise from how the dominant approach neglects major issues that inextricably interconnect with our wellbeing: social affiliation and relationality; structural and material inequality; temporalities including generational and sustainable relations; balances between different types of wellbeing

Summary

Introduction

This paper offers a provocation to the Geographies of Health in relation to one of our most cherished concepts, that of wellbeing, and the sense of our own wellbeing, referred to here as subjective wellbeing. The contemporary dominant understanding of subjective wellbeing is very narrow and overly centred on the individual agent. This dominant way of thinking results in practices that un dermine the very thing we seek to enable in that the implications for popular imagining of our selves and our lives render subjective well being a harmful and toxic concept. Albeit under a variety of names and indicators, is not new in policy, philosophy or social and spatial science (see Conradson, 2012 for a history of wellbeing in Geography). What is new is the rapid growth of interest in capturing subjective wellbeing, that is, those aspects of wellbeing that overlap with concepts such as happiness and purpose in life, and in using measurable indicators as part of assessing social progress (see Stiglitz et al, 2009)

British trends in subjective wellbeing

The hyper-individualised and thwarted self of subjective wellbeing

A supermarket approach to social relations

Toxic wellbeing

Wholesome tonics?

Conclusions