International
workshop (Hanse): Researching Wellbeing in Developing Countries
- Ian Gough
What is human well-being and can it be measured? What
can different academic disciplines contribute to this question?
Can notions of well-being developed in the rich world be applied
to poor countries in the South? How can it be researched in poor,
partly illiterate, communities? These were some of the questions
addressed at the first WeD international workshop held in the ultra-modern
but hospitable Hanse Institute for Advanced Study in Germany in
July.
The workshop was co-sponsored by the United Nations University in
Helsinki and the Hanse, and was directed by Ian Gough, Deputy Director
of WeD. It had two key aims: first, to report on and evaluate the
state-of-the-art understanding of well-being from different disciplinary
perspectives and second, to evaluate our emerging strategies to
research human well-being in four poor and middle income countries
(Ethiopia and Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand). The workshop was organized
around the three central themes of the WeD group: Needs, Quality
of Life and Resources, in each case addressing both conceptual and
methodological issues. Leading thinkers working on these themes
were invited to dialogue with members of the WeD research team,
including representatives from all four of the research countries.
The result was a compact but wide-ranging interdisciplinary group
from around the world.
The workshop was opened by Allister McGregor, Director
of WeD, with a survey of the WeD approach to researching well-being
in developing countries. In the first session, Des Gasper from the
Institute for Social Studies at The Hague spoke on the link between
human needs and human well-being, a topic also revisited by Ian
Gough in his presentation. Sabina Alkire, from Harvard University
and the Global Equity Initiative, tackled the question of how to
measure capabilities and human freedom, while Geof Wood, WeD, did
the same with human security. Pip Bevan and Alula Pankhurst, from
Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, presented initial findings from
WeD research in Ethiopia and some of the questions which these were
provoking.
Opening the QoL session Richard Ryan, Professor of Psychology at
Rochester University, USA demonstrated how his Self Determination
Theory identified universal psychological needs, while Monika Bullinger
from Hamburg-Eppendorf University and the ISOQOL (International
Society for Quality of Life Research) network surveyed the progress
made in comparing quality of life across cultures. Fascinating examples
of applied QoL research were provided from South Africa (Valerie
Moller, Rhodes University), Mexico (Mariano Rojas, an economist
from Universidad de las Americas-Puebla) and the European System
of Social Indicators, (Heinz-Herbert Noll, Mannheim University).
The wider, more sociological and contextual approach
to resources developed in the WeD team was presented in the third
session by Sarah White and James Copestake from Bath and Awae Masae
from Thailand. Economists Mark McGillivray and Andy McKay then presented
global comparative research findings on non-economic well-being
and on vertical and horizontal inequality.
The last session opened with a paper by Pip Bevan
on how essential it was to integrate a wide range of disciplines
in this effort, but noted how forbidding the obstacles to this were.
The two final speakers gave novel glimpses of the policy implications
of the focus on well-being: Hetan Shah, of the New Economics Foundation
in London, stressed that the British government was now taking seriously
'well-being' as an evaluative tool, while Charles Gore of UNCTAD
(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) spoke of the
contradictions between the global Millennium Development Goals,
national PRSPs and the local realities. He emphasised how important
the WeD programme was to bridging these gaps.
The workshop participants probed the WeD research
strategy and sharpened up some of our ideas. It also provided a
good reality-test for our upcoming fieldwork methods. Ian Gough
and Allister McGregor are now editing a selection of the papers
into a book. But as important a legacy is the buzz which the workshop
discussions (and late night informal conversations) gave to all
who attended, including five WeD postgraduate students, and the
fillip it gave to the WeD programme.
Ian Gough is Deputy Director of
WeD and Professor at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences,
University of Bath.
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Postgraduate Reflections on Hanse Workshop
Becky Schaaf (First
year PhD student using a non-linear systems approach to explore
the structures and dynamics of savings groups in North-East Thailand)
"A central theme of the conference that I found
particularly interesting was the importance of communicating within
and beyond academia. This included considering how the WeD project
and findings can inform and link with existing policy and development
projects. The need for WeD to amalgamate or incorporate the approaches
of different disciplines also appears crucial. As argued by Pip
Bevan, the use of a variety of approaches can only enhance, rather
than detract from, our understanding of the one reality that exists."
"The importance of looking beyond the research
to consider how to communicate with various people and organisations
and how to positively affect the lives of people in developing countries
was emphasised by Hetan Shah and Charles Gore. Amongst the often
highly theoretical and technical discussions, this focus on keeping
sight of the end goals of the project and considering how to ensure
the findings of WeD enter and influence policy discourse, seems
fundamental to its ultimate success."
Ashebir Desalegn (First
year PhD student from the Psychology department, Addis Ababa investigating
the applicability of Self-Determination Theory (Aspiration goals
and values indices) to an Ethiopian context)
"The workshop offered a rare opportunity for research students
like me to meet and discuss issues of interest with renowned scholars
that we have only known from the literature … What I found
particularly interesting was the vigour with which presenters put
across their arguments, how hard they fought their corners, yet
the participants' tolerance for diverse viewpoints whilst trying
to get a coherent picture of well-being, inequalities and poverty."
"I learnt a lot about how to work towards a meaningful
inter-disciplinary dialogue. It also helped me look at the areas
that inter- disciplinary discourse could converge on (and diverge
from) and, most importantly, how to build on points of convergence."
Monica Guillen-Royo (First
year PhD student working on the relation between consumption and
human need satisfaction)
"Researching consumption and well-being, as I
am doing, is challenging because of the strong views people, either
researchers or lay people, have about what they consume and the
reasons behind their choices … During the workshop, it was
generally agreed that well-being is an umbrella concept and that
notions of satisfaction, happiness and affect were commonly included
in its definition. But it was more difficult to agree on a unified
approach to research on well-being. The workshop helped to clarify
those differences whilst presenting a challenge for the WeD group
to reconcile the different research paradigms."
"Although consumption was not directly addressed, it was identified
by several presenters as playing a central role for individual's
well-being. In particular, Mariano Rojas summarised Subjective Well-being
approaches highlighting the importance of domains of life such as
family, economic and personal domains, with income playing a secondary
role affecting the economic domain. In Thailand the changing consumption
patterns were tackled by Awae Masae who underlined their two opposite
effects on well-being, since life is becoming easier but indebtedness,
and thus hardship is increasing…To sum up, the Hanse International
workshop encouraged my research on consumption and well-being. It
broadened my knowledge of the on-going discussions on well-being
and provided interesting insights into the consequences of changing
patterns of consumption in developing countries."
Farung Mee-Udon (First year
PhD student focusing on the gendered dimensions of the universal
health care scheme in rural Thailand)
"Understanding well-being faces certain challenges,
including how academics communicate to the public on their research
findings. Hanse demonstrated the importance of linking theoretical
and practical research with policy formulation and action.”
Further details of the work of these and other
WeD Postgraduates may be seen at:
www.welldev.org.uk/people/postgrad.htm
Toolbox: WeD's Resources and Needs Questionnaire (RANQ) - Jackeline
Velazco
WeD is currently in the process of compiling and
analysing the results of the Resources and Needs Questionnaire (RANQ):
a survey instrument applied to 1000 households per country across
a range of rural and urban communities within Bangladesh, Ethiopia,
Peru and Thailand. The RANQ is a distinctive methodological tool
designed to begin the exploration of the social and cultural constructions
of well-being in developing countries.
RANQ is informed by WeD's theoretical framework comprising
the Theory of Human Need; the Resource Profiles Approach; and Quality
of Life work. In essence, well-being is understood as an 'outcome'
which has objective, subjective and relational components. Well-being
is secured by individuals through the 'processes' in which they
organise different types of resources. Similarly, the pursuit of
well-being is influenced by the 'meanings' that they assign to specific
needs that they are trying to attain and the processes involved.
Individuals achieve states of well-being through a series of relations
with wider structures ranging from their household, through community
to the nation-state and global economy.
This integrated framework identifies the main foci
of empirical research. Essentially these can be classified as outcomes,
processes and meanings. Therefore, the WeD Framework proposes that
there are three central categories of data to be collected and analysed:
a) on what people/households/ communities/nations
have or do not have (material and human resources, social relationships,
status, and other resources)
b) on what people do or cannot do with these resources
c) on how people think about what they have (do not have) and can
or cannot do with what they have.
Although available secondary data (e.g. national census
and household surveys) offers information on what households have
and do, the RANQ generates its own data set that provides a comprehensive
picture at the individual, household, community level that links
these to how people think. More specifically, it gathers information
on household resources (human, material, natural, social and cultural),
the extent of needs satisfaction for households (eg health, education,
food and housing) and long-term shocks and fortunes. Many questions
are identical across the four countries; others have been adjusted
to each country's characteristics. The same coding system and data
verification procedures are being used to guarantee that comparable
data are collected across the sites in all countries to facilitate
cross-country analysis.
RANQ is organised into six sections. The first describes
the organisation of the household and is followed by a general assessment
of subjective well-being. The third section focuses on a household's
human resources and collects information on household members’
occupations, education and health. The fourth collects data on household
access and use of material resources such as land and natural resources,
livestock, asset ownership, housing utilities and sanitation. It
also gathers data on long-term shocks and fortunes, food shortages
and clothing, wealth, transfers and income support. Both the third
and fourth sections include questions on household's perceptions,
expectations and satisfaction on various resource dimensions. The
fifth section provides data on social resources such as kin and
fictive relations, connections to the local community, to the wider
world, to markets and government. The last section collects information
on cultural resources such as language, social identity and honorific
titles.
The RANQ data permits analysis a) within a site, b) among sites
of the same country by rural and urban areas, and c) a comparison
across the four countries; thus allowing the following general research
questions to be analysed:
What is the relationship between quality of life (subjective
and objective) and access to resources (human, material, social
and cultural), long-term shocks and fortunes, and access to government
services? Is there any relevant difference between urban and rural
sites?
To what extent is quality of life affected by household
participation in: a) labour market (as self-employed or wage-worker),
b) product market (buyer and seller), c) credit market, and d) input
markets?
To what extent are the findings of each research site
related to the poverty/inequality/quality of life indicators at
the national level? If a different pattern is identified, how can
such differences be explained?
These findings inform a more detailed quantitative
and qualitative data collection stage using sub-samples of individuals
and households obtained from the RANQ stage. This procedure will
offer a more comprehensive understanding of the 'outcomes' achieved
by individuals and households as well as the 'processes' and 'meanings'
that have contributed to these outcomes. This next phase will consequently
study the ways in which people conceive of their quality of life
or subjective well-being using a range of anthropological, sociological
and psychological approaches and methods.
Jackeline Velazco is a WeD Research Officer,
Economics of Development, based at the University of Bath.
WeD
News: Conferences, Workshops, Books and Reviews
Conferences/Workshops
Attended by WeD
Ian Gough presented the
new Bath book, Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Developing Countries
at the 4th International Conference on the Capability approach held
at the University of Pavia, Italy (July) with the theme of "Enhancing
Human Security". During the meeting, the Human Development
and Capability Association (HDCA) was launched by its president
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, and deputy president, the eminent philosopher
Martha Nussbaum with the aim of promoting high quality cross-disciplinary
research in the interconnected areas of human development and capability.
It thus has much in common with the WeD programme.
Ian also attended a workshop held in H.M. Treasury
(October) that brought academics, think-tankers and policy advisors
together to discuss the policy implications of including 'promoting
well-being' as a policy goal for the British government. It provided
a unique opportunity to discuss a number of different streams such
as the Happiness Report, soon to be submitted to the Cabinet
Office, the New Economics Foundation's Well-Being Manifesto,
the ESRC's Environment and Human Behaviour Programme, the
Listening to Children Study and the Sustainable Communities
Plan and much else. This was reflected in the conceptual range,
from factors affecting happiness at one extreme to studies of values
and of broader needs-based strategies at the other. Ian was struck
by two things. First, the way that the well-being agenda was bringing
together diverse voices critical of the current wisdom of putting
growth first. Second, that it was hosted by the Treasury and that
Gus O’Donnell, the Permanent Secretary, replied at the end.
He pulled out several recurring themes: the importance for well-being
of the earliest years of childhood (much praise for the Sure Start
programme) and of mental ill-health, the ongoing necessity to ‘tax
bads’, the ambivalence of choice as a policy goal, and the
connection with Gordon Brown’s initiatives on international
aid, debt and justice.
James Copestake visited the Peruvian
team in September and also gave a paper at the Universidad Nacional
Central del Peru, Huancayo. This explored the challenge of combining
different conceptual and methodological frameworks from Economics,
Psychology and Social Anthropology to explain the variation in the
relationship between economic development and improvements in life
satisfaction.
Allister McGregor (Director of WeD), Katie
Wright-Revolledo and Laura Camfield
attended a symposium on "Well-being and anthropological perspectives",
at the University of Manchester, Faculty of Social Anthropology
(September) where Allister gave a paper on "Cultures and the
construction of well-being".
James Copestake, Susan Johnson
and Katie Wright-Revolledo played an active
role in the final global meeting of the Imp-Act programme (September)
hosted by the Centre of Development Studies, Bath. This was followed
by a two-day workshop organised by MicroSave (a programme to promote
secure, high quality savings for poor people, funded by SUM/UNDP
Africa and DFID), in which Susan was involved. See www.Imp-Act.org
and www.MicroSave.org
Jorge Yamamoto (WeD-Peru)
presented a paper at Universidad Nacional del Centro in Huancayo
in June on qualitative and quantitative methods in Anthropology
and Psychology interdisciplinary work using Peru WeD methodology
as an illustrative case. In August, he gave a paper at EAFIT University
in Medellin, Columbia on organizational psychology relating to job
satisfaction. The Peru WeD findings provided an alternative approach
to job satisfaction relating to the analysis of the negative dimensions
of urban living and the positive dimensions of rural life. In September,
Jorge contributed Peru WeD data at a roundtable discussion on the
conflict between natives of the Amazon rainforest, timber companies,
government representatives and NGOs organised by the Instituto de
Investigacion de la Amazonia Peruana (Peruvian Amazonian Research
Institute) supported by the Universidad Privada de Iquitos, Peru.
Findings from the rural sites of Peru WeD provided valuable insights
into the roots of the conflicts between the various stakeholders
relating to differences in rural and urban life goals and values.
Teofilo Altamirano (WeD-Peru)
presented papers at the Latin American Economic System in Caracas,
Venezuela on Poverty Alleviation and Remittances in July and the
Inca Museum in Cuzco, Peru on new economic anthropology and the
analysis of rural households within the Peruvian Central Sierra
in August. Both presentations used examples for the WeD-Peru data
to demonstrate the relationships between internal and international
migration, the importance of remittances, and the needs and resources
necessary for day-to-day survival within rural households. Teofilo
was also involved in a national radio broadcast in August discussing
the research process and expected outcomes of the WeD project.
Pip Bevan together with
Alula Pankhurst and Derese
Getachew (WeD-Ethiopia) presented papers based on WIDE 2
(Wellbeing and Illbeing Dynamics 2) data at the Ethiopian Economics
Association Conference (June) on mothers and babies under stress,
HIV/AIDS, and government extension packages. Feleke
Tadele gave a paper titled "Urban Poverty Studies in
Ethiopia: A Methodological Review" (June) at a workshop on
"Chronic Urban Poverty in Ethiopia" held in Ethiopia organised
by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, University of Manchester,
in collaboration with the Ethiopian Economics Association. Alula
also presented a paper on conceptions and responses to HIV/AIDS
based on WIDE 2 data to the Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social
Workers and Anthropologists' annual meeting (July). WeD Ethiopia
also had their in-house WeD-Ethiopia workshop from September 15-17.
Pip Bevan (WeD Bath) attended
a meeting at LSE, London, to advise the Commission for Africa. It
was attended by a number of prominent academics from a variety of
disciplines as well as Sir Bob Geldof who isalso liasing with the
other Commissions for Africa. These are active in each of the G8
countries. See www.commissionforafrica.org
Buapun Promphakping (WeD-Thailand,
PSU) used WeD findings to present a paper titled "Poverty in
the Mekong Region" (July) at an international conference focused
on "The Changing Mekong: Pluralistic Society Under Siege"
organized by the Centre for Research on Plurality in the Mekong
Region (CERP), Khon Kaen University. WeD-Thailand (KKU) participated
in the Southern Thailand Agricultural Fair, Prince of Songkla University
in August.
Publications
Alula Pankhurst and Pip Bevan's
paper on "Hunger and poverty in Ethiopia: local perceptions
of famine and famine response" was published in Humanitarian
Exchange.
See www.odihpn.org
From WeD-Bangladesh, Iqbal Khan
and Zulfiqar Ali contributed to the Country
Report titled "Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh: tales of Ascent,
Descent, Marginality and Persistence", edited by Binayak Sen,
Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies, Bangladesh and David
Hulme, Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), University of Manchester.
Iqbal and Zulfiqar also participated in the CPRC dissemination workshop
study (May) on chronic poverty in Bangladesh
See www.chronicpoverty.org
Munshi Israil Hossain submitted an article titled
"Internal Labour Migration: Recuperating or intimidating the
livelihoods of those who stay away and who stay put in rural Bangladesh?"
in 'Social Science Review' , Dhaka University.
Key Dates
- The Development Studies Association (DSA)
Conference 2004 with the theme of "Bridging Research and
Policy" will be held on 6 November at Church House, Westminster,
London.
- Awae Masae and
Buncha Somboonsuke
(WeD-PSU) will attend an international conference on "Southeast
Asia: Development and Change in an era of Globalization"
in Khon Kaen University Thailand (29 November - 2 December) organised
by "The Research Center, Mekong Regional Tourism"
For a printed copy of the WeD Newsletter, to
obtain an on-line version or for inclusion in the WeD mailing list
please contact j.french@bath.ac.uk
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