Jeremy Bentham provided a comprehensive list of the sources of pleasure and pain, rather in the manner of modern writers on well-being such as Nussbaum. He explicitly used the term well-being and in the course of extensive discussions he covered many of the issues of concern to modern researchers. In particular he stressed the social and other-regarding aspects of well-being and emphasised the importance of “ill-being”. Bentham insisted that the measurement of well-being should be firmly based on the concerns and subjective valuations of those directly concerned. Those who wished to superimpose other judgements were dismissed as “ipsedixitists”. The paper considers what, if anything, the modern researcher can learn from Bentham.

*Teofilo Altamirano, James Copestake, Adolfo Figueroa and Katie Wright

Summary (full paper available in .pdf format)
This paper presents an overview of published literature on poverty and related concepts in Peru. Its purpose is to contribute to a universal and interdisciplinary understanding of poverty, while at the same time giving due weight to discipline-specific and local understandings. Following an introduction exploring these issues, the next three sections review the differing understandings of poverty offered by economics, anthropology and sociology. The scope of empirical economic analysis has broadened in its analysis of the multiple dimensions of poverty, but remains weak in explaining reasons for the persistence of poverty. The anthropological perspective offers a rich account of local understandings of poverty and has an important role to play in strengthening the voice of poor people themselves in research and policy processes. Sociological perspectives have highlighted the tension between a deterministic explanation of the persistence of poverty and research into how poverty can be influenced by individual and collective action.

The last section proposes that these three perspectives can be incorporated into a single framework centred on the concepts of inclusion and exclusion. Peru is conceived of as a sigma society characterised by a profound initial inequality in social assets. The self-interested actions of the main domestic actors prevent block significant reforms, and the capacity of external development agencies to break the impasse can be counterproductive due to the sensitivity of the cultural and political issues involved. In contrast to the ‘tragic optimism’ of Sender, this theory of social exclusion can be summed up as ‘constructive pessimism’.

Participants in the exploratory research in Thailand identified 26 aspects to their QoL, the most important of which were family relations, health, money, occupation, and housing. Family Relationships was the most important area for all groups and comprised following social norms, engaging in reciprocal relationships of caring and support, and meeting your family’s needs. People were also concerned about their Health, largely due to the inconvenience and cost of illness, and aware of the psychological impact of other areas of their lives (for example, choice of Occupation). Money was linked explicitly to being able to experience the good life, and lack of it was a problem for all age groups. However, although everyone wanted to own their own House, only people in peri-urban areas were concerned about its appearance and size.

This information on the goals, resources, and values of people living in North-eastern and Southern Thailand, combined with findings from Peru, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, will be used to develop a measure to assess the QoL of people living in developing countries.

Subjective quality of life was not simply equated with happiness, but related to the aspects of life people regarded as important. For example, observing religion was part of both living well and being a model person, but not a source of happy memories, which suggests that treating happiness as the ‘universal goal’ is not sufficient to capture people’s motivations. People’s values and aspirations were ascertained via three questions: ‘When were you happiest?’ ‘What are the characteristics of a woman or man who lives well?’ ‘Who are the people you most admire/ respect or the best/ model persons of this community?’ The answers revealed many commonalities across sites and countries; for example, having good relationships with immediate and natal family was universally important (‘relatedness’). It also revealed cultural differences; for example, ‘not being materialistic’ was only characteristic of a ‘model’ person in Northeast Thailand, possibly because of its link to the Buddhist ideal of the ‘world renouncer’.

Framing the enquiry in terms of wellbeing rather than poverty enables researchers to explore what poor people have and are able to do, rather than focusing on their deficits, which should produce more credible and respectful representations of people’s lives to inform development policy and practice. The desired outcome is development that creates the conditions for people to experience wellbeing, rather than undermining their existing strategies.

It begins from a modification of Esping-Andersen’s ‘welfare state regime’ framework undertaken by Gough, Wood, Bevan and others (2004), which sets out a broader welfare regime framework sensitised to developing countries. This paper extends that approach to embrace the WeD wellbeing perspective. First, this extends the analysis from a focus on welfare outcomes to wellbeing outcomes and processes. Second, it makes the case for exploring how resources are negotiated through relationships across the institutional landscape of the state, market, community and household. Third, it argues for greater emphasis on the role of culture in explaining wellbeing outcomes. Lastly, it proposes analysing separately the processes of stratification and mobilisation which reproduce or undermine these welfare regimes. Rather, these are separate processes affecting wellbeing which shed additional insights into the foundational notion of autonomy which lies at the heart of much thinking about wellbeing. Taken together this new framework, it is anticipated, can shed light on the way macro-level structures are mediated by local level agents and mediators.

This paper argues that strengthening farmer agency, and thus their presence as actors in international food chains, can be partially achieved if farmers are involved in devising the rules for organic and social certification. I set out nine principles that I have developed which seem important when trying to capture and measure ‘quality of life’ for the purposes of social certification. My theoretical and empirical work, detailed here, is set within a methodological discussion on how to best ensure that research is ‘respondent-led’. Respondent-led research is, I argue, critical for ensuring that an understanding of the components of ‘quality of life’, and their operationalisation as standards and indicators, is truly meaningful to the target group.