The Rise of an Ideal
Tracing Changing Discourses of Wellbeing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3312401 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eeva Sointu (0000-0001-7495-2096, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 255-274 |
| Publication date | 2005-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-954x.2005.00513.x |
| OpenAlex | W1559459824 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 113 |
| References cited | 21 |
Wellbeing is a quality in demand in today's society. Wellbeing is virtue that is much desired, much promoted, and much debated. Yet, as an ideal, wellbeing is not a concept set in stone. Rather, conceptualisations and experiences of wellbeing are produced in and through wider social perceptions and practices. This article outlines and analyses contemporary conceptualisations of wellbeing and suggests that ideas of wellbeing capture and reproduce important social norms. Indeed, the increasing popularity of the ideal of wellbeing appears to reflect shifts in perceptions and experiences of individual agency and responsibility. In particular, dominant discourses of wellbeing relate to changes in subjectivity; they manifest a move from subjects as citizens to subjects as consumers. In a consumer society, wellbeing emerges as a normative obligation chosen and sought after by individual agents. This article is informed by social theories of subjectivity and critical analyses of selected newspaper reports from 1985 to 2003
Agency (philosophy) · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics) · Normative · Obligation · Political science · Popularity · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice
Happiness and the Art of Life
This Must Surely be the Way to Happiness
Protagonismos alternativos em saúde – contexto teórico de uma pesquisa compreensiva
Alternative health protagonisms – the theoretical context of a comprehensive research program
Vital scientific puzzle or lived uncertainty? Professional and lived approaches to the uncertainties of ageing with HIV
An Anthropology of Welfare
Utmaningen från Beckford
Well-being and consumer culture
Wellbeing, health and geography
Beyond Components of Wellbeing
Being Well Together
The regional heterogeneity of wellbeing ‘expenditure’ preferences
Retired High-Flyers
Developing an Exploratory Framework Linking Australian Aboriginal Peoples’ Connection to Country and Concepts of Wellbeing
What is wrong with children's well-being in the UK? Questions of meaning and measurement
The Pursuit of Happiness
Interrogating ‘effectiveness’ in climate change adaptation
Governing teacher well-being in international policy discourse
“What does well-being mean to me?” Conceptualisations of well-being in Irish primary schooling
Embedding wellbeing in career development practice
Contingent Relations
The wellbeing pandemic
Governing Through Potential? Interrogating the Promises of Mental Health Materials for Young People
The Contested Terrain of Sport and Well-Being
Mapping Global Research on Child Well-Being in School Contexts
Perspectives on Indigenous well‐being and climate change adaptation
Well-being and Mobility
Connecting relational wellbeing and participatory action research
Struggle over employees psychological well-being. The politization and depolitization of the debate on employee mental health in the Finnish insurance sector
Protecting and supporting children and women affected by gender-based violence
Health, Exercise, and Well-Being
Money, commodification and complementary health care
The right to development as a human right to an enabling environment for collective well-being
The Social Practices of Food Bank Volunteer Work
A clash of modernities
Volunteer tourism in the context of development thinking
What does wellbeing do ? An approach to defamiliarize keywords in youth studies
Embodying debt
Not well enough
Assembling wellbeing
Muslim ‘hate preachers’ in British tabloids
What the papers say
Narrating well-being in the context of precarious prosperity
Ordering, Enrolling, and Dismissing
Medical Decision Making in Relative Risk Scenarios
Who Gets to ‘Work Hard, Play Hard’? Gendering the Work–Life Balance Rhetoric in Canadian Tech Companies
Continuity, commitment and context
Children's Well-being in Developing Countries
The unbearable surplus of being human’
Building back better? Resilience as wellbeing for rural migrant households in Bihar, India
Eating at Work
Promoting young people’s spiritual well‐being through informal education
Wellbeing and Aging in The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine
Which 'being' in wellbeing? Ontology, wellness and the geographies of happiness
Sustainability and the Spiritual Work Ethic
Not 'going there
Understanding (disrupted) participation in community sports clubs
Healthy living guidelines and the disconnect with everyday life
Well-being’ as a focus for public health? A critique and defence
Wellbeing Research in Developing Countries
Conceptualizing student wellbeing in secondary education
Why must I wait?' The performance of legitimacy in a hospital emergency department
The search for wellbeing in alternative and complementary health practices
Wellbeing and empowerment
Understanding how men experience, express and cope with mental distress
Mindfulness and the 'psychological imagination
Discourses of wellbeing and environmental impact of trail runners in protected areas in New Zealand and the United Kingdom
One Welfare
Wellbeing and aging in person-home-assemblages
‘The Little Things’
Local Expressions of Subjective Well-being
Repositioned professionals and heterodox
“I…don’t want to see you flashing your bits around”
Happiness Research
On sustainability and materiality. Homo faber, a new approach
Research agenda on well-being and language education
Factors influencing participation in outdoor physical activity promotion schemes
Discrimination and Well-Being
Wellbeing, independence and mobility
Time to live well
How teacher wellbeing can be cruel
Considerations for Incorporating “Well-Being” in Public Policy for Workers and Workplaces
Geographies of awkward encounters
Damned if You Do and Damned if You Don't
Heritage sites, value and wellbeing
You have to do something
Intuition, Subjectivity, and Le Bricoleur
The normativist-naturalist puzzle
Stable and destabilised states of subjective well-being
Mind and Body Management Strategies for Chronic Pain and Rheumatoid Arthritis
Blaming the Flowers for Wilting
Living Well? Strategies Used by Women Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer
The Shaping of Midlife Women's Views of Health and Health Behaviors
Geographies of wellbeing
The 'taking place' of health and wellbeing
The toxic effects of subjective wellbeing and potential tonics
Wellbeing
Towards an interdisciplinary approach to wellbeing
Atmospheres, landscapes and nature
Analysing wellbeing
A sociology of contemporary cultural change
Why do patients turn to complementary medicine? An empirical study
The Politics of Recognition
The Politics of Recognition
How to Do Media and Cultural Studies
Development as Freedom
Powers of Freedom
The Ethics of Authenticity
Intimations of Postmodernity
Gentle caring experience’
Rethinking the architecture
Upheavals of Thought
Researching Society and Culture
Using Foucault's Methods
Health care and consumer choice
Cultures of Cosmopolitanism
The labour of identity
| Unique citing works | 113 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5,65 |
| Citation span | 2006 - 2026 (21) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 106 |