The Ontology of Well-Being in Social Policy and Welfare Practice

ISBN-13: 9783031181443 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023

Steven R. Smith

Opis

This book provides important philosophical insights concerning the kind of creatures we are such that we can experience something we understand as well-being, with these insights then being applied to various areas of social policy and welfare practice. The author defends what he calls The Ontology of Well-Being Thesis (TOWT), addressing ontological questions about the human condition, and how these questions are fundamental to issues concerning what we might know about human well-being and how we should promote it. Yet, surprisingly, these ontological questions are often side-lined in academic, political, and policy and practice based debates about well-being. 

Addressing these questions, head-on, six features of the human condition are identified via TOWT: human embodiment, finiteness, sociability, cognition, evaluation, and agency. The main argument of the thesis is that these features reveal the conflicting character of human experiences, which can, in turn, have a profound bearing on our experience of well-being. Notably, it is our conflicting experiences of time, emotion, and self-consciousness, which can potentially help us experience well-being in complex and multi-dimensional ways. The author then applies these insights to various social policies and welfare practices, concerning, for example, pensions, disability, bereavement counselling, social prescribing within health settings, the promotion of mental health, and co-production practices. 

This book is of importance to philosophers, social policy analysts, and welfare practitioners and is also relevant to the fields of psychology, sociology, politics, and the health sciences. 

Spis treści

Chapter 1 – Introduction.- Chapter 2 – Well-Being and the Human Condition.- Chapter 3 – Well-Being, Pain, and Parfit: Time, Self-Interest and Pensions Policy.- Chapter 4 – Well-Being, Agency, and Finiteness: Time, Self-Acceptance and Disability Policy.- Chapter 5 – Well-Being, Melancholy, and Happiness: Bitter-Sweet Emotions, Sober Self-Reflection, Loss and Bereavement.- Chapter 6 – Well-Being, Radical Politics and False-Consciousness: Self-Knowledge, Disability, and ‘Subjective’ versus ‘Objective’ Perspectives in Co-Productive Practices.- Chapter 7 – Well-Being, Mental Illness, Co-Production and Social Prescription: Social Constructionism, Relational Integrity, and Agency.- Chapter 8 - Meaning and Purpose-Based Approaches to Pluralistic Understandings of Well-Being.- Chapter 9 – Conclusion: The Human Condition, Conflicting Experiences of Time, Emotion, Self-Consciousness, and Value Incommensurability.

O autorze

For over thirty years, Steven R. Smith has published widely in a variety of internationally renowned outlets, which have included book-length research monographs, edited collections, journal articles, book chapters, and commissioned reports. He has also delivered papers and made keynote speeches to numerous conferences both nationally and internationally. Moreover, much of his research and other related outputs explores government policy and professional practices in Wales, as well as elsewhere.

His overall research interest is applying abstract philosophical principles and arguments concerning social values, to the formulation and implementation of social policies and professional practices. More specifically, this research has related, amongst other things, to:

* The politics and philosophy of disability and the disability rights movement 

* The political philosophies and ideologies of modern welfare states

* The politics and philosophy of multiculturalism

* Liberal egalitarianism and the politics of ‘social justice’ and ‘fairness’

* The politics and philosophy of promoting the values of: Well-being, Equality, Diversity, Social Inclusion, Reciprocity, Freedom and Citizenship. 

Following from the above, his present research interests include examining: different conceptions of self-interest and personal identity as related to promoting well-being across diverse groups; the role of co-production in formulating and implementing social policy in health and social care settings; theory-building concerning ‘social prescribing’ in Wales and GP practices and the role of co-production; and how well-being as an overarching social value might be coherently understood and applied to government’s aims and objectives and professional practices.