Book Review
Rethinking Wellbeing: grasping the social context
Publisher: Australian Public Intellectuals Network,
Edited by Professor Lenore Manderson, Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, University of Melbourne , http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_2882.html
According to Professor Lenore Manderson, Wellbeing is a slippery term and one frequently used without thinking about the social, economic and cultural factors that influence a state of health and happiness.
Rethinking Wellbeing presents seven authors who challenge conventional assumptions about measuring wellbeing and explore new ways of thinking about it in essays that cover economics, relationships, social capital and gender.
Professor Manderson sees the intention of this book as being able to provide a critical account of various approaches to wellbeing, such as those used to calibrate the global burden of disease and other measures that seek to aggregate and minimise local differences.
The flaws of many widely used instruments for measuring wellbeing such as the QALY (Quality-Adjusted Life Years) and the DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years) are exposed by some contributors, who argue the need to reform these frequently used tools to assess physical and mental health and quality of life.
“We cannot treat people as if they are all the same without listening to the noise of age, ethnicity, gender, class and the world and local political contexts in which they live. It is as important now as it was 30 years ago to look at the factors that affect life choices, influencing social capital, agency and wellbeing”, says Professor Manderson.
The authors come from a number of disciplines: anthropology, economics, social policy, sociology and philosophy. Papers in Rethinking Wellbeing have resulted from a research project of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and funded by the Australian Research Council.
Rethinking Wellbeing ($34.95) is published by the Australian Public Intellectual Network in association with Curtin University of Technology. http://www.api-network.com
Monika Bhatia
Project Manager and Editor, 
3 November 2006
