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Research points to a robust negative relationship between average levels of subjective wellbeing and the distribution of subjective wellbeing. The fact that our wellbeing falls as wellbeing distributions widen suggests we care about inequalities in the lives of others. Central to this relationship is the role of place and human geography. The literature relating wellbeing to inequality in wellbeing is confined almost exclusively to inter-country comparisons. Virtually no attention has been paid to the relationship between wellbeing and inequality within countries - at the level of regions and below. The aim of this thesis is to test the generality of the inter-country evidence in the sub-national context. I present four hypotheses which I test on three separate cross-sectional surveys: the New Zealand Quality of Life Survey, The New Zealand General Social Survey and the survey of Māori wellbeing, Te Kupenga. I follow the literature in using the standard deviation of wellbeing as a measure of wellbeing inequality. In each case the negative relationship between individual wellbeing and wellbeing inequality is clearly identifiable. The wellbeing effect of living in a place one standard deviation higher than another is roughly equivalent to the difference between the wellbeing of someone who is fully employed and someone who is unemployed and looking for work. Clearly we are highly sensitive to disparities in the subjective wellbeing of those around us. I conduct several tests of the psychological drivers that lie behind the wellbeing response to local inequality in wellbeing. The first tests fairness perceptions, and finds sensitivity to wellbeing inequality to be higher among those who do not believe society is intrinsically fair. My test of altruism, while not as convincing empirically, suggests altruistic people may also be less affected by local wellbeing inequality. Both conclusions are consistent with the implied causation running from inequality to wellbeing. While an important addition to the wellbeing literature, the more important implication of my findings is political. As the New Zealand Local Government Act comes up for renewal, the evidence I have assembled strongly supports providing local government with a clear purpose and the necessary funding to address the underlying causes of local inequalities in wellbeing. On empirical grounds alone, reducing wellbeing inequality is likely to make us all much happier.

Since 2008 the NSW Government has been investigating the concept of 'wellbeing' as it relates to Aboriginal communities. Adopting a focus on wellbeing has meant delving into questions about what makes communities strong, and what factors are unique to creating strong Aboriginal communities, as well as considering the government's role (if any) in supporting Aboriginal community wellbeing. This paper seeks to convey the essence of the journey into wellbeing to date. It details the positions and assumptions that this work started with, and analyses why this has shifted over time. It examines what worked and was feasible, and what didn't. In particular, the paper overviews the creation of the Strengthening Aboriginal Community Wellbeing Framework (the policy context), and the development of a resource in the form of a user friendly software program for communities wishing to holistically assess their wellbeing – the 'toolkit' (the practical outcome of the work to date).

Images, by their nature can captivate and involve us in a way that is very fast. Usually, this takes much longer through conversation or in writing. As humanity finds itself on the threshold of a new global reality we are only glimpsing what will become an utterly different ecological, economic and political system in the near future. The ramifications of navigating and surviving this new post climate change environment on earth is only beginning to take tangible shape. The effects in terms of anxiety, and stress across huge swaths of humanity are however already manifesting. How photography can help address this dynamic and engage it is what we will be exploring in this presentation.

One of the strengths of a capability account of wellbeing is that it allows us to theoretically and empirically analyze at a quite practical level why certain things matter to people - such as their housing, their jobs, and their friendships. A capability account of wellbeing is also very well suited to understand the importance of place for wellbeing. Some dimensions of wellbeing are constitutively place-related, such as "feeling at home". Other dimensions of wellbeing are affected by what the places and locations in which we live mean to us. Taken together, we call them "place-based capabilities". Using a capability account of wellbeing allows us to use social scientific research to investigate the role of social, economic, demographic, political, ecological and technological processes on wellbeing. This paper illustrates this by investigating the role of recent technologies in enabling and expanding capabilities. On the one hand, technological change has dramatically expanded those capabilities. On the other hand, the use of those technologies has unintended consequences for other capabilities. The conceptual as well as empirical relationships between (place-based) capabilities and technology is therefore a complex one.

Pleasure may be the key to the successful working of the reproductive systems of humans. However, for all the enjoyment sexual relationships can provide, there are countervailing forces of guilt and disappointment at work on the individual psyche. Religious and social norms enforce limits on sexual expressiveness. These controls are defended as means to protect individuals and their partners from unhappiness due to infidelity. The contrasting balance of potential pleasure on the one hand and deeply felt self-controls on the other gives rise to many problems of sexual health. Couples with discordant expectations about sexual pleasures can find their relationships crumbling. Deeply planted understandings about inappropriate behavior can cause individuals to feel shame or fear when faced with choices about their sexuality and particularly their desires. People unable to achieve desired pleasures due to physical handicaps experience a loss of wellbeing that can be extremely distressing. Simultaneously society struggles to control the individual expression of harmful sexual behavior such as child molestation while protecting the rights of individuals to enjoy personal satisfaction. The recognition and promotion of sexual pleasure as an integral part of wellbeing is one of the most challenging elements on the sexual health agenda. Progress in this area will require extraordinary efforts by professional groups and political leaders to forge a forthright understanding of the meaning of pleasure in people's lives, and the priority of promoting healthy sexuality as a part of a global health agenda.

Pleasure may be the key to the successful working of the reproductive systems of humans. However, for all the enjoyment sexual relationships can provide, there are countervailing forces of guilt and disappointment at work on the individual psyche. Religious and social norms enforce limits on sexual expressiveness. These controls are defended as means to protect individuals and their partners from unhappiness due to infidelity. The contrasting balance of potential pleasure on the one hand and deeply felt self-controls on the other gives rise to many problems of sexual health. Couples with discordant expectations about sexual pleasures can find their relationships crumbling. Deeply planted understandings about inappropriate behavior can cause individuals to feel shame or fear when faced with choices about their sexuality and particularly their desires. People unable to achieve desired pleasures due to physical handicaps experience a loss of wellbeing that can be extremely distressing. Simultaneously society struggles to control the individual expression of harmful sexual behavior such as child molestation while protecting the rights of individuals to enjoy personal satisfaction. The recognition and promotion of sexual pleasure as an integral part of wellbeing is one of the most challenging elements on the sexual health agenda. Progress in this area will require extraordinary efforts by professional groups and political leaders to forge a forthright understanding of the meaning of pleasure in people's lives, and the priority of promoting healthy sexuality as a part of a global health agenda.

This paper interrogates two different perspectives on music and wellbeing. The first positions musical practice as being beneficial for emotional wellbeing and mental health, whilst the second positions musical work – building a career as a musician - as potentially detrimental. This apparent paradox matters because the clinical findings which establish a causal link between music and wellbeing are being disembedded from the contexts in which those links are manifesting by charities, social enterprises, advocacy organisations, educational institutions, governments and international bodies, and fuelling normative sociological prescriptions which encourage participation in music making. For those who go on to develop career ambitions, wellbeing outcomes are far less clear. Therefore, a more sophisticated appreciation of the uses of music and its impact on wellbeing is required. This paper provides a more balanced view of the connections between music, wellbeing and health and reflects on how this paradox might be resolved.

The article proves that it is possible to achieve wellbeing if there is an improvement of both the pension system and change in the citizen's attitude towards retirement income. The calculations (dynamics of the percentage of the working retirees, both in Russia and TPU, and the average salary) show that the increase in the ratio of the number of retirees and working people can't lead to the deficit of the budget of the Russian Pension Fund. It is proved that the key way to overcome the deficit is to remove payments, which are not or little connected with earned income (disability and loss of a breadwinner pension, long service pension, and early retirement pension) and save only one function – compensation for loss of earnings. Refusal of the territorial rent (pension's peg to the minimum of subsistence of a retiree in the region) will also balance the financial state of the Pension Fund. It is mathematically proved that the wellbeing of retirees can be reached if they participate in the compulsory and voluntary pension insurance programs, which are not necessary governmental.

This paper discusses a role of trust in post-industrial society. I argue that a social theory of trust advanced and methodologically inconsistently. Trust is a key characteristic of developed human society, which is showing at two levels: individual and social (trust to public institutes and Government as a whole). In particular, trust is defined a progress. Success of self-actualization ones society depends on widespread element of culture – trust. I content the idea that trust is a product of traditional society based on principle of absolute faith that is confidence in ones and his actions. Trust is irrational, it correspond to notion "sense of trust". Contemporary sociology besides gives another one explanation of trust: trust is a product of rational activity, based on reflection. The modern sociological questioning shows that since early 1990s until 2000s, there is a strong tendency for rising of distrust. I also argue that the post-industrial society is in need of trust which is providing base for social communication.

This paper interrogates two different perspectives on music and wellbeing. The first positions musical practice as being beneficial for emotional wellbeing and mental health, whilst the second positions musical work – building a career as a musician - as potentially detrimental. This apparent paradox matters because the clinical findings which establish a causal link between music and wellbeing are being disembedded from the contexts in which those links are manifesting by charities, social enterprises, advocacy organisations, educational institutions, governments and international bodies, and fuelling normative sociological prescriptions which encourage participation in music making. For those who go on to develop career ambitions, wellbeing outcomes are far less clear. Therefore, a more sophisticated appreciation of the uses of music and its impact on wellbeing is required. This paper provides a more balanced view of the connections between music, wellbeing and health and reflects on how this paradox might be resolved.

"Notions such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice are integral to evaluating social progress and developing policies. One increasingly influential way to think about these concepts is the capability approach, a theoretical framework which was pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s. In this book Ingrid Robeyns orientates readers new to the capability approach through offering an explanation of this framework. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice also endeavors to resolve historical disputes in the literature and thus will be equally engaging to those familiar with the field. The author offers a novel and illuminating account of how the capability approach can be understood in a variety of academic disciplines and fields of application. Special attention is paid to clarifying misunderstandings that have been caused by different disciplinary assumptions and the interpretive consequences they have for our consideration of the capability approach. Robeyns argues that respecting the distinction between the general capability approach, and more specific capability theories or applications, helps to clear up confusion and misinterpretation. In addition, the author presents detailed analyses of well-known objections to the capability approach, and also discusses how it relates to other schools of analysis such as theories of justice, human rights, basic needs, and the human development approach. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice offers an original and comprehensive account of the field. The book will appeal to scholars of the capability approach as well as new readers looking for an interdisciplinary introduction."

This paper introduces the theme of the special issue on wellbeing, independence and mobility. We begin with outlining the complexity of each of these notions and then turn towards their interdependence. It is argued that the links between wellbeing, independence and mobility are manifold and contextual in older people's everyday lives: they differ between places, between individuals and across phases in each individual's unique lifecourse. The inherent complexity of those links can be examined fruitfully and understood better if a geographical or environmental analytical perspective is adopted. We also suggest that the interdependence of wellbeing, independence and mobility in later life needs to be understood in the context of neo-liberal governmentality and the creation of particular ways of being and acting for older people. The piece concludes with a brief description of the papers brought together in the special issue.

Wellbeing and social capital are central concepts in the policy discourse of the new government. At the same time, inspired in part by the Capabilities Approach of Sen and Nussbaum, Treasury has been developing its living standards framework. This discussion paper makes a first attempt at exploring these concepts from the perspective of the justice system. The aim is to support an ongoing conversation within the justice system, and between the justice system and wider stakeholders.

Over recent years, the Treasury has increasingly focussed on using a living standards framework to assess the impact of government policies on the wellbeing of New Zealanders. The purpose of this report is to evaluate a range of different frameworks for measuring current wellbeing that exist both internationally and domestically as part of the further development of the Treasury Living Standards Framework.

With teacher burnout on the rise in the US, this study explores the resources that teachers report to need to buffer the demands of their job and to increase their experience of wellbeing instead of stress and burnout. The data consists of tweets that teachers posted as a part of the #ArmMeWith Twitter campaign to voice the resource that they need in their job. We used thematic analysis to categorize teacher resource needs from 2,639 tweets. Using the Job Demands-Resources theory (JD-R) of employee wellbeing, we sorted codes into themes (physical, psychological, social, organizational), and investigated resource needs across regions of the United States. In this sample, teachers reported needs in all JD-R resource categories, and we identified an additional theme of institutional resource needs to represent the need for political and social change that teachers reported. In our frequency analysis, the need for physical and organizational resources were the most prevalent, and we found no regional differences. This research contributes to the literature on teacher wellbeing by highlighting resources that have the potential to bolster teacher wellbeing. The research also contributes to the JD-R theory by suggesting that institutional factors may contribute to employee wellbeing.