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- Convenors:
-
Sarah White
(University of Bath)
Sally Brooks (University of York)
Shreya Jha
Elise Klein (ANU)
China Mills (University of Sheffield)
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- Location:
- E59 (Richmond building)
- Start time:
- 7 September, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel critically interrogates understandings of the person advanced within sustainability discourse and practice. How is humanity seen as related to the broader world of living things? What implications have changing ecosystems for understandings of human being and action?
Long Abstract:
This panel invites papers that critically interrogate the understandings of the person advanced within sustainability discourse and practice. How is humanity seen as connected to, distinct from, or a part of, the broader world of living things? What assumptions about human action are implied in programmes aiming at behaviour change? What implications have changing ecosystems for understandings of human being and action? How can interactions between the human and natural worlds best be traced? Does development inevitably rupture the organic interdependence of a sacred ecology in human-nature relations? What ontology underlies the representation of human-nature interactions in terms of 'eco-system services'? How does social justice, and social difference by race, ethnicity, class, age or gender figure in all of this? Papers which reflect on practical examples of programmes, particular geographical or historical contexts or experiences of social action are particularly welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Mental health is increasingly being made to 'count' globally, evident in its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper explores the quantification of mental health and its interplay with development, focusing on the kinds of people that the numbers describe and create.
Paper long abstract:
Mental health is currently in a process of transformation from being described as an 'invisible problem' in international development to being framed as one of the most pressing development issues of our time. The concern that mental health is both absent within international development agendas and an obstacle to the achievement of development goals lies at the heart of the recent inclusion of mental health in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Three intersecting axes have been key to the inclusion of mental health in the SDGs: the conceptualization and calculation of the contribution of mental disorder to global burden of disease; the quantification of mental disorder as an economic burden; and the relationship between mental distress and poverty. This paper focuses on the data used to make mental health count (e.g. calculation of prevalence rates and burden) to explore the ways that techniques of quantifying mental health constitute that which they measure, and to trace the kinds of people that the numbers describe and make possible. The inclusion of mental health within development marks an important historic moment to foster a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between mental health and development and of how these two fields at times work together in producing reductionist, economistic, individualized and psychologized responses to poverty.
Paper short abstract:
Life history interviews show local understandings of wellbeing are fundamentally relational, with both relationality and wellbeing framed in moral terms. Relationships between birth and foster parents critically mitigate risks of fostering and are profoundly mediated by social and economic status.
Paper long abstract:
In west and southern Africa, the search for a better life frequently involves children moving between households. This paper investigates what this practice reveals of relationality and wellbeing. It is based on the reflections of three sets of adults who also overlap: those who lived in others' houses as a child; parents who have given children to be looked after by others; people who have taken on the care of others' children, especially after the death of their parents. The interviews show local understandings of wellbeing are fundamentally relational, and that both relationality and wellbeing are framed in moral terms. While fostering reflects wellbeing aspirations, its transactional elements also engender risks to wellbeing, with a high degree of ambivalence in relationships, combining hope and fear, trust and distrust, love and instrumentality, help and abuse. Relationships between birth and foster parents are critical to mitigating these risks, and are profoundly mediated by social and economic status. Broader implications for scholarship on relationality and wellbeing are discussed.
Paper short abstract:
Data on women's subjective wellbeing in fishing communities in South Asia demonstrate the prevalence of alcoholism and domestic violence as common barriers to wellbeing. These are significant problems in fishing societies worldwide, which are set to worsen with depleting access to marine resources.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents empirical research into women's subjective wellbeing from two fishing communities in India and Sri Lanka. Findings demonstrate the particular importance of good marital relations in women's self-assessments of wellbeing, and the prevalence of alcoholism and domestic violence in fishing households, which act as frequent barriers to wellbeing. Whilst high rates of domestic violence in South Asia are widely acknowledged in the literature, we develop a rationale as to why we might reasonably expect alcoholism and domestic violence to be significant problems in fishing-dependent societies both within South Asia, and beyond, due to the nature of work and stresses placed on marital relations, stress which may be growing in light of declining marine resources and their changing governance. Encouraged by recent calls for more gendered approaches to environmental management, we further argue that some aspects of marine resource conservation may inadvertently place already vulnerable women into greater harm by restricting access to marine resources in ways that undermine women's property rights and income-earning capabilities - factors which can significantly enhance women's position in the household and reduce the occurrence of domestic violence. We offer a vignette to illustrate the impacts of marine conservation on women in the India study to support our argument, and suggest that conservation initiatives must place women's wellbeing, in particular the problems of alcoholism and domestic violence, more centrally in their decision-making.