Wellbeing, Resilience and Sustainability

Wellbeing, resilience and sustainability are three of the most popular ideas in current usage and are said to represent a much-needed paradigm shift in political and policy thinking. This book is unique in bringing the three concepts together as representing a new trinity of governance. Here we introduce some of the commonalities between the ideas, particularly their concern with distinctive human capacities that shape who we are and that imply a particular relationship to our wider social and natural environments. The book explains what is distinctive about the three ideas and why they are currently popular. In particular, we are concerned with how these ideas contribute to governance ‘after the crisis’, and how questions of social, political and economic uncertainty influence the ways in which these main arguments are developed. The book will appeal to those studying these ideas, how they apply to politics, political economy and governance, and to the wider public and policy-makers in these fields.

Author Biography

Jonathan Joseph is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Bristol, UK. He was previously a professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK. Previous books include Varieties of Resilience: Studies in Governmentality and The Social in the Global: Social Theory, Governmentality and Global Politics. His current work looks at resilience, global governance and International Relations theory
J. Allister McGregor is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK.  He was Director of the UK ESRC Research Group on Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) and was co-author/editor of Wellbeing in Developing Countries: From Theory to Research. He has written extensively on a social conception of wellbeing for academic and policy audiences.