The Pursuit of Human Well-Being

The Pursuit of Human Well-Being PDF Author: Richard J. Estes
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319391011
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 829

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Book Description
This handbook informs the reader about how much progress we, the human race, have made in enhancing the quality of life on this planet. Many skeptics focus on how the quality of life has deteriorated over the course of human history, particularly given World War II and its aftermath. This handbook provides a positive perspective on the history of well-being. Quality of life, as documented by scientists worldwide, has significantly improved. Nevertheless, one sees more improvements in well-being in some regions of the world than in others. Why? This handbook documents the progress of well-being in the various world regions as well as the differences in those regions. The broad questions that the handbook addresses include: What does well-being mean? How do different philosophical and religious traditions interpret the concept of well-being within their own context? Has well-being remained the same over different historical epochs and for different regions and subregions of the world? In which areas of human development have we been most successful in advancing individual and collective well-being? In which sectors has the attainment of well-being proven most difficult? How does well-being differ within and between different populations groups that, for a variety of socially created reasons, have been the most disadvantaged (e.g., children, the aged, women, the poor, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities)?

The Pursuit of Human Well-Being

The Pursuit of Human Well-Being PDF Author: Richard J. Estes
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319391011
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 829

Get Book Here

Book Description
This handbook informs the reader about how much progress we, the human race, have made in enhancing the quality of life on this planet. Many skeptics focus on how the quality of life has deteriorated over the course of human history, particularly given World War II and its aftermath. This handbook provides a positive perspective on the history of well-being. Quality of life, as documented by scientists worldwide, has significantly improved. Nevertheless, one sees more improvements in well-being in some regions of the world than in others. Why? This handbook documents the progress of well-being in the various world regions as well as the differences in those regions. The broad questions that the handbook addresses include: What does well-being mean? How do different philosophical and religious traditions interpret the concept of well-being within their own context? Has well-being remained the same over different historical epochs and for different regions and subregions of the world? In which areas of human development have we been most successful in advancing individual and collective well-being? In which sectors has the attainment of well-being proven most difficult? How does well-being differ within and between different populations groups that, for a variety of socially created reasons, have been the most disadvantaged (e.g., children, the aged, women, the poor, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities)?

The Human Pursuit of Well-Being

The Human Pursuit of Well-Being PDF Author: Ingrid Brdar
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400713754
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book brings together the latest research on positive psychology from an international cast of researchers and particularly from the growing body of European researchers. The chapters describe research and practice from diverse fields of positive psychology, covering topics such as happiness and well-being, motivation and goals, personality, academic performance and coping, measurement and interventions. The book emphasizes a cultural approach to the human pursuit of well-being. It is unique in that it presents research from a range of cultures, such as Russia, Croatia, and Egypt, in addition to ten different Western cultures. This approach helps broaden our understanding of those aspects of human experience that make life worth living in diverse cultural conditions. The book includes well-known and new authors from the field and contains selected papers that were presented at the 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology held in 2008 in Croatia.

The Pursuit of Unhappiness

The Pursuit of Unhappiness PDF Author: Daniel M. Haybron
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191562912
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The pursuit of happiness is a defining theme of the modern era. But what if people aren't very good at it? This and related questions are explored in this book, the first comprehensive philosophical treatment of happiness in the contemporary psychological sense. In these pages, Dan Haybron argues that people are probably less effective at judging, and promoting, their own welfare than common belief has it. For the psychological dimensions of well-being, particularly our emotional lives, are far richer and more complex than we tend to realize. Knowing one's own interests is no trivial matter. As well, we tend to make a variety of systematic errors in the pursuit of happiness. We may need, then, to rethink traditional assumptions about human nature, the good life, and the good society. Thoroughly engaged with both philosophical and scientific work on happiness and well-being, this book will be a definitive resource for philosophers, social scientists, policy makers, and other students of human well-being.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness PDF Author: Carol L. Graham
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 081572439X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
In The Pursuit of Happiness, renowned economist Carol Graham explores what we know about the determinants of happiness and clearly presents both the promise and the potential pitfalls of injecting the "economics of happiness" into public policymaking. While the book spotlights the innovative contributions of happiness research to the dismal science, it also raises a cautionary note about the issues that still need to be addressed before policymakers can make best use of them.

The Well of Being

The Well of Being PDF Author: Jean-Pierre Weill
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250092701
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
An enchanting, visually arresting, “extraordinary children’s book for adults...that peers into the depths of the human experience and the meaning of our existence.” (Brainpickings.org).

The Pursuit of Development

The Pursuit of Development PDF Author: Ian Goldin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198778031
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In this book Ian Goldin shows how the understanding of how nations escape poverty and achieve economic and social progress has changed as the pendulum has swung from arguments for state-led development to a preoccupation with market forces.

Pursuits of Happiness

Pursuits of Happiness PDF Author: Gordon Mathews
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845454487
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Anthropology has long shied away from examining how human beings may lead happy and fulfilling lives. This book, however, shows that the ethnographic examination of well-being--defined as "the optimal state for an individual, a community, and a society"--and the comparison of well-being within and across societies is a new and important area for anthropological inquiry. Distinctly different in different places, but also reflecting our common humanity, well-being is intimately linked to the idea of happiness and its pursuits. Noted anthropological researchers have come together in this volume to examine well-being in a range of diverse ways and to investigate it in a range of settings: from the Peruvian Amazon, the Australian outback, and the Canadian north, to India, China, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Gordon Mathews is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has written What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds (1996) and Global Culture /Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket (2000), and co-written Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation (2007); he has co-edited Consuming Hong Kong (2001) and Japan's Changing Generations (2004). Carolina Izquierdo is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research has centered on health and well-being among the Matsigenka in the Peruvian Amazon, the Mapuche in Chile, and middle-class families in the United States.

Well-Being: Expanding the Definition of Progress

Well-Being: Expanding the Definition of Progress PDF Author: Alonzo L. Plough
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190080493
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Well-Being: Expanding the Definition of ^Progress explores how cities and countries are redefining progress to include equitable well-being, as well as economic strength, reflected in policies, budgets, and narratives about what matters. How might this approach further spread in the United States and around the world? Book jacket.

Community Psychology

Community Psychology PDF Author: Geoffrey Nelson
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780333922828
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
This is the first up-to-date text written specifically for the international market on psychology in the community. Community Psychology covers the history and foundations of the field, key concepts and values, community research, community action, and the application of psychology in various settings, integrating the values/politics and scientific/research aspects of community work. Written by experienced authors in the field, this text will be internationally invaluable.

Subjective Well-Being

Subjective Well-Being PDF Author: Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309294479
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Subjective well-being refers to how people experience and evaluate their lives and specific domains and activities in their lives. This information has already proven valuable to researchers, who have produced insights about the emotional states and experiences of people belonging to different groups, engaged in different activities, at different points in the life course, and involved in different family and community structures. Research has also revealed relationships between people's self-reported, subjectively assessed states and their behavior and decisions. Research on subjective well-being has been ongoing for decades, providing new information about the human condition. During the past decade, interest in the topic among policy makers, national statistical offices, academic researchers, the media, and the public has increased markedly because of its potential for shedding light on the economic, social, and health conditions of populations and for informing policy decisions across these domains. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience explores the use of this measure in population surveys. This report reviews the current state of research and evaluates methods for the measurement. In this report, a range of potential experienced well-being data applications are cited, from cost-benefit studies of health care delivery to commuting and transportation planning, environmental valuation, and outdoor recreation resource monitoring, and even to assessment of end-of-life treatment options. Subjective Well-Being finds that, whether used to assess the consequence of people's situations and policies that might affect them or to explore determinants of outcomes, contextual and covariate data are needed alongside the subjective well-being measures. This report offers guidance about adopting subjective well-being measures in official government surveys to inform social and economic policies and considers whether research has advanced to a point which warrants the federal government collecting data that allow aspects of the population's subjective well-being to be tracked and associated with changing conditions.