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Health Promotion International Advance Access originally published online on August 17, 2007
Health Promotion International 2007 22(3):261-268; doi:10.1093/heapro/dam022
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

DEBATE

Well-being and consumer culture: a different kind of public health problem?

Sandra Carlisle* and Phil Hanlon

Public Health and Health Policy, Glasgow University, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK

* Corresponding author. E-mail: s.carlisle{at}clinmed.gla.ac.uk


  Abstract

The concept of well-being is now of interest to many disciplines; as a consequence, it presents an increasingly complex and contested territory. We suggest that much current thinking about well-being can be summarized in terms of four main discourses: scientific, popular, critical and environmental. Exponents of the scientific discourse argue that subjective well-being is now static or declining in developed countries: a paradox for economists, as incomes have grown considerably. Psychological observations on the loss of subjective well-being have also entered popular awareness, in simplified form, and conceptions of well-being as happiness are now influencing contemporary political debate and policy-making. These views have not escaped criticism. Philosophers understand well-being as part of a flourishing human life, not just happiness. Some social theorists critique the export of specific cultural concepts of well-being as human universals. Others view well-being as a potentially divisive construct that may contribute to maintaining social inequalities. Environmentalists argue that socio-cultural patterns of over-consumption, within the neo-liberal economies of developed societies, present an impending ecological threat to individual, social and global well-being. As the four discourses carry different implications for action, we conclude by considering their varied utility and applicability for health promotion.

Key words: well-being; consumer culture


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