Using qualitative and quantitative methods both to generate and analyse data, this paper argues that we need to shift our conceptions of wellbeing, from the psychological subject generally assumed by much wellbeing research, to one that recognises the importance also of economic status and concerns in people’s sense of themselves and what matters to them.
The data comes from Chiawa, Zambia, where men and women villagers were subjects both of a predominantly quantitative survey and of more in-depth, life history interviews, 2010-2013. The research as a whole took a comprehensive approach to wellbeing, looking across a range of factors such as health and educational status and provision, livelihoods, and subjective dimensions of wellbeing. The concept of wellbeing used was relational. Two very different kinds of data (surveys and life history interviews) approaches to analysis (statistics and discourse analysis) reinforce each other with a single message. Together they suggest the need for adjustment in the account of wellbeing, from the psychological subject generally assumed by much wellbeing research, to one that gives greater weight to the economic dimensions of subjectivity. http://www.palgrave.com/la/book/9781137536440