Pursuing the hedonic experience: the discourse of wellbeing

The growing interest in issues of wellbeing and what ‘makes people happy’ can be witnessed in a number of different arenas, ranging from the academic to the political to the popular (see for example, programmes such as BBC's The Happiness Formula (BBC2, 3 May 2006) and Making Slough Happy (BBC2, 15 November 2005)). For some commentators, their concern with what is often termed ‘hedonics’ lies in the academic exercise of taking apart the factors that contribute to happiness and understanding how it might be measured (McAllister, Reference McAllister2005).Footnote ³ In a rather more radical step, others vigorously advocate a focus on happiness and wellbeing in government policy (Helliwell and Putnam, Reference Helliwell, Putnam, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005; Layard, Reference Layard2005; Marks and Shah, Reference Marks, Shah, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005). A research proposal by the Young Foundation (2006), for example, suggests that ‘it is now accepted that government should concern itself with happiness and well being’. Likewise, Marks and Shah (Reference Marks, Shah, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005: 503) note that ‘the idea that government should be concerned with people's well-being and happiness is no longer considered frivolous’.Footnote ⁴

The voices calling for a ‘politics of happiness’ have not gone unheard by policymakers and politicians within the New Labour government (Easton, Reference Easton2006). The focus on wellbeing is influencing government policy, most notably the sustainable development strategy Securing the Future published by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA, 2005). The strategy states that ‘by the end of 2006, the Government will sponsor cross-disciplinary work to bring together existing research and international experience and to explore how policies might change with an explicit well-being focus’ (DEFRA, 2005: 23). The establishment of the Sustainable Development Research Network, funded by DEFRA to develop research and indicators on wellbeing, is intended to contribute towards building this wellbeing evidence base. Likewise, the Local Government Act 2000 gives local authorities a ‘wellbeing power’; it enables them to do anything that improves the environmental, economic, or social wellbeing of their area and community.Footnote ⁵

Wellbeing proponents note that they have alighted on a new science that gives them a basis for understanding happiness as an objective entity (Huppert, Reference Huppert, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005; Layard, Reference Layard2005; McAllister, Reference McAllister2005). The development of indices and measures to test and evaluate wellbeing is a particular feature (Marks and Shah, Reference Marks, Shah, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005). Marks and Shah (Reference Marks, Shah, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005: 511) even suggest that national wellbeing accounts ought to be constructed by the government, to ‘measure what matters’ in relation to individual wellbeing. Thus, whether by asking people how happy they are in surveys (that is, assessing subjective wellbeing) or using physiological experiments that measure electrical activity in the brain, happiness has become ‘evidence-based’; it is, in Layard's (Reference Layard2005: 224) terms, ‘a real, objective phenomenon’. From here, it is a natural jump for many to suggest that if happiness exists, and we know what contributes to it, we can alter it through subjection to various forms of policy intervention.

What form this intervention might take depends on the diagnosis of the factors that contribute to wellbeing and happiness. Much of the literature on wellbeing stems from psychology and economics, and challenges the economic orthodoxy that income is the primary basis of happiness (Lane, Reference Lane2000). Analysts point to evidence that, despite improvements in material living conditions and the eradication of widespread poverty in advanced industrial nations over the past 50 years, levels of happiness have not improved, and in some cases have declined (Buonfino and Mulgan, Reference Buonfino and Mulgan2006). They highlight increased rates of crime and depression, and growing distrust in social relations as indicators of the ‘malaise’ of developed societies, and suggest that governments need to look beyond economic growth to other factors that contribute to people's wellbeing. In this sense, a contribution of the wellbeing message may be that it moves beyond the dominant economic analysis of society and individual behaviour, and recognises the value of other types of being and interaction.

Commentators agree that there are a number of interrelated factors that contribute to wellbeing, ranging from the biological to the social, including ‘physical health, income and wealth, relationships, meaningful work and leisure, personal stability and (lack of) depression’ (McAllister, Reference McAllister2005: 6).Footnote ⁶ Happiness is seen to have both external and internal, more personal, determinants. For example, Helliwell and Putnam (Reference Helliwell, Putnam, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005: 437) reinforce a view that wellbeing is connected to specific social relations that, broadly, conform to conventions of religion, nuclear family and marriage. They suggest that ‘marriage has universally been found to be a strong correlate of happiness’ (p. 437), and later note that ‘having a family enhances subjective well being, and spending more time with one's family helps even more’ (p. 448). In a different focus, on the issue of biology and genes and their relation to experience in determining happiness, Layard writes that ‘people with good genes also tend to get good experiences. Their parents are good at parenting. Their own niceness elicits good treatment from other people’ (2005: 58).

One of the difficulties of the wellbeing agenda appears to be the way that it sets up happiness as a state of being that can be achieved through particular forms of idealised behaviour, thereby reinforcing particular social norms (Furedi, Reference Furedi2004, Reference Furedi2006). Happiness is propagated as something that can be attained, as though it were a fixed ‘end state’ waiting to be discovered, although as Freud noted, happiness ‘is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon’ (Reference Freud1989: 23). Meanwhile, happiness and its presumed opposite entity – misery – have been cast as dichotomous categories, along with the emotions that lead to them; thus for Furedi ‘emotions are classified into those that are positive (joy, happiness and contentment) and those that are negative (fear, anger, sadness, hate)’ (Reference Furedi2004: 31). For wellbeing proponents, the avoidance or dispelling of negative emotions that may lead to unhappiness is a key objective. Happiness becomes an individual virtue to which we should all aspire.

We would suggest, however, that these views are reductive in the way they fix fluid social states and emotions (such as happiness and misery) and also, potentially, stigmatising of certain groups or individuals in society who do not ‘measure up’ to the happiness ideal, nor engage in the types of behaviour analysts and policymakers tell us lead to happiness (whether it be participation in employment, marriage, being physically active and so on). This is particularly so with mental illness, as it is suggested by wellbeing proponents that depression is a major, and growing, cause of unhappiness in western societies.Footnote ⁷ Layard exemplifies this approach in stating, ‘In the West, the most miserable group of people are the mentally ill. We know how to help most of them, but only about a quarter are currently in treatment’ (Reference Layard2005: 231). He advocates that wellbeing politics and policies should focus on tackling the unhappiness created by mental illness, primarily through therapy (Layard, Reference Layard2005, Reference Layard2006).

Such analyses could appear to be indicative of an agenda in which the individual self – and their happiness – becomes a focus for government interventions. Those who are critical of the ‘politics of happiness’ see the new focus on wellbeing as a move away from a politicised public sphere to one in which the management of individuals and their behaviour is paramount. Thus, for Furedi (Reference Furedi2004, Reference Furedi2006), the wellbeing agenda is part of New Labour's ‘politicisation of emotions’, in which government is increasingly delving into psycho-social relationships, and where social problems become recast as emotional ones. Likewise, Heartfield suggests that third way politics transcends the activist formation of political will: ‘the realm of subjectivity that is politics is shrunken and diminished’ (Reference Heartfield2002: 18).

For others, the discourse of wellbeing can be related to the (continuing) process of disembedded individualisation in society, in which solidaristic social relations, and collective and community ties and identities, are dissolving (Bauman, Reference Bauman2000; Beck, Reference Beck1992; Giddens, Reference Giddens1991). In this context, the key challenge for individuals is to negotiate a path through the dilemmas of modern life, and forge self-identities and biographies that reflect a life of one's own choosing (Beck, Reference Beck1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, Reference Beck and Beck-Gernsheim2002; Giddens, Reference Giddens1991). The self therefore becomes a reflexive project: the individual must decide between multiple, and often conflicting, forms of information and knowledge in deciding how to live (Giddens, Reference Giddens1991; Rose, Reference Rose1999). For some, the process of self-reflexivity has intensified as a result of the undermining of traditional forms of expertise and the rise of consumer culture, which presents individuals with ever-more diverse forms of expertise from which to choose. In this context, processes of individualisation ‘not only permit, but they also demand an active contribution by individuals’ (emphasis added) (Beck and Beck-Gernshein, Reference Beck and Beck-Gernsheim2002: 4).

Sointu (Reference Sointu2005, Reference Sointu2006a, Reference Sointu2006b) suggests that the pursuit of wellbeing can be linked to this project of self-actualisation, and forms of governance that engender self-responsibility. She notes how the meaning of wellbeing has shifted from the ‘body politic’ (expressed in discussions of the wellbeing of the economy or society) to the ‘body personal’, such that wellness has increasingly become the responsibility of the individual. In associating wellbeing with health, Sointu highlights the opening out of domains of health expertise beyond the biomedical, to include alternative health practices as a context in which individuals are ‘enjoined to freely seek out the ways of living most likely to promote their own health’ (Rose, Reference Rose1999: 86). Such strategies to promote wellbeing are notably consumerist in character; individuals exercise their autonomy, and create their ‘biography’ through the role of ‘choosing consumers’ (Sointu, Reference Sointu2005: 271, Reference Sointu2006a).

Others point to the risks associated with the self-autonomous subject, highlighting that the process of individualisation is inherently unstable and precarious. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim note, in an uncertain world, the ‘do-it-yourself biography is always a “risk biography”, indeed a “tightrope biography”’ (Reference Beck and Beck-Gernsheim2002: 3). The flip side of self-responsibility is that failure comes to be located within the individual, the personal; social issues can be transposed into psychological ones. Thus, as Bauman states of individuals, ‘If they fall ill, it is because they were not resolute or industrious in following a health regime. If they stay unemployed, it is because they failed to learn the skills of winning an interview or because they did not try hard enough’ (2002: xvi). It is within this context that we come to see the focus on emotion and strategies of governance to manage those individuals deemed not to be meeting their obligations as active and self-responsible citizens in ensuring their own wellbeing (Rose, Reference Rose1999).

For example, the problems of particular groups deemed to be excluded and dependent – the unemployed, lone parents, disabled people – are frequently being associated with a lack of self-esteem by the New Labour government. In the context of employment, for example, a National Employment Panel report commissioned by the government recommended that lone parents who were out of work required ‘an intensive period to build self-confidence and explore alternative lifestyles’, to enable them to move nearer to the labour market (Verwaayen, Reference Verwaayen2003: 3). Meanwhile, activities such as confidence building, counselling and mentoring are increasingly seen as appropriate interventions to improve the employability of particular groups (DWP, 2006).

For several authors, such interventions are evidence of the growing emphasis in welfare policy on therapeutic tactics, and not just in the context of employment but also parenting and addressing ‘anti-social’ behaviour (Dean, Reference Dean1999; Furedi, Reference Furedi2004; Rose, Reference Rose1999). Yet while therapeutic intervention is often presented as an opportunity for self-discovery, Furedi (Reference Furedi2004) argues that it may serve to reinforce individual vulnerability and dependency on a new cadre of ‘psy’ experts. Seen from this perspective, there is a danger that wellbeing politics – and its accompanying evidence base, which arguably leads to the invention of new categories or problematisations that give government a mandate to ‘act’ – may be less about individual autonomy and more about exercising subtle forms of social control to responsibilise those groups not deemed to be actively engaged in society.

Disabled people and the wellbeing agenda

In the rest of the article, we evaluate the implications of the wellbeing agenda in relation to the lives of disabled people, and to the development of a politics of disability. We do so by exploring UK government policy documents and statements promoting wellbeing (for instance, see DH, 2005; DWP, 2006; LGA, 2003). One of the most detailed documents about the characteristics and determinants of wellbeing and the implications for public policy is Donovan and Halpern's report for the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, Life Satisfaction: The State of Knowledge and Implications for Government (Reference Donovan and Halpern2002). While claiming not to be a statement of government policy, it has formed the basis for further work within the Cabinet Office on developing the wellbeing agenda (Easton, Reference Easton2006). As such, it is an authoritative source of information and opinion, and held in high regard by ministers and others seeking to develop wellbeing policy.

We also draw on documents from sources outside government, including the New Economics Foundation's Well-being Manifesto for a Flourishing Society (NEF, 2004; see also Marks and Shah, Reference Marks, Shah, Huppert, Baylis and Keverne2005, and Layard's, Reference Layard2005, Reference Layard2006, work on happiness, most recently expressed in ‘The depression report: a new deal for depression and anxiety disorders’). In so doing, we recognise the diversity of these sources. We do not suggest that the wellbeing agenda currently represents a coherent set of operationable policy objectives on which government and other agencies agree; some take a more radical stance in their propagation of what a wellbeing society should look like. However, there are a significant number of areas of congruence between the documents, developing out of a context in which influential policy advisers, such as Layard (who has been awarded the rather dubious title of ‘happiness czar’), have the ear of government.

In developing our analysis, our concern in the rest of the article is less with considering the factors that contribute to disabled people's happiness, but rather with exploring some of the ‘wider norms and values imbuing the rise of the ideal of well being’ as they are set out in the documents, and their implications for disabled people (Sointu, Reference Sointu2005: 256). We divide the rest of the section into two. First, we consider the documents' ‘diagnosis’ of what constitutes wellbeing in the context of disabled people, and the ways in which disability, where it is addressed, is conceived of and understood. We argue that one issue is the focus, almost exclusively, on the individual (and their pathology), and the use of a deficit paradigm or understanding of disablement in society. This is overlain by the propagation of a biological determination, in which health status, and physiological and genetic factors, are perceived to be core in influencing much of (disabled) people's life satisfaction.

Second, we explore the documents in the context of arguments that the wellbeing agenda is tied to forms of ‘therapeutic governance’ and strategies which seek to engage individuals in taking (self) responsibility for ‘acting upon oneself to overcome dissatisfactions, realize one's potential, gain happiness and achieve autonomy’ (Rose, Reference Rose1999: 90). Such governance appears, however, to be focused narrowly around utilitarian objectives relating to the reshaping of welfare, and connecting notions of personal wellbeing to active participation in the labour market. In this respect, one interpretation of the wellbeing agenda is to suggest that it is part of broader, structural, changes in economy, employment, and state, or part of the conjoining of welfare to workfare, and forms of intervention to enhance the employability of particular groups, such as disabled people. Wellbeing, in this view, is the connectivity between the (responsible) self and other forms of sociability.