Les récits du bien-être

Narratives of Wellbeing

Call for papers



The critical turn in wellbeing studies asks not only how wellbeing can be defined and measured, but what is created and excluded by the process of striving for and articulating wellbeing. Such perspectives move away from the focus on wellbeing indicators to ask: what we are talking about when we talk about wellbeing? And how might wellbeing be understood, experienced and mobilised differently in different contexts?

To extend scholarly conversations on this subject,  Narratives of Wellbeing will be a symposium and edited volume that critically examine wellbeing through a narrative framework. Narratives are a window into the temporal nature of human experience (Ricoeur 1979) and narratives of wellbeing reveal how the aspiration to live well is socio-culturally and individually mediated. How is being well navigated, interpreted, articulated, and/or brought into being through the construction of narrative? How might the stories we tell about wellbeing change depending on the expected audience? What are the tensions and overlaps between various scripts about what it means to live well, socially, culturally, economically, and spiritually? How do certain narratives of wellbeing become authoritative while others are subjugated? When are narratives about wellbeing therapeutic and when are they iatrogenic? What do different narratives of wellbeing accomplish, produce and disguise?

This interdisciplinary symposium and edited volume will bring together researchers who approach wellbeing from a range of perspectives, including: sociology; politics; anthropology; linguistics; history; Indigenous studies; philosophy; religious studies; development studies; and gender, sexuality and diversity studies. We welcome paper proposals on topics including, but not limited to: historical narratives about wellbeing; competing scripts about wellbeing; wellbeing as narrated in different disciplinary traditions; the strategic use of wellbeing narratives; power and inequality in the articulation of wellbeing; and the therapeutic possibilities of narrativising wellbeing.

Symposium abstracts are due to be submitted by June 30, 2022. Symposium papers (2000-3000 words) will be pre-circulated a week before the event. The symposium will be convened in hybrid format online and at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Following the symposium, participants will be invited to contribute to an edited volume, with full papers provisionally due 1 November 2022. Please contact the convenors with abstracts orany questions.

Convenors: Tarryn Phillips, Timothy Jones, Natalie Araujo and Jack Taylor

Contact:

Tarryn.Phillips@latrobe.edu.au
T.Jones@latrobe.edu.au
N.Araujo@latrobe.edu.au
John.Taylor@latrobe.edu.au

https://narrativesofwellbeing.wordpress.com/