Assembling wellbeing: bodies, affects and the 'conditions of possibility' for wellbeing. (2nd January 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Coffey, Julia
• Is Part Of: Journal of youth studies. Volume 25:Number 1(2022)
• Page Start: 67
• Page End: 83
• Publication Date: 2022-01-02
• Subjects: Wellbeing -- affect -- embodiment -- visual methods -- youth; Youth -- Periodicals; Youth -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 305.235
• DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2020.1844171
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1367-6261

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Wellbeing is a loaded term in youth sociology, due to its associations with individualising narratives which call on young people to manage the effects of structural disadvantage or hardship through personal practices such as 'cultivating resilience'. This article extends relational approaches in youth sociology to develop an understanding of wellbeing as assembled and patterned by the diverse socio-material conditions of young people's lives, including stress, abuse, trauma, financial hardship, friendships, families, work, study, and landscapes. I draw on case study examples and photographic images from a study of young people's 'everyday embodiments' to illustrate the rich, non-individual and more-than-human dynamics by which wellbeing assembles. This conceptualisation may be useful for scholars of youth who take a critical view of the traditionally individualised and psychologised remit of 'wellbeing', and wish to thoroughly interrogate the socio-material and affective dynamics which mediate the conditions of possibility in young people's lives. The reframing of wellbeing along embodied and affective lines contributes new understandings of the ways structural circumstances and events in young people's lives reverberate in the body and mediate how the world is experienced, and the possibilities for living which result.