Community risk and well-being: Towards a spatially integrated social science within a socio-economic framework

Włodzimierz Okrasa

Published: 2013-12-31

Vol. 8 (2013)

Community risk and well-being: Towards a spatially integrated social science within a socio-economic framework

Włodzimierz Okrasa

Abstract

Despite that the two concepts, community risk and community well-being, seem to constitute the two sides of the same coin - community (especially, local community) as a place to live - they rarely coincide with each other in empirical analyses. The main thesis of this paper is that analyzing them jointly seems to be fruitful, especially in a policy-oriented evaluation research conducted in the context of community development. Community well-being is, by its very nature, an example of the truly interdisciplinary notion. When defined in terms of happiness and subjective well-being it becomes the focus of predominantly psychometric approach. Sociologists prevail in attempts to interpret it in terms of quality of life and of social indicators. And economists and statisticians are trying to measure nation-wide material and non-material aspects of well-being with intention to incorporate them into an appropriately re-formulated, or extended, system of national account. As a part of these conceptualizations (moving “beyond GDP”) some approaches are being developed to include the value produced under non-market activities, including the non-profit organizations or third sector (either through utilizing Satellite Accounts methodology or through the labor market research). However, no much attention is given in such frameworks to well-being conceived as an attribute of a local community. The objective of this paper is two-fold. First it is to demonstrate the complexity involved in the relationships in which the concept of well-being remains with local risk and local capital, at the analytical level. Second, how this complex pattern of interaction can contribute conceptually and methodologically to the advancement of the process of integrating social science research in the area of the pro-well-being community development. To create and use the new types of university-community relations in this context seems to be the most promising approach for social scientists, and is recommended here as a way worthwhile to follow.

Keywords:

community risk, community well-being

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Okrasa, W. (2013). Community risk and well-being: Towards a spatially integrated social science within a socio-economic framework. Academic Journal of Sociology, 8, 4–15. Retrieved from https://czasopisma.uksw.edu.pl/ucs/article/view/17143

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