A Reconsideration of the Concept of Well-Being From a Foucauldian Perspective

In recent years, well-being has become one of themain governmental focuses, and it has been considered a tool for politics and outcome evaluation. Nevertheless, despite this marked interest in themeasurement of well-being and its potential for politics, there is little consensus on how well-being should be conceptualized and measured, which has led to the emergence of a broad and divergent set of definitions and approaches to well-being (Forgeard et al., 2011). In this sense, the polysemy of the concept of well-being prompts us to consider not only the politics of how well-being is defined, and its implications for social exclusion and inclusion but also the type of power that this politics establishes. Likewise, this polysemy suggests that the meanings proposed by each agent can promote special interests instead of the public good. Thus, based on a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, in this article, the authors argue that these varied conceptualizations and approaches to well-being exist in order to control the individuals’ perceptions, experiences of agency, and responsibility. In addition, well-being is linked to a variety of sociohistorical and cultural factors. It is an inescapably political process, which is based on a specific time and place and which changes over time.