Deadline: 2013, June 30. Between wealth and well-being: consumption, psychology and quality of life

Guest editors: Anna Maria Zawadzka & Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska, University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland

Journal of Social Research & Policy invites original paper submissions for a special issue on “Between wealth and well-being: consumption, psychology and quality of life”, to bring together papers concerning mutual relations between growing standard of life, prosperity and well-being in modern societies.

Academics, especially those doing research in psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics, have always been interested in the subject of the impact of cultural, social, and economic change on individuals and societies. Apparently, changes brought about by prevalent growing wealth and consumer culture may have both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, the changes make life easier and increase the standard of living as well as lead to a rapid advancement of technology. However, focusing on wealth may decrease well-being, sense of affiliation and the quality of social relationships and it may also result in neglect of culture and art and mindless destruction of the natural environment. Therefore, it is really crucial to study and indicate the threats produced by the changes and look for precautions against them. There are a lot of import ant questions to be answered, i.e.:

  1. What are the individual and social benefits and costs of the permanent economic growth?
  2. Is being wealthy and focusing on consuming and buying a good strategy for happy life? In what way? What kind of consumption may increase our well-being?
  3. Is it good to be happy?
  4. In what way may the concept of happiness be a product of consumer culture?
  5. How can individualistic vs. collectivistic values strengthen the concept of happiness seen as a pursue to wealth and possession? Why?
  6. What can stop the development of consumer culture? Is spirituality a good alternative nowadays?
  7. What are the strategies to preserve health and well-being? How can we improve the existing measures of the well-being?
We invite original and empirical papers, written in a good English language on the subjects of:
  • Consumption, values and social change
  • Indications of well-being and ill-being in consumer culture
  • Psychological and social costs and benefits of consumption societies
  • Values, well-being and quality of life
  • Materialism, mercantilism and well-being
  • Self-regulation, self-control and consumption
  • Money time and happiness
  • Social influence, materialism and consumerism
  • Self-esteem and consumption
  • Consumption vs. spirituality and well-being
  • Strategies of healthy and happy life
  • Measures of well-being and happiness
All submissions will be peer reviewed. For guidelines on manuscript preparation and submission, please visit the journal website. Please send any inquiries to Anna Maria Zawadzka psyamz@univ.gda.pl, or Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska psymzp@ug.edu.pl


Volume 3, Issue 2 December 2012

INTERNATIONAL WELLBEING INDEX

Editor: Graciela Tonon, Universidad Nacional de Lomas de Zamora & Universidad de Palermo, Argentina

David Mellor, Robert A. Cummins & Tony Loquet

Life Quality and Wealth:  A Qualitative and Quantitative Comparison of Affluent and Poor People

Ferran Casas, Armando Bello, Mònica González & Mireia Aligué

Personal Well-Being among Spanish Adolescents

 Habib Tiliouine

Subjective Wellbeing, Psychological Needs, Meaning in life, Religious Practice and Income in the Population of Algeria

 Fermina Rojo-Perez, Gloria Fernandez-Mayoralas, Vicente Rodriguez-Rodriguez, Maria-João Forjaz, Carmen Rodriguez-Blazquez, María-Eugenia Prieto-Flores, Jose-Manuel Rojo-Abuin & Pablo Martinez-Martin

The Personal Wellbeing among Community-Dwelling Older Adults in Spain and Associated Factors

 

 Elena Gurková, Jozef Džuka, Mária Sováriová Soósová, Katarína Žiaková, Sylvie Haroková & Radka Šerfelová

Measuring Subjective Quality of Life in Czech and Slovak Nurses: Validity of the Czech and Slovak Versions of Personal Wellbeing Index

 Janette K. Boazman, Michael F. Sayler & Donald Easton-Brooks

Mediating Factors of Personal Wellbeing in Gifted College Students: Early-College Entrants and Honors College Students

Research Note 

Diana Dămean

A Validity Study of the SSP-School Inclusion Questionnaire

Book Reviews

Raluca Buhaş

Samantha Holland (Ed.), Remote Relationships in a Small World, Peter Lang Publishing, 2008, 296 p.



About the Journal

Welfare states have made well-being one of the main focuses of public policies. Social policies entail, however, complicated, and sometimes almost insurmountable, issues of prioritization, measurement, problem evaluation or strategic and technical decision making concerning aim-setting or finding the most adequate means to ends. Given the pressures to effectiveness it is no wonder that the last several decades have witnessed the imposition of research-based social policies as standard as well as the development of policy-oriented research methodologies. Legitimate social policies are, in this context, more and more dependent on the accurate use of diagnostic methods, of sophisticated program evaluation approaches, of benchmarking and so on. Inspired by this acute interest, our journal aims to host primarily articles based on policy research and methodological approaches of policy topics. Our journal is open to sociologically informed contributions from anthropologists, psychologists, statisticians, economists, historians and political scientists. General theoretical papers are also welcomed if do not deviate from the interests stated above. The editors also welcome reviews of books that are relevant to the topics covered in the journal.


ISSN (print) 2067-2640
ISSN (electronic) 2068-9861

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