On Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, 2015, George Mason University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, and Center for Global Studies examined the concept of well-being within a global, societal context.
Well-being is one of the key elements of Mason’s strategic plan, so much so that one of its goals is for the university to “become a model well-being university that allows all of its members to thrive.” The university’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being serves to promote research and practice into those tools that promote lives of vitality, purpose, and resilience for members of the Mason community.
This conference sought to expand the understanding of well-being by examining its role through a global dialogue and the lens of public sociology.
This makes sense, says Mark Jacobs, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, not only because Mason is the home of the nation’s first doctoral program in public sociology. It is fitting because of Mason’s close proximity to the District of Columbia, a focal point of international policy.
Public sociology is an approach to the academic discipline that moves sociological research beyond the confines of the classroom to the real-world application of the discipline’s teachings. Its audience is public, rather than internal to the field, and it uses sociological theory and research to address current societal problems.
The conference looked at the questions of how well-being should inform the field of public sociology, and how public sociology should inform a concept of well-being, explains Jacobs. By doing so, the conference aimed to expand the notion of well-being to an application within everyday societal structures.
Participants in the conference included
- Thomas Eberle, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
- Margaret Ensminger, Johns Hopkins University
- Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, City University of New York
- Trever Hagen, Exeter University
- Gene Halton, University of Notre Dame
- David Inglis, University of Exeter
- Sebastian Koos, University of Konstanz, Germany, and Harvard University
- William Kornblum, City University of New York
- Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia
- Joachim Savelsberg, University of Minnesota
- Anna Lisa Tota, Roma Tre University
- Robin Wagner-Pacifici, The New School
- Erik Olin Wright, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Based upon the participants’ varied backgrounds, areas of expertise, and institutions represented, Jacobs is enthusiastic that the participants represented a true global dialogue on how the concept of well-being can expand beyond the individual and have an effect on societal organizations.
November 13, 2015
