ABSTRACT
Though ‘well-being’ is defined in a wide range of ways (Atkinson, Fuller and Painter 2012; Kearns and Andrews 2010; Pain and Smith 2010; Schwanen and Ziegler 2011; Ziegler and Schwanen 2011), the concept is most often associated with ‘human flourishing’ (Fleuret and Atkinson 2007: 109) and ‘optimal psychological experience and functioning’ (Deci and Ryan 2008: 1). In this chapter, I consider what a phenomenological perspective might contribute to research on well-being by examining two central phenomenological principles – first, human-immersion-in-world; and, second, lived obliviousness. Human-immersion-in-world refers to the phenomenological recognition that human beings are inescapably conjoined with and enmeshed in their world, which here relates to the person or group’s sphere of action, understanding and experience, both firsthand and vicarious. That people are always already caught up in and enjoined with their world suggests that the well-being of an individual or group cannot be discussed apart from lived relationships with their worlds, including the places in which they find themselves. In other words, individual well-being and place well-being mutually presuppose and afford each other. In this sense, one might more accurately speak of the well-being-of-person-or-group-in-place (DeMiglio and Williams 2008; Eyles and Williams 2008; Malpas 1999; Relph 1976; Seamon 2014, 2018; Stefanovic 2008).
