See part one here, part two here, and part three here.

Workshop session: Growth and Reconsidering Happiness.
Since my French is horrible, and there were no translators for this session, my notes will be much sparser. We began by hearing Isabelle Cassier discuss GDP, and compare the resulting trend lines of per-capita GDP with a measure of life satisfaction. Tremendous growth in the GDP was not reflected in life satisfaction measures across time and across countries.

Looking at the chronology the evolution of the GDP and the Life Satisfaction indicator from all the western countries after 30 years. In comparison internationally, there's no correlation evident, for example, between Brazil and Japan.

l'argent ne fait pas le bonheur/money can't buy happiness

What do the economists say? Three families of explanations about the difference between measures of economic growth and life satisfaction:
A. Wealth is relative
man changes and is adaptable (the effect of the surroundings)
man is a social animal (Aristotle) (the effect of social comparisons)
B. Wealth isn't everything
Good sense

Of a number of elements, none are as well-defined and well-constructed over many years as the GDP, of all things contributing to life satisfaction
Some of the factors affecting well-being include:
inequalities/ lack of social justice
changes in work conditions
health
family and social relations
governance and institutions
the environment

Reflections about the indicators:
Indicators of what? What concepts should we keep?
Progress (social/societal/of societies)
Wealth (material, immaterial)
Well-being (utility, being)
Quality of Life (individual, collective, sustainable)
Prosperity (economic, state of happiness)
Development (South/North)
Happiness (individuals separately/connected, universal)

What outcomes?
Revive the question of a model society
Neither growth nor de-growth: good-bye to outcomes
Individual or collective?
Diverse symptoms of living together
Poverty of the the individualism methodology and of the analyses or the indicators that we collect
Meda: recognize the existence of a community that has different interests
Goods in common can draw attention away from individual liberty
Stiglitz Commission: quality of life; we measure the QOL of the whole society in the actions of individuals

Objective indicators create a universal norm we can discuss; subjective indicators deny the existence of one society, of a common Good?

Who decides?
Risk 1: replace the debate about the outcomes for one or two indicators: a technocratic governance model
Risk 2: an opinion indicator represents universal outcomes: a model of unique development
Risk 3: Need to measure the non-quantifiable (happiness): preserve the happiness to economists
are institutions ready for radical change?

Measure and improve the progress of societies
measure without a definition?
Progress: only one definition?
Improve: role of the public pouvoirs
Society: whose society?
Dimensions few present for discussion:
Considerable economic interests with the old measures: resistance to change
Aspects of reparation or redistribution: can't have change without redistribution
Historical perspective: what was the news of 1944 (compatible national constitutions and cap growth): what's the news today?
Impact of the financial crisis:
What to do?
Contribute to the redefinition of finalities
reduce our own incoherence
Denounce? Expose? them of institutions and governments

Dennis Stokkink addressed “The impact of economic growth on poverty and inequalities: the importance of political choices, of indicators and of their definitions.” Our goal is both economic growth and equality for one and for all. The question of economic growth automatically applies on an individual level to questions of poverty and inequality. He turned the rest of the time (and the PowerPoint presentation) over to Marion Englert.

There exists a merger implicit between economic growth and the different approaches to well-being, both social and subjective well-being. The subject of the study she is reporting on is the relation between economic growth (and poverty and inequality) and income/revenue. Poverty is a multidimensional concept. The postulate is that the maximization of the size of the pie allows a increase in each of its slices, suggesting that the increase in the GDP contributes to social development and reduces poverty. The question then becomes: does the real world support this postulate? Is there an evidentiary link between theory and technique?

Plan:
Define poverty
Examine growth and redistributive capacity
Explore the example of countries of high revenue
Review the temporal approach (historical)
Examine international comparisons
Reach conclusions
(Ed. Note: There may have been a couple more steps in their plan, but this is all I caught.)

First, we have to understand Absolute v. Relative Poverty. We have an intuitive perception that what we mean by poverty varies in different times and different places. Poverty can be measured through social comparisons – does this family have as much money as others in the society? -- or through social exclusion principles – does this family have enough money to fully participate in society?

Pertinence of the concept of relative poverty
the question is not about the size of the share but about the relative size of the share
Growth and redistributive capacity
differenct effect depends on the mode of growth: productivity vs. employment rate
increase in productivity
augmentation of revenues
growth of productivity does not imply positive redistribution (without fiscal reform)
growth of besoins with GDP (generosity relatively constant)
redistribution is a political choice
increase in employment rate
growth results from an increase in employment diminishes relative poverty in the condition of the absence of working poor and the public fiscal policy remains the same.
MORE:
The existence of the working poor (living precariously at unequal salaries)
Possible annulment of the positive effect of employment growth in th function of fiscal policy
High-revenue countries:
temporal approach (historical evolution of inequality in relative poverty)
Fordism v. post-fordism
Characteristics of the types of regulation/deregulation post fordiste:
Reviving ideology: predominance of neo-classical and liberal ideology
Approach the level of international comparisons
After sharing graphs on the rate of relative poverty in higher-income countries, marion Englert concluded with the results of the economic analysis:
Per capita GDP does not influence the level of the variations in inequality and relative poverty, but is positively correlated with other variables.
Per capita GDP shouldn't always be considered the only indicator of global poverty, though it is an appropriate indicator to highlight overall poverty in some countries.
Redistribution as public policy is particularly effective in the reduction of inequalities and relative poverty, and is not correlated with per capita GDP
Levels of poverty and inequality are dependent on societal choices and political decisions that respond to social objections.

One of the comments was in English, so I can share it with you. In response to the question about what people needed to be comfortable with their quality of life, in 1994 American surveyed said they needed $80,000 to be comfortable, while in 2004 those surveyed needed $200,000 to feel comfortable. The conclusion is that people never think they have enough. The second comment is about the futility of trying to address global poverty through economic growth. Under our current economic model, we would need 30 planets to reach the amount of economic growth needed to eliminate poverty globally.

New speaker: Laurent Jolia-Ferrier, from the Societe Mesurer le developpement durable spoke on the topic of “Indicators for a new look at human development and societal well-being.” He discussed a project developed for the Ile-de-France region with a wider application.

The beginning: L'IAURIF has a base of 400 indicators of the environment, society, and economy for this region
The fact: these indicators, indispensable to specialists, are not allowed to communicate simply with the greater public
The need: Discover a methodology to create a synthetic measure of regional performance of the region in matters of the environment, society, and economy.
The tools tested have been judged unable to be adapted to this use, so we needed to create a tool we could use for our own.

Developing a methodology and an authorized tool:
The intent was to synthesize certain indicators in 3 levels, so that one could move from the simple to the more disaggregated and precise/specific:
Level 1: 2 indexes (environment and social-economic)
Level 2: 10 indexes (earth, water, air, flora and fauna, resources, public health, wealth, knowledge and culture, community, equality)
Level 3: 30 indexes

We also needed to be able to compare the performance of several collective areas between themselves, and reflect the political impacts in different places as a result of this work after a reasonable amount of time. We needed to validate the indicators with experts for each domain, including which indicators to keep, the sources of the domains used, and the management of the consolidation of the proposed indicators.

We were running short of time, so we went quickly past the objectives of the study and the commentary page on the slideshow, and spent a little more time looking at the results of the tool when comparing the counties of western Europe in environmental performance and socio-economic performance. Then we compared the results with a couple of other indicator frameworks.

Sandrine Michel and Delphine Vallade were up next, talking about “Social expenditures financing and long term economic growth: the contribution of a synthetic index of the development of men.” I think this is Delphine Vallade speaking.

We begin by examining economic growth over the long term: the contracyclicity and procyclicity of the expenditures for mankind since 1945. The study is problemmatic:
Is it possible to interpret the recurrent contribution of the expenditures at the exit of crisis with the structural irreversability of growth? Are these expenditures a unitary characteristic? Proposition of a synthetic indicator. Let's begin with a discussion of works about these indicators and our reflections.
Three dynamic works around the measures of growth and the nature of wealth: production very dense of alternative indicators
Social indicators and collective well-being: The conventions of evaluations of progress (Gadrey 2002)
Social indicators and the measure of wealth
(I missed the other titles)
[DS = depenses sociales – that was the key I needed to understand the previous slide which used the abbreviation liberally. I'm sure she said what the abbreviation stood for, but I just didn't catch it.]

We looked at social expenditures – with an interesting graph examining social expenditures for education from 1850 to 2004 along with the trend line. Further graphs looked at social expenditures for education, health, and old age.

Then we saw a graph that overlaid social expenditure spending with GDP (again 1850-2004) showing lower social expenditures during economic recessions. It's my lack of language clarity raising its ugly head again – as she covers the different economic periods and relative social expenditures, I can't tell which of the variables she is suggesting is causative – whether poor economic times lead to lower social expenditures, or lower expenditures lead to economic recessions, or if the two are coincidental. She's asking, what are the determinants of the movement in these trend lines? Demography? Economy? The historical analysis is very interesting, but I can't answer her questions. The concept of looking back to be able to, as she puts it, study the financial solutions that prevailed in times long ago is an interesting idea. The years immediately prior to 1945 aren't just an example of economic shortfalls – it was a time of enormous upheaval in France, and barring a further occupation, I'm not sure if we can draw any really good conclusions from that time period.

More charts, and really neat timelines. Plus a few slides that seem to be trying to meet the challenge of “how many French words can you fit on one page before PowerPoint self-destructs?” I'm afraid the lateness of the hour (it's now 7:00 p.m. and we've been in sessions since early this morning), combined with jet lag, are magnifying the language barriers. I am prepared to admit that this presentation is revolutionary in its thinking and exemplary in its application. I just hope someone else is taking notes who will be willing to share them. I apologize to Delphine Vallade for these notes.

We have a dinner next – I hope it's unstructured without presentations. I'm speaking first thing tomorrow morning, and my head is starting to hurt.
Au revoir!

See part one here and part two here.

Session 3: was called Working Out the Collective Construction. Gilda Farrell acted as moderator. Before the session, the panelists asked: construction of what? Ideas? Knowledge? Indicators? Societies?

Samuel Thirion, Council of Europe: Good afternoon. How can we build local indicators of societal progress, and what does that entail? I'll share the experiences we've had at the Council of Europe. It also deals with concepts, and this morning made it clear we have more work to do on framing those concepts and finding new words to describe what we are doing. It also entails experiments as we try to pull all people together to work on this. How we work with citizens at the local level is important.

Our experience so far is that we need to make experiments and to think out of the box to see what happens in the field. I'll tell you where we're at and share those issues we think are still unresolved. Experiments are essential and entail a lot of effort, which is why we need to work in networks to share the results of our experiments and learn from each other.

The Council of Europe has always worked on human rights. In 1997 we had a summit on social cohesion, then we published a methodological guide, and the ndid experiments in localities and now we have a working group. We wanted to sum up what had been done and establish networks to learn from each other. Our society is constantly evolving. We are used to the welfare state where the state is responsible for the welfare of all, but now we see that is not enough. Now we see with the rise of poverty a welfare society. Social cohesion is about growing society for the wellbeing of all, which means being able to define the wellbeing of all, develop indicators to measure progress, and then think about the shared co-responsibility of all to make the conditions better.

We have assets/goods, that allow us to experiment with different activities in different spaces (companies, schools, etc.) to move toward well-being. If you want to create from the ground, use available structures to ensure the sustainability of the effort. If you have a neighborhood council, involve them in the process and then they can carry out the activities.

First step: defining well-being together. The definition has to be accepted by all actors, it has to be built from the ground up. It has to be done collectively. The idea is to bring citizens together to have them reflect on the what the well-being of all looks like – not just immediate vision but reflective reasoned discussion, starting in small groups, beginning at “what is well-being and happiness to you” and “what could society do better.” Then we collect the ideas and create an inclusive vision. Start in unicolor groups (8-10), then in “rainbow groups” (with people coming from different perspectives). In Europe, 80 percent of the criteria are material; in Africa, the opposite.

We apply a synthesis: regroup the criteria in themes and define the indicators for the themes. Regroup the indicators in families, building on the scientific work and frameworks – this doesn't replace the local work, but places it into the methodological framework that is supported by the research to strengthen it. The individual indicators are inter-dependent.

(Then came some slides with lots of words and diagrams and models. I'm trying to capture the key points here, and will link to the slides if/when they become available. Just bear with me for the next paragraph or two.)

Feeling of well-being
citizen participation
human relations
relationships with institutions
cadre de vie
access to movens de vie
something else

progress indicators are different from traditional indicators becasue they indicate a way, a direction
variables
value
categories/degrees to apply to the living environment
apply tool to see bad situation or improving situation through matrix/categories (what does really bad and really good look like?)
4 types of criteria to build the ladder
- need to work on measuring indicators with citizens
- evaluate the impact of actions
- involve citizens to reflect on the impacts of their own actions
- use criteria in designing public policy and analyzing that policy
- apply the method of analysis of the goods/material side of things
- move from actions to co-responsibility

New model of governance – build as a common group, linking participatory and representative democracy

Gilda Farrell: What I heard as they key points were the need to move from the ethics of debate to indicators, and to have a clean method to make sure duplication of experiments is possible. The difference is in the ways well-being is perceived, and not in the implementation of methods. I questioned the link between indicators – interaction between indicators. The framework is adapted to the company – relationship between indicators and responsibility.

Frank Lenk, Metro Outlook in Kansas City: The metro area regional council is not a government, and has no power except the power of a good idea. This is an agricultural area; we exist because of a bridge. We have a very linear pattern of development in the core, and then a sprawl development pattern in which we must drive everywhere to do anything. We look at land use patterns – we have lots of land. We also have more freeway lanes per person than anywhere else in the US and we're building more and still have congestion.

So what does one do when the entire region is built around growing outward with an automobile?
We were created to think about the quality of life -- used to be regions were good places to live if they were good places to work, now they are only good places to work if they are great places to live.
Overall regional goal: rising quality of life for everyone
not progress for some at the expense of others
not progress at the expense of future generations
not economic welath at the expense of social or environmental health
message from the future: create a tool sensistive enough to hear messages from future generations
requires deeper understanding than what we have today
model for understanding quality of life
people choose to live in communities
institutions
policy and spending decisions
poem
we make the decisions
focus is on raising wealth in all three dimensions
life requires a profit
economic embedded within the social and natural systems
topographic map – is it a hill or a valley?
Model forced us to look at high-performing institutions
look at capacities
tools (decisions and institutions)
objectives
why bother to create a model?
Coherence
clarity
continuous improvement
completeness
diminishment of bias, fads
link public with policy, and policy with performance measurement
provides a common frame of reference, more focused and better questions
version 2 tried to compare to peer cities
overuse of comparisons for reasons of measuring competitiveness rather than quality of life
sustainability and triple bottom lines
environment, economic, and social
www.metrooutlook.org
wheel of progress
today's investments create tomorrow's quality of life
how do we create a system that allows us to invest more wisely
Gilda: thank you for this interesting presentation which allows us to reflect on the connections, and on institutions as platforms and spaces for decisions
the point of future generations as a starting hypothesis – can we go from material to quality of life matters later
questions for these two speakers:
?methodology for Council of Europe applied at a country in southern Africa – can we freely apply this method or do we have to create something?
Reactions to citizens and indicators in Kansas City?
Do what extent do they show differences in tastes v. discrepancies in fate?
Aim of your indicators – how do they tie in to public? How are they linked to public policy?
For Frank, the work you've been carrying out, are they taken into account by public authorities?
Frank: citizen involvement has been weak. As we develop plans we are much better at involving citizens throughout the region, engaging citizens and make sure we know what they want. Some common threads we can build. Policy makers nod and smile and go on. Metro Outlook version 3 really are going to be tied to policy – determining system-level indicators and program-level indicators to ensure programs support overall goals, another year or so before that's in place.
Samuel: we are building a method with other people, free method, all can use it. Can be done in Brazil. We created an international group to allow a transfer beyond the borders of Europe. Need to see how this works in other contexts. In Latin America there's the Como Vamos approach – need to build links. Our approach isn't gospel, you know.
Romania, their priority was that of governance, while in 14th arrondissement in Paris was about achieving balance in one's own life. In other context, it might be the importance of nature. You will find discrepancies regarding the criteria then you can fine-tune your analysis based on the local input.
Yes, we want to tie in our approached with local authorities, not as a parallel process. The goal is to influence public authorities. How do we influence public authorities? They usually re-analyze their own policies in light of what the citizens are saying.
Michele Leclerc Olive: the case of an African town facing societal transformation. This presentation if I had to define the context, it's at the crossroads between philosophy, mathematics, and other matters. I'm not an economist, but a citizen. But the very local example is more than to see whether our categories can be applied. It's a way to think locally.
Town of guillema – decentralization process created more than 700 towns compelling people to experiment with a new kind of citizenship. So they created neighborhood and village communities, like how nGO's are completely different from the practice of public authorities, and the difference between local and state political processes.
Now decentralization reform. Ivory Coast crisis deprived Mali from its window to the sea and built two roads. Both roads reach the town of dhierma. Town has been transformed. Massive number of migrants because people want to take the opportunity of the economic concentration there.
For us it is very interesting because now we can't see democracy on a daily basis because we are so used to it, but there we can study the beginnings of democracy and really observe it. What they could not see was the transformation of their towns due to urbanization, while we could see it because we had other examples in mind having seen urbanization and knowing what changes were coming based on research, study, and examples.
UNDP has co-run an observatory of the transformation. What we see is that the local authorities should be able to improve the living condition of the population because they are elected, so it is all linked to political reforms. However, the local collectives have to deal with geographical space but you have to remember that we localize indicators but when we transfer them they are different from localized indicators. One the one hand, we should implement general indicators, and on the other, use localized indicators which are completely different from UNDP or academic indicators.
Usually, when one looks at an indicator, one looks at the dimension, direction, and momentum of the indicator. The thing is that to really grasp dynamics and momentum the statistic unit must be very precise. We cannot assume that just because we create an indicator that it will be meaningful or tell the truth.
Hypothesis of regularity and continuity.
City of Paris built its subway based on likelihood, rather than predictability – not data based on what they had done, but looking forward to what they could do and what was being done elsewhere.
Currently ,very different conceptions of citizenship are being debated. In Africa, it is not that hard to have a political voice – not all do it, but it is different from what we are used to. So that shows that free speech doesn't create well-being by itself, but is only one part of creating well-being. Can smother the topic if focus only on giving a voice to citizens just to give a voice to citizens. Participatory democracy is the process, not the end in itself. Indicators assess the likely, not the possible. The Black Swan.
So I think well-being is not maybe something of the present time and especially in the small African town that fuel the immigration and the tales of these towns have to be taken into account when talking about the well-being of society.
Gilda: Helps us reflect on the shortcuts we sometimes take. Indicators don't always explain the dynamics of a society, and words don't mean the same thing everywhere. We have difficulty in measuring and embracing reality.
?Coming back on what you just said, allowing oneself to speak, in Africa debates are a means to regulate/sort out various issues on a daily basis.
?As an organization we work in Africa, but we have a real difficulty with indicators imposed from top-down by funding institutions to measure performance, and sometimes we find it impossible and useless to use performance indicators. Sometimes they would use private auditors to do performance measurement. We need to play an important role.
?These many ideas are challenging the systems we have in place, but we do our best efforts not to fall into the trap of using traditional indicators. People have a right to share their experiences but what is the link you make to the criticism of participatory democracy.
I'm not criticizing participatory democracy. We need to be careful how we use this phrase when we see what's being built in the name of participatory democracy. African debates – the reason why these decentralization processes are breakthroughs is that everyone can't take part in these debates – women are excluded, and some families are excluded. You need to be old to take part in debates. The practice today is similar to ancient Greece – culture of public debates, and culture of excluding people from debates. Processes can still exclude people. 80 percent of the population in Mali cannot read or write French – many cannot read or write at all, but many could in their own languages. But French is the official language, so many people were excluded. Debates and commitments in front of others instead of written contracts. Time dedicated to debate gets left aside when only think about technical side because they seem a waste of time.
Gilda: Extremely important to have courage and take risks.
Bernard Billaudot
Social progress and measures a problem of justics
framework: what is societal progress and how we can measure it
not starting from reflection based on wealth, broadening scope from measuring GDP only
instead, start from social justics framework
Historical issue – societal progress is modern concern
Institutional: concern about results from institutions
but it's not the total result, just the areas defined where the institution is intended to impact
Justice societal progress results from justifications based on reason, not just belife
Progress depends on how justice is administered and the values behind justice
All modern societies which exist are based on Western model, First Modernity, one dominating model
first characteristic of model is that only justifications to increase efficiency are acceptable
justice is limited to private spehere
justifications of inequalities it creates if creates greater good
what goods are we talking about? Can they be classified into categories – superior ideas about what is good. Wealth, power, fame.
The good is linked to an ethical, moral, or social value
reference value – freedom if refer to technical efficiency, community then the value is fame
what is their exact meaning
competition v. individuals
second modernity: inequities are unfair – you can't talk about global progress, even with rising indicators, as long as inequalities exist
in Western way of thinking, no link between what is good and what is just
In second modernity, goods are only means toward activities to create well-being
indicators of inequalities
if inequalities increase, have not made progress
conclusion: derives from positive analysis
in western world, only value taken into account is competition
need to agree on joint conventions and individual freedom based on ethical standpoints can justify the same convention but based on different principles.
Gilda: okay, this was quite a complex presentation. Not to oversimplify things, but we are led to identify progress in an ideological fashion. In this notion of progress, we need to be able to assert the primacy of justice.
?You are talking second modernity? Why is this beyond Western? Why are there two concepts of excellence? What do you do with someone who does not share this definition/convention/or how conventions are crafted?
?To reach unanimity, to reach conventions, how do you fight dominant ideas – not everyone will accept forgoing the part of him or herself influenced by conventions?
?Point of the complex presentation appears to be to show us that when we talk about societal progress we work within a large convention in terms of what are the inequalities and in the 1940s and 1950s those who created the national accountancy system they were not naïve, they were operating within the Keynesian system and knew what they were doing. In other words, we should take into account the historical aspects of the justice of excellence, because we need these great conventions to rebuild the system. We need political spaces and find new ones.
Gilda: since we are still in the first modernity, I'd like us to be quite efficient.
B: I define the second modernity as opening up the public debate to including social justice in defining the rules, not a substitution/replacement because the defenders of the first modernity will never accept their replacement. American philospher McIntyre said about justice in the philosophical sense: ancient Greeks and Jews had different notions of justice. Justice in modern context. I don't agree with all his ideas. So the philosophers who adhere to the idea of excellence I mentioned them, then there is Smith and Eros(?), just to name a few. The history that came before the construction of the first modernity, the history of excellence as justice has religious roots, so I wanted to part from that, becaue that's how justice was created after the wars of religion. Religious wars were the end of one particular kind of justice. When inequalities increase, you are still in a position of injustice – justice is model, but still in position of injustice. That's why we need indicators of social progress.
Comments:
Samuel: You end on a question: would an unequal society be better? But when we work with citizens, we get the answer – the citizens have given the answer. Well-being is not present when I see my neighbors living in poverty. We need to listen to citizens and hear what they have to say.
Michele: Of course we need to what citizens have to say, but we need to think about the local dimension which is often considered as the starting point to think about global issues. But the real answer is to deal with global and local at the same time.
Frank: This is a deeper level than I'm used to dealing with. I like the idea of justice criteria as part of what makes a society sustainable. In the world that I'm familiar with, people agree on what they want about life. Where they disagree is what to fix first. Arriving at a common set of priorities is much more difficult.

See part one here. The second session of the day was titled "Reconsidering Societal Progress."

This session was moderated by Enrico Giovannini of the OECD, who began with three quotations for the group to identify the speakers.

“We have used the GDP to determine wrongfully the state of a society. We have not been measuring its vitality. There are two needs: the needs of the body and the needs of the mind. We have been focused, perhaps exclusively so, on the needs of the body.” (I didn't get the full quote)
current Prime Minister of Bhutan

Happiness lies not in the possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement; in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. There must be an end to the conduct in banking and business that too often condones callous and selfish wrongdoing. The people of this country have been erroneously encouraged to increase output of farm and factory without regard to what that means. Without regard to party the great majority achieve well-being through happiness. (Again, that's not the full quote) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“How do we measure the progress of society? By how many find a job that pays the mortgage. (More inspirational stuff follows -- anyone have this quote?) Barack Obama

There is a world movement. This is not a new story. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past. What's different from the last time we had a movement around social indicators? What's different from the work that's we've been doing on sustainable development?

(At this point my computer's battery died and I had to take notes by hand. If you'll check back in a couple of days I'll get them typed up and in here.)

Well-being and Place: an International Conference

7th -9th April 2009, Durham University, United Kingdom

Organised and hosted by the Centre for the Study of Cities & Regions and the Social Wellbeing and Spatial Justice research cluster of the Department of Geography at Durham University in collaboration with the University’s Wolfson Research Institute.

Keynote speakers
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation
Professor Tim Blackman, Director, Wolfson Research Institute, Durham University

Call for papers
Over the last ten years the targets of policy have expanded beyond the purely material and economic to embrace more subjective dimensions of human flourishing. Amongst a range of terms that have entered policy debates, ‘well-being’ has perhaps gained the greatest currency, incorporating both physical and cognitive elements and applied across individual and collective scales of analysis. It is clear that the definition, experience and determinants of well-being will vary in different kinds of places. However, the complex ways in which place and well-being interact remain relatively under-researched and under-theorised.

This conference will draw together research that explicitly links well-being and place. It will advance knowledge and stimulate future directions that are both creative intellectually and timely for contemporary policy debates. The organisers would like to include research from a range of different scales of analysis, across different substantive domains and from both policy-linked and more explorative approaches. The concept of place can be interpreted broadly from geographical locations (urban, rural, city, nation), everyday settings (home, work, school, street, leisure centres) and different scales (individual to international).

We welcome contributions from the academic and policy communities that focus on the relationship between well-being and place, broadly defined. The themes for the sessions will include:

· Home and well-being
· Theory, methods and ethics of well-being
· Transitions: well-being across this life course and the next
· Therapeutic places and unhealthy spaces
· Busy with a purpose; the importance of doing nothing
· Well-being in motion: flows, networks, relations
· and others

Abstracts (200 words) for paper presentations and proposals for panel discussions can be submitted up to 30th November 2008. Please send to Sara Fuller: s.k.fuller@durham.ac.uk. More details about registration and accommodation will be available shortly on the conference website (www.geography.dur.ac.uk/conf/wellbeingandplace).



Dr Beverley A Searle
Research Fellow
Department of Geography
University of Durham
South Road
Durham DH1 3LE

Telephone: 0191 334 1901
Fax: 0191 334 1801

New from The Policy Press:
WELL-BEING; In search of a good life?
Beverley A. Searle
For further details visit http://www.policypress.org.uk

Thursday October 30, 2008

Opening session, Rennes Conference: Building Together Local Indicators for Societal Progress

The opening session began with the promised simultaneous translation available, which was of great help for those of us in the audience who did not speak French. We were welcomed by a series of local and regional dignitaries – the audience was quite pleased that Mrs. Mitterand had joined us. The speakers also shared how the work in Rennes to create indicators of societal progress had created some real change in how public policy was made and how its impacts were assessed. The session also served to set the framework for discussions for the rest of the conference.

I tried to take notes as fast as I could. Here's what I came away with – those of you who were in attendance, please let me know if I missed something important.

Jean-Emile Gombert, Vice-President of the University of Rennes: This public event is a sign of a change of direction, and as academics we will accompany this new direction, this change. Once again, I state how proud my university is of being able to host this event, because the stakes of this meeting are of utmost importance.

Daniel Delaveau, Mayor of Rennes-President of Rennes Metropole: Thanks to everyone on the panel, thank you everyone in the audience, and welcome Mrs. Mitterand who I am grateful to welcome here. You can be confident you have my support. The economic crisis today proves how dangerous and stupid an economic study and policy can be when it does not take into account the human factor. This is a city that lives in solidarity and naturally supports such a project because it believes in a planet living in solidarity. The key is to develop projects at a local level which can be implemented on a global level. This model we call the City of Ideas. We need new indicators that look beyond GDP and look at wealth creation in the context of human development and social development. The need to build new indicators depends on knowing what our values are, and this is often a political process. We need to identify our values and then develop the indicators as tools to assess our progress in implementing these values. We know that there are international values which are encompassed in charters such as the Declaration of Human Rights which is reflected in the Human Development Index. We designed our own index after a conference bringing together researchers and politicians to develop an aggregated indicator with 23 sub-indicators weighted with multiple measurement data – this barometer with three axes that each correspond to an aggregated indicator. This is a practical tool because it helps us understand our progress in every area and is easier for the citizens to understand. We need to develop all sorts of knowledge and the make that knowledge accessible. We illustrate the importance of these indicators through the implementation of policies in economics and housing to ensure that all citizens have services that meet their needs and that we identify and meet the needs for social development of the Rennes Metrople. This will build our competitiveness. We want to provide people with information and show them what our expected performance is. We share this barometer with all our staff and partners. Welcome Mrs. Mitterand and the France Liberty Foundation. I wish you a pleasant stay in our city.

Yves Franchet, President of PEKEA: He was moderating the discussion. Over the past 10 years we've seen the liberalization of trade and revolutionary technology in Web 2.0 that is going to create violent upheaval in the global trade policies. We have also seen the concentration of wealth in the most favored countries. The coordination between local, regional, national, and global is inefficient, especially on the global level, where the countries who make decisions today at the IMF and other places have not changed in the last 60 years. The European government model which is close to us has changed our role in the world but has not led us to the democratization of society we had hoped. Perhaps this crisis is an opportunity to be seized. However, the government too often devolved responsibilities to the local levels without the means or competencies to make things happen. This leads to disappointed citizens and makes them not want to be involved in political life any more. PEKEA was created to federate isolated people and bring ethics back into the mix and give people a voice. The seminar deals with a specific theme – hw do we measure progress? Many researchers have worked on this for years. Over the past years, the GDP has been called into question as a measure of progress, because it does not take into account to social dimension. What should be measured? Who defines the indicators? For us, involving citizens in the design of the indicators is an important part in designing policy to transform society.

Enrico Giovannini, Director-General of Statistics, OECD: We need to look beyond GDP and build together localized indicators of societal progress. This is a very important initiative. This is not just the statistics division that is promoting these activities. The OECD must develop new measures to measure the progress of societies. We have to move towards measuring welfare, not just output. This will constitute a major development in moving the society forward. The Istanbul Conference led to the Istanbul Declaration, and the first message to take this agenda forward is the following:

We must encourage communities to determine for themselves what progress means in the 21st Century. So the center of this progress is the community. The title of this conference allows us to answer the important questions that define for us what we must do to advance this ideal.
First, What: Build indicators
Where: At the local community level
How: together
Why: to create societal progress

The title has all the factors to help us move forward. This is a world movement. The fact that people are here from other countries is just a sign that something is going on everywhere. In Latin America, Asia, Africs, communties and countries are building round tables to determine where we are going, to build indicators to measure progress and create new policies and new socieities. This is an issue of democracy in the 21st century. Building the indicators is not enough unless we involve society and inform society. The OECD is happy to engage not-usual partners for the OECD in this kind of work. The global progress on measuring global progress involves NGOs, national and local authorities, only if we move beyond the classical separation between policy-makers and everyone else can we really attain progress.

Demand to go beyond the idea of “progress” to define where we are really going. Prime Minister of Bhutan said in Istanbul: You economists have contributed to destroying the world, because you invented GDP and got the world focused on the wrong things. You now have the opportunity to fix this problem.

Annie Junter, Co-Director of CRESS, University of Rennes: Warm welcome. The social science research center is a research unit which gathers economists and researchers to look at organizational performance, economic disparities and social cohesion and discrimination. We are an unusual research unit among the universities of France because we pull together multiple academic disciplines around a common concern and the collective construction of research, thinking about the solidarities among the academic, political, and civil sectors. Solidarity, performance, and equality are our three concentrations. Parity between men and women is also a concentration. Also happy to be part of a city which received the Equality Label last September. In the future, we want to consolidate our international and European links; most recently, we have been forging research links with Canada.

Jean Louis Tourenne, President of the General Council of Ille et Vilaine: I have great compassion for you. You know how touchy politicians are. We all want to take the floor and say a few words. I won't acknowledge the experts here, because the list would be took long. If you have time, visit this region and experience the beauty for yourself. We are a bit of masochists because we held this conference here 2 years ago and you shook our ideas and challenged what we thought. You moved us out of our comfort zone. We should have said “Enough with PEKEA!” and moved back to our comfort zone. But instead, we embraced your provocative ideas with a different vision of society than we have today. The question is, how did we managed to get where we are today? Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, we had some idea of what happened on the other side of the wall. But we had a dream in which the human being was at the heart of hope and policies in which we would build a society in which everyone would be included. When the Wall fell, the world moved forward in an ultra-liberal model around creating wealth under a market system. We agreed to that model and built our policies around this market model, and if some people got left by the side of the road, then that was an inevitable result to wealth creation. We used to say, “Tell us what you need, and we'll tell you how you can get along without it.” We got impregnated with ideas such as “wages are too high in France,” without even challenging them – immediate profit was embraced instead of thinking about what that would mean to purchasing power. We accepted a cautious taxation approach, and were ashamed of increasing taxes, as if taxes were not the ultimate expression of redistribution and sharing. This is an element of equality and equal opportunity. We were not even talking about happiness anymore. Sometimes we would blush and shyly say, “We ought to do something about well-being,” but all our measures of progress were in wealth creation and GDP. Our policies favored banks, and never production. We have not learned any lessons. Now we say, “Financial capitalism is dead. We can now focus on capitalism focused on production.” As if capitalism itself didn't create class struggle. As if class struggle was just old-fashioned. As if working to have no classes anymore was not a dream we once had. As if keeping wealth in the hands of a very few people is acceptable public policy. And the biggest injustices are done on and on and on. And we adapted social policy for eldery people or people born damaged so we wouldn't challenge the system but have bandages to make life bearable for those unable to participate fully in the system. And we had to create strict immigration policies, since after we had looted third-world countries we had to keep people out who would think they had a right to some of the wealth we had taken.

Because of the place you were born and the day you were born and the family you were born into, our current model treats you differently. We need a different policy that gives every individual a role to play in his or her territory, and have the means to do so. All individuals need the appropriate training so they have a voice and a judgment in things. We need a new world were life is not measured in acquired wealth but on human happiness. We need measures of happiness, of sustainable development, of well-being. Building indicators only makes sense if you first define the objectives you want to reach and have stated what your ideal society is, so that you can measure the gap between what you want and where you are today, so that you can design policies to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

We in local government have a great interest in PEKEA because we are in direct touch with the population. This is an opportunity to create a decent civilization. And that's all I have to say.

Alain Yvergniaux, Regional Council of Bretagne: I want to welcome you here, and I share what Mr. Delaveux has just said. I used to be on the Rennes-Metropole council and worked with PEKEA then. Let me tell you of the interest that we as politicians have in this work. I was impressed back in December 2002 how original the proposals were at a conference PEKEA put on. You set up an international, multi-disciplinary network, mixing economists, historians, philosophers, and many other researchers and wished your research not to be conifined to academics but to be used to fuel the thinking of local governments and that local governments should be part of the original thinking going on. We found this unique and exciting. We decided after the conference in 2002 do develop a club of local governments to link your research to a group of politicians who could implement your work in public policy, and it is now becoming reality. Nord-Pas Calais, Rennes, Bretagne Region all take part in the work, and this needs to continue. We need alternative indicators to measure the impacts of our policies on our populace and our region. Of course we support this initiative today. We also have an Agenda 21 approach to design new indicators and a new way to design our public policy so that we can include the impacts of our policies on the well-being of citizens. Your topics may have been selected a year ago, but they are much more relevant today. We are dealing with crises in economics, food, employment, environment that are marking the end of an old way of thinking and the end of this development model. We need a new development model that addresses environmental and social issues, all brought together in a model of sustainable development. Don't forget the environment in your discussions – we as a group of governments were meeting yesterday around climate change issues, and the news form the experts is not encouraging.

PEKEA is a pioneer in this approach. I'm working on an economic development project between Brittany and Western Africa and am working with the United Nations on the development model. Many people are interested in PEKEA and the development of a new development model.
Gilda Farrell, Director of the Development Division of Social Cohesion, Council of Europe: Ponder the meaning of the word “together” -- not just multi-disciplinary approach, a plurality of intelligences and life experiences. We are debating the concept of well-being not just to open up research and thought itself for a plurality of academic and scientific approaches. We want to make it possible for a society to build collaborations. We don't have another model at hand to build utopia. We need to build a new knowledge that goes beyond a multi-disciplinary approach. Now we don't believe that our citizens are knowledgeable enough. We have been neglecting them. We focus only on some types of knowledge. We need to go beyond – to dare call into question the principles by which we work and which govern us. We need to define well-being, to define progress. We are stuck in a polarization of preferences. Are we still able to have what I would call concerted preferences. The most interesting preferences are the ones that open up space for life within a society. We understand that citizens clearly see where the limits are, what is tenable and what is not. By doing so, we trust the word of the citizens. Once we have understood that we need to consider the future in terms of the immaterial, and immaterial rights, we can begin to build better indicators. We need to consider the primacy of individual human rights whenever we are gathering around a common project – we may have been talking about limits, but the exchange of ideas are unlimited. I want to take this opportunity to invite you to a follow-up seminar 27-28 November 2008 about individual well-being and the promotion of societal well-being.

Michel Renault, Director of the ISBET-PEKEA Project, University of Rennes: We are cooperating with local authorities to build indicators together with ISBET because it's the building together that's most important. Indicators are not a one-way process. We hve many scientific theories, but we need a means to involve the citizens. We live in a society that got used to listening to experts. We desire to share knowledge – we don't want to be in a society where knowledge has been confiscated by experts who tell us what to think. I'd like to pay tribute to all who are participating, and to Marc Humbert, who cannot be with us. He's been appointed president of a Franco-Japanese (something). He's launched so many projects in this field and we are all indebted to his work.

With that, the first session ended and we got a chance for a break. I missed some of the comments while taking notes, so if you have corrections, edits, or anything to add, please let me know.