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PARADIGM-ORIENTED ANALYSIS OF WELLBEING
Abstract
The article delves into the problem of representation of various images (metaphors) of wellbeing which are constituted and reproduced in various academic disciplines. At the present time there are great numbers of scientific approaches and concepts of wellbeing which at times touch upon different aspects of man’s life. These approaches often do not agree with each other. This article presents an attempt to construct an integral matrix of wellbeing theories which will provide for the review of various wellbeing concepts from the common standpoint. The conception of “wellbeing” is extremely complicated and it cannot be defined unequivocally and exactly, just through listing its qualities. We suppose that the conception of wellbeing reflects conceptions of what “good life” is in a given cultural and historical situation. These conceptions manifest themselves in form of certain images and metaphors that act as time-specific indications of good life within a given cultural system. The main methods of research are paradigm-oriented analysis and metaphor analysis. The examination of wellbeing conceptions is angled towards the metaphorical field through which the image of “good life” is described in these conceptions. In the course of the further analysis paradigmatic foundations of the selected images of “good life” are revealed. For the purpose of this article we discern four paradigms of scientific approach in social studies which determine basic metaphors of wellbeing – the functionalist, radical-structuralist, radical-humanist and interpretative (Burrell and Morgan). For the functionalist paradigm the basic metaphor is the concept of “order”, for radical-structuralist – “power” and “dominance”, for radical-humanist – “emancipation”, for interpretative – “activity”.
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