Presentation
The RG delves deep into mainstream views and strongly emphasises the social, cultural, and political dimensions determining individuals' livelihoods and ensuring intergenerational sustainability. It highlights how local specificities can limit or enhance people's capabilities to confront power relations and intervene locally in global inequalities. This RG explores geographical contexts worldwide, such as Southern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Studying diverse ethnographic contexts aims to uncover the unique aspects of different social and everyday worlds. Furthermore, this approach allows researchers to compare and contrast how local communities interact with global dynamics regarding social, political, and economic factors. This RG values postcolonial perspectives and favours explanatory, critical, and interpretive approaches over top-down categories. The RG uses a range of methodological strategies, focusing on long-term ethnographic research, and analyses various themes such as gender, ecology, citizenship, and health. It hopes to discover new insights into these complex issues by encouraging interdisciplinary initiatives and critical collaborative synergies. This RG aims to create a "Forum of cumulative and well-being crises" to promote an academic and public discussion towards a holistic framework of well-being analysis in Portugal. Anthropology is uniquely positioned to rethink the definition of quality of life, with people’s livelihoods and struggles at its centre, within the context of ecological limits and sustainability of planetary resources. The forum will generate academic and public productions to improve public policies and investments and promote alternative development models.
