Prof. Fouad Beseiso Member of ISQOLS Latest Scientific Contribution on Happiness Economics

Prof. Beseiso joined the Arab Economic Conference on “ The  Arab Development Between Current Challenges and the 4^th Industrial Revolution Realm “  Which has been organized by The Arab Economic Research Society, the Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait and the Arab Union of Chambers of Commerce in Beirut - Lebanon .The Conference was held in Beirut-Lebanon on 13-14 December 2019 . Dr. Beseiso contributed to the conference with a research Paper on “The Role of The Socio-Economic, Political and Moral System Arising From The Economics of Happiness In Approaching Successfully The 4^th Industrial Revolution “ . At the final session of the conference The Arab Economic Research Society while celebrating its 30^th founding anniversary awarded its Founding members honoring Accolades. Prof. Beseiso was one of these Economists who enjoyed the Society Honoring. The Conference was attended by highly practisional Arab Economists who contributed through their research papers and discussions a deep analytical views towards the main question on  how to manage successfully  the various requirements of the forth Industrial Revolution.

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS | ISQOLS

Western Economic Association International

95TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Denver, Colorado, June 26–30, 2020

Keynote Addresses by

Maurice Obstfeld, UC Berkeley,

and John Shoven, Stanford

International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies

sponsored conference sessions

Organized by

• Kelsey J. O’Connor, STATEC Research (Luxembourg)
• Francesco Sarracino, STATEC Research (Luxembourg)
• Malgorzata Switek, University of Southern California

Present a Paper

If you are interested in presenting a paper on the

economics of happiness, please send your paper title,

abstract, list of authors, and contact information to

kelsey.oconnor@statec.etat.lu by January 17, 2020.

Authors of accepted papers will be notified by January

31, 2020.

Chair a Session

Give others the benefits of your expertise and help foster

the exchange of ideas. If you are interested, send your

complete contact information to

kelsey.oconnor@statec.etat.lu.

ISQOLS WEAI Sponsored Conference Sessions.pdf

The Journal of Well-being and Leisure in Africa (JWLA) is a scientific, blind peer-reviewed journal, which elicits anonymous reviews of a high standard.

The Journal of Well-being and Leisure in Africa (JWLA) is a scientific, blind peer-reviewed journal, which elicits anonymous reviews of a high standard. JWLA is an open access journal and is licensed by Creative Commons Attribution International. The JWLA accepts manuscripts from the African continent as well as within the international context from the broader Social-, Economic & Management- and Natural (health) Sciences.

The JWLA is devoted, but not limited to research in:

- Well-being (happiness, satisfaction with life, quality-of-life, and life domains) and
- Leisure (leisure well-being) in its broadened form.

The outcomes should focus on:

- Well-being as a multidimensional concept, and
- JWLA furthermore encourages a multidisciplinary approach, from the perspective of individuals, communities and society.

Publication is:

-  Annually, with multiple volumes. 

Learn more at: https://journals.nwu.ac.za/jwla

My Latest Quality-of-Life related Works to Share with ISQOLS Community

Takashi Inoguchi

Institute of Asian Cultures

J. F. Oberlin University (Tokyo)

*I acknowledge gratefully the comments made by Prof. Richard J. Estes on an earlier draft of this piece.

Since I was given the honor of delivering the Alex Michalos Lecture at the 2017 ISQOLS annual conference at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Inoguchi, 2017), two developments have taken place in my quality of life related research. One is the revised enriched publication of my lecture in Hong Kong.

 These more recent findings are reported in the forthcoming book chapter:

Takashi Inoguchi, "An evidence-based typology of Asian societies: What do Asian societies look like from the bottom up instead of top down?" in Takashi Inoguchi, ed., The Sage Handbook of Asian Foreign Policy, vol.2, London: Sage Publications, forthcoming in February 2020. 

My theoretical typology of societies has two key merits: (1) evidence-based; and, (2) bottom up. In the author's view, this typology is unique, original and innovative in that daily life satisfaction is taken up to construct the characteristics of a society whereby cross-national comparative measures determine the various social, political, and economic dimensions of individual society. I have attempted to identify adequate public policy scheme in the United Nations 'Sustainable Development Goals' project--one of my current interests that overlap with the typology’s various dimensions. I explain why my scheme would be immensely helpful. Thirty-seven sustainable development goals need the good grasp of people's satisfaction with daily life in sixteen domains (housing, standard of living, household income, health, education, job, friendships, marriage, neighbors, family life, leisure, spiritual life, public safety, conditions of the environment, social welfare system, democratic system) on top of the empirical reality of developmental achievements and prospects.

Examining selected aspects of various UN Sustainable Development Goals reports convinces me of the need to know where people--neither the national government and its relevant bureaucratic agencies nor UN and international specialized organizations, nor business--are dissatisfied and therefore seeking advice as to how to prioritize the attention and advice of the national government, UN agencies, businesses. People's real dissatisfactions here and there are gauged by grass-roots-level opinion polls. Otherwise, UN SDGs will end up with the highly technocratic exercise.

Fortuitously, The Financial Times (FT) calls a better form of capitalism, which points to the same weakness as the UN SDGs scheme, i.e., stakeholder capitalism with those holding stocks reigning supreme. FT says: “The long-term health of free enterprise capitalism will depend on delivering profit with purpose. Companies will come to understand that this combination serves their self-interest as well as their customers and employees. Without change, the prescription risks being far more painful." "Free enterprise capitalism has shown a remarkable capacity to reinvent itself. At times, as the historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay wisely noted, it is necessary to reform in order to preserve. Today, the worlds has reached that moment. It is time for a reset." (Financial Times, September 16, 1919).

In the UN SDGs case, largely forgotten at least in the UN SDG documents are people, especially popular dissatisfaction about quality of life as manifested in their daily life. We focus on East Asia where our expertise lies in terms of the availability of a number of polls of quality of life such as those led by Takashi Inoguchi, Noriko Iwai, and Ryozo Yoshino.

The second is the extension of quality of life studies on a global scale. The book, coauthored with Lien T.Q. Le and entitled:

Takashi Inoguchi and Lien T.Q. Le, The Development of Global Legislative Politics: Rousseau and Locke Writ Global, Springer, forthcoming in November 2019.

What has driven the earth on which a liberal world order has been flourished since World War II? We contend that it is the growth of multilateral treaties. If Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and John Locke's social contract ideas are writ global under digitalized globalization, global quality of life can be gauged surrounding a bunch of global quasi-social contracts, i.e., 511 multilateral treaties, as of 2019. On the basis of them the liberal world order has struggled, survived and thrived until recently because they are 'transformative' in the sense that joining them encourages both domestic and global improvements of quality of life among joiners on a global scale. At home sovereign states must see to it that the direction and distribution of citizens' preferences whether it is about parental authority, or about intellectual property rights, or about nuclear ban. If domestic laws contradict with clauses of a proposed treaty, one may start to work toward revising the concerned domestic law or leave it unrevised and opt for not joining the concerned multilateral treaty. At the same time one has another front. Beyond your society, one may watch international environments concerning the concerned multilateral treaty. If you feel strong affinity about culture, identity, religion, history and geography with a certain group of states, you may be inclined to tilt your treaty decision about a concerned treaty to a certain group of states. If you feel that a concerned treaty falls in the policy domain, say, health and  labor, in which your society may not be confident to sustain the WHO's international standards immediately soon, you may a s well opt for joining but with some reservations attached as to compliance with the WHO's multilateral treaties. The point here is that multilateral treaties are intrinsically tied with both domestic and external engagements whereby your sovereign state must juggle, jostle and struggle to secure your own interests and priorities and at the same time it must see to it that your external environments may not be triggered to be metamorphosed by your disharmonious unilateral moves and that your inattention to the "red lines" of those states that stand hegemonic to your country as far as alliance and defense policy. Here important to note is that our scheme does neither presume the salutation of the Westphalian model where a sovereign state stands as if to say that I stand higher than thou nor the acceptance of the extreme model of globalization whereby liberalism sweeps every intermediate organizations out beneath a pure global market. Implicit trust matters in the whole process of joining and together implementing a bundle of global quasi-social contracts.

For the next few years I now envisage a little optimistically to write two books. One is:

Takashi Inoguchi, Eight Types of Asian Societies: Bottom Up and Evidence-Based (in preparation).

and the other is:

Takashi Inoguchi and Lien T.Q. Le, The Birth and Development of Global Legislative Politics: East Asia in Focus (provisional title)

With the proofing processes of the two forthcoming books being about to end, as of September 2019, I thought that I might as well share a reflective and prospective piece for the better communications with ISQOLS community.

Click to learn more about Takashi Inoguchi.

The Handbook of Quality of Life in African Societies  published in the International handbooks of Quality of Life Series is being written about on the United Nations Academic Impact website!

See:  https://academicimpact.un.org/content/zero-hunger-series-africa-not-broken-tale-african-innovations-food-and-well-being  

Congratulations to the editor, Irma Erloff, and the editor for the series, Graciela Tonon! 

The Fall 2019 Social Indicators Network News (SINET), the official newsletter for ISQOLS, is available now to read now. Click on the link below to read: 

Advancing the Research on Resiliency: Fostering Resilient Outcomes for Youth

 

Children and adolescents today are increasingly faced with adversity, including poverty, chronic exposure to violence, and traumatic life events. The ability to thrive despite these significant stressors—or being “resilient”—has been a focus of interdisciplinary research spanning the past several decades. Resiliency theory focuses on the “protective processes” both within the individual and their environmental circumstances.¹ Despite the complexity of these processes, research suggests that resilience can be learned and schools can play an essential role in the development of resilient skills among youth.²

 

Much of the research to date has focused on contextual factors such as parent and school relationships. Comparatively fewer studies have focused on specific internal attributes or processes that enable youth to thrive even in the face of adversity. Further, most of the research is correlational. There is a need to understand the efficacy of evidence-based interventions to promote resiliency in youth.

 

School Psychology invites authors to submit empirical studies evaluating universal or targeted school-based interventions aimed at promoting resiliency or teaching resilient skills among school-aged youth. We are especially interested in studies that utilize rigorous research designs to empirically evaluate short- and long-term outcomes. Studies that address the sustainability of these intervention in school settings and the role of the school psychologist in their delivery are especially encouraged.

 

The deadline for initial submission is October 15^th, 2019. Any questions related to this special section can be addressed to Stephanie Fredrick (fredr1ss@cmich.edu).   

 

¹Luthar, S. S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543-562.

 

²Forbes, S. & Fikretoglu, D. (2018). Building resilience: The conceptual basis and research evidence for resilience training programs. Review of General Psychology, 22, 452-468.  

Call for Papers Advancing the Research on Resiliency.docx

International Conference “Well-being 2020: knowledge for informed decisions”

Hotel Parc Bellevue, Luxembourg, 18 – 21 of March 2020

Organized by The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (STATEC) and the Ministry of the Economy, Luxembourg

Endorsed by the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS; isqols.org)

This international conference will bring together leading scholars to discuss the quest for better lives. Economists traditionally advocated economic growth as the foremost policy goal, but now even economists often challenge this view. The discussion remains open, indeed flourishes, with more contributors than ever. How do we promote well-being? What are the best policies? What is the role for civil society?

The conference will take place over three and a half days from 18 – 21 of March 2020. We have scheduled one keynote speaker for each day and a roundtable discussing how policy-makers can integrate the findings from well-being studies.

Topics of the conference

This is an interdisciplinary conference welcoming contributions from every field of social sciences, such as: economics, sociology, psychology, and political sciences. We especially welcome papers on the following topics:

·       Correlates and consequences of well-being and ill-being (e.g. personality, wealth, productivity, immigration, occupation, health);

·       Well-being over time;

·       Well-being inequality;

·       Inequality, social capital, and inclusive growth;

·       Well-being and the changing environment;

·       Public or private interventions for well-being and their evaluations;

·       Future directions in well-being research.

·       Well-being and ill-being metrics (e.g. single indicators vs. dashboards; micro vs. macro);

Key-note speakers

Our four key-note speakers are: prof. Stefano Bartolini, University of Siena; Mr. John De Graaf, an American author, journalist and film-maker; prof. Carol Graham, Brookings Institution and University of Maryland; and prof. Andrew Oswald, University of Warwick.

Round table

On Friday morning the conference will host a round table on “Policy meets research” where representatives of institutions will discuss advantages, disadvantages and limitations of the well-being approach in policy making.

Paper submission and deadlines

To apply, please, submit an abstract complete with name of the author/s and a title to: submitSWB2020@statec.etat.lu. Extended abstracts and full manuscripts are welcome.

The deadline for application is the 15 October 2019. We will notify the authors of accepted papers by mid-December 2019.

For more information, please, visit our conference web-site (www.wellbeing2020.lu) or send an e-mail to: infoSWB2020@statec.etat.lu

We look forward to welcoming you in Luxembourg,

The scientific committee:

Serge Allegrezza, STATEC

Martijn Burger, Erasmus University of Rotterdam

Conchita d’Ambrosio, University of Luxembourg

Johannes Hirata, Osnabruck University

Kelsey O’Connor, STATEC

Chiara Peroni, STATEC

Maurizio Pugno, University of Cassino

Francesco Sarracino, STATEC

visit our website (https://www.wellbeing2020.lu/) or feel free to contact us (submitSWB2020@statec.etat.lu).

The deadline for submissions is the 15th of October 2019.

Call-for-Papers-Wellbeing2020.pdf

ISQOLS educational grant 

I am Shoirakhon Nurdinova, an educational grant recipient. I am grateful that I have received an educational grant which made enable me to trip to the International Society for Quality of Life Studies conference. I attended at ISQOLS Conference in Granada, Spain with my presentation entitled “Are Turkish Housewives Happy?: A Qualitative Approach”. My presentation focused on happiness of Turkish housewives, whom I conducted semi-structured interviews. The interviews with 60 housewives from different regions of Turkey explores factors affecting women’s decisions to/to not participate in labour market, and their happiness level. The presentation allowed me to introduce my research findings to ISQOLS members and conference participants  and expand my academic network.

 I enjoyed to other participants’ presentations, in particular on wellbeing/happiness of working/non-working women. Carina Keldenich’s presentation “Happy Homemakers or Desperate Housewives? Work, Parenthood and Women’s Affective Well-Being” was quite close to my topic.

ISQOLS conference was very important for networking on my research and future career. Networking is beneficial for me in sharing information, getting in touch with experts in terms of scientific collaborations and developing research ideas.  Furthermore, networks influence me positively to improve new skills and to make scientific achievements in my future entire academic career. Feedbacks of experts improved my future scientific approaches. Also, ISQOLS conference was good opportunity to stay up to date with current best practices and cutting edge methodologies in the field.

Another beneficial part of the event was ISQOLS mentor mixer program, which provide young ISQOLS members with experienced mentors. I am lucky that I met my mentor Prof. Ming-Chang Tsai. We discussed about my future career goals, research interests, publishing opportunities etc. during mentor mixer program. Also, we discussed about my future research on happiness in Central Asia, which is quite new research area in Central Asia. I believe that mentorship program would be helpful me to develop more effective tools and methodologies on happiness economics, quality-of-life-studies in Central Asian Countries.

ISQOLS conference gave me motivation and a new perspective on my work and research.

Yours faithfully, Shoirakhon Nurdinova

17^th ISQOLS Annual Conference in Granada, Spain, 4-7 September 2019

by Natalia Kopylova

University of Johannesburg, South Africa,

email: nataliakopylova@hotmail.com

24 September 2019

I attended the ISQOLS conference that took place in beautiful Granada. It was my first international conference and I will remember it for the rest of my life.

I was given the opportunity to not only present the topic “Subjective wellbeing in countries in transition: Russia and South Africa” but also be the chair of the session “Well-being around the world” which took place on the 5^th of September (the second day of the conference). It was a nerve-wracking moment, considering that I’ve never presented internationally. In my opinion, the session was received successfully by academic researchers and experts that attended parallel session that morning.

During the conference, I was able to attend numerous sessions and workshops that directly relate to my research interests. The speakers provided valuable information that will help me going further. For example, the keynote lectures by Stefano Bartollini and Michael Marmot were inspiring and thought provoking. The first one focused on money, social relationships and people’s happiness. Whereas the second speaker concentrated on health inequalities and social determinants of health. On the first day of the conference (4^th of September) I took part in the pre-conference workshop by Lara Fleischer “The future of OECD well-being measures”. It was an interactive session where all attendants participated in the discussion of the proposed headline indicators set. The dashboard of the indicators will assist me further when conducting one of my PhD topics. On the third day (6^th of September) I was present at the morning parallel session on “Quality of life among the elderly”. Presenters investigated the elderly’s well-being, their activities and proposed methods that could be used in order to improve their lives. The afternoon session of “Happiness and technology” showed a different perspective on the measurement of the levels of happiness among the people.

Being in the first year of my PhD, this conference gave me great exposure to a plethora of new content and opened the door to many opportunities. I was fortunate enough to meet international academics whose work I have read and cited which was the highlight of my trip. There was always a chance to interact and exchange views during the conference sessions and coffee breaks. This conference was an eye-opening experience that gave me more knowledge and confidence for the future.

I would like to thank the ISQOLS for giving me the Educational Grant. A special thank you to my supervisor, Prof. Talita Greyling, who introduced me to this field and provided such generous support and guidance. It was a great pleasure to be a participant in such a momentous event.