ABSTRACT
This chapter examines geographical engagements with wellbeing. It discusses some of the conceptual and methodological issues that concern social research on wellbeing. The chapter focuses on two particular streams of work: a welfare-oriented mobilization of wellbeing associated with social geography and, wellbeing scholarship that has emerged from within health geography. It reviews a selection of welfare-oriented geographical work on wellbeing, including the development of territorial social indicators during the 1970s, work on quality of life and life satisfaction liveability, and more recent investigations into the geographies of happiness and cultural constructions of wellbeing. The chapter also considers work on wellbeing that has emerged from within health geography, including studies of therapeutic landscapes, green space, healthy cities', and the emotional dimensions of place attachment. If welfare oriented analyses are one significant stream of geographical scholarship on wellbeing, then health geography is the other.
