Perspective Chapter: Well-Being and Culture – An African Perspective
Well-being as a subject is often looked at from a Western perspective, including definitions and measurements. This, however, ignores the sociocultural characteristics of individuals or groups that may be crucial to the subjective conceptualization of well-being. The concept of well-being relates to...
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| Autores principales: | , |
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| Formato: | Capítulo de libro |
| Lenguaje: | inglés |
| Publicado: |
IntechOpen
2023
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/85871 |
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| Sumario: | Well-being as a subject is often looked at from a Western perspective, including definitions and measurements. This, however, ignores the sociocultural characteristics of individuals or groups that may be crucial to the subjective conceptualization of well-being. The concept of well-being relates to understanding how people derive and interpret wellness regarding their interactions with other humans within the family, community and social context. This viewpoint of well-being is presented in this chapter as “holistic” from a cultural approach. The notion of well-being from an African perspective is usually defined within the framework of group norms, values, kinship relationships and ties entrenched in cultural values. The concept of well-being in this sense also runs counter to the idea of well-being in western cultures. The African is a ‘group person’, a ‘family person’ and the ‘we person’. These sociocultural features are presumed to affect or influence well-being, mental health and treatment. This chapter expounds on techniques to effectively understand the culture in health from the African perspective. We submit that culturally sensitive measures of well-being will aid deeper exploration of the construct within the African setting and allow for a construct base comparison between Western and African settings. |
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| ISBN: | 978-1-83768-583-7 |
| DOI: | 10.5772/intechopen.109842 |