Advancing Education in Muslim Societies, an initiative of IIIT, hosted its last Human Development webinar of the spring academic semester on June 9, 2022. Dr. Mark Fabian, deputy director at the Institute for Social Change in the University of Tasmania, delivered an insightful presentation titled, “Wellbeing and Public Policy: A Contextualist Approach.” The talk was moderated by Dr. Ilham Nasser, the Director of the Human Development program at IIIT.

Dr. Fabian explained that wellbeing is a value-laden concept which is often not captured fully in the economist-driven scientific models such as life satisfaction surveys. Therefore, current wellbeing policy is not informative enough and is based on a deficit approach to human beings. Dr. Fabian suggested that for policy to better serve the public, we need a contextualist approach that brings members of the public, service providers, and academics into conversation so that their respective lived experience, practitioner know-how, and technical expertise are all taken into account for a public policy on wellbeing that is legitimate, implementable, and rigorous. In that sense, Dr. Fabian is advocating for a bottom-up rather than top-down framework to public policy.

During the Question and Answer session, Dr. Fabian further explained that the purely economic approach is “bad for the planet and disconnecting our societies, even though it may be technically sound.” He said we need to be willing to explore other models and improve their robustness.

The recording of the webinar can be viewed here.