Social Well-being, Development, and Multiple Modernities in Asia

Book excerpt: This book presents an integrated international exploration of social well-being from a comparative standpoint: how it is framed, how it is perceived by the people, and how it is exploited by the state. It provides a genuine multicultural and multidimensional understanding of social well-being in an Asian context by showing the strength of comparative analysis. The idiosyncrasy of an individual society is reinterpreted through the universality of harmonized data analysis and imaginative discussion of the findings. The book offers the reader a deep understanding of how social well-being is framed in eight Asian countries, how it is contextualized in each society, and how it is correlated with the concept of development and sustainability. Articulated by carefully chosen examples, historical background, and interpretation of the latest data analysis, this book is highly recommended to readers who seek to understand the relationship among the well-being of individuals, national development, and global sustainability.