Economics and subjectivities of wellbeing in rural Zambia

Mixed method research in Chiawa rural Zambia explores the importance of the economic within subjective dimensions of wellbeing. Statistical analysis shows a close relationship between subjective economic confidence and overall happiness, and that objective economic status predicts some subjective dimensions of wellbeing. Qualitative analysis explores the role of economic capacity in forging (male) gender identities; the emphasis on reciprocity and a moral economy; and the use of economics as an expressive idiom in speaking of the self. This implies that economic and social rights should remain at the heart of development policy-making, but also the need to bring economics, the body, the mind and materiality more clearly into the social world.