Assemblages of Wellbeing in Human Geography
Summary
The assemblage perspective in human geography reframes wellbeing as an emergent outcome of dynamic interplays among social actors, material artefacts, environments and practices. Rather than attributing health and happiness to discrete individual or structural factors, this approach attends to the fluid configurations through which people, places, things and discourses coalesce to produce capacious states of thriving. By emphasising relationality and situatedness, assemblage-thinking reveals how wellbeing is enacted through everyday affective encounters in diverse locales – from urban streetscapes and community art initiatives to virtual environments and green landscapes. This shift challenges componential models that isolate variables and instead offers a holistic lens on how resources are mobilised, maintained and transformed across scales. The global significance of this framework lies in its capacity to inform policy and intervention by recognising the multiplicities and contingencies of wellbeing. Practical applications span the design of inclusive public spaces, digital platforms that foster salutogenic online experiences, and mental health initiatives that harness ‘enabling landscapes’ to support recovery and social inclusion. In sum, assemblages of wellbeing underscore the importance of attending to the emergent, contingent and embodied dimensions of health and flourishing in human geography.
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Assemblages of Wellbeing in Human Geography publication trend
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Technical terms
Assemblage: An emergent configuration of heterogeneous human and non-human elements whose interactions produce particular effects, such as wellbeing.
Enabling landscape: A constellation of places, material features and social practices that collectively support capacities for agency, belonging and recovery.
Relationality: The quality of interdependence and interaction among social, material and spatial components within an assemblage.
More-than-representational: An approach emphasising affective, embodied and non-discursive dimensions of experience beyond textual or symbolic representation.
References
- The Impacts of Online Experience on Health and Well-Being: The Overlooked Aesthetic Dimension. Virtual Worlds (2023).
- ‘Living needs a landscape’: A qualitative study about the role of enabling landscapes for people with mental health and substance abuse problems. Health & Place (2023).
- Beyond Components of Wellbeing: The Effects of Relational and Situated Assemblage. Topoi (2013).
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