Narratives of Wellbeing

Tarryn Phillips is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of Crime, Justice and Legal Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. Conducting ethnographic research alongside Fijian communities for over a decade, she has published widely on issues of diabetes, health inequality, poverty and nutrition. Her most recent book is an ethnographic novel, with Edward Narain, called Sugar (University of Toronto Press, 2024).Natalie Araújo is Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. Her work focuses on intersecting issues of structural violence, trauma, agency, and gender in Latin America, the Latin American diaspora, and the Pacific, and within Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities in Australia.Timothy Willem Jones is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University, Australia. His research focuses on the changing relationship between religion, sexuality, gender and wellbeing in modernity. His publications include the monograph Sexual Politics in the Church of England, 1857-1957, and co-edited volumes Material Religion in Modern Britain, and Love and Romance in Modern Britain, 1917-1970.John Taylor (Jack) is Associate Professor and Anthropology Program Convenor in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. His publications on tourism include the book Consuming Identity: modernity and tourism in New Zealand and the co-edited book Touring Pacific Cultures.

• 1. Interrogating wellbeing through a narrative frame.- 2. Wellbeing in a world of want.- 3. Secularisation, wellness industries, and nonreligious spiritual health care.- 4. Narratives of health and wellness in the construction of place: The case of Palm.- 5. Narrativising spirituality, wellness, and planetary wellbeing.- 6. Uprooting and grounding: Migrant gardeners, urban food cultivation, and cultural wellbeing.- 7. Living through back-to-back public health crises in Samoa: Mutual narrative creation and research practices.- 8. From sickness unto life: How community and belonging can bolster wellbeing during serious illness and end-of-life care.- 9. ‘Uncle Lou turning over’: Demedicalising wellbeing through the trans-masculine community archives.- 10. Gutpela sindaun: Narratives of wellbeing in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.- 11. The land is life: Contesting food security and development initiatives through gendered narratives of wellbeing in urban and peri-urban Vanuatu.- 12. Answering the call: Narrative of authenticity, identity, and connection in ‘wellness tourism’ advertising.- 13. From magical thinking to being ‘pragmagic’: Narratives of wellbeing in health and social care in England.