Project description
The commercialisation of wellbeing in Southeast Asia
In the 21st century, Southeast Asia’s wellness industry is thriving. People worldwide travel to the region for yoga, meditation, spa retreats, detox diets, anti-aging therapies, and emotional healing. This trend is driven by rising anxiety, longer lifespans and a growing global middle class. The ERC-funded WELL-ASIA project studies the commercialisation of wellbeing as ‘wellness’ in 21st-century Southeast Asia. It examines the social, economic and moral implications of pursuing wellness and explores the global interactions between industry workers, consumers and local communities. The project focuses on Singapore, Chiang Mai (Thailand) and Ubud (Indonesia), aiming to understand how the commercialisation of wellbeing is transforming local economies and transnational mobilities and shaping new perceptions of health in a globalised world.
Objective
WELL-ASIA studies the commercialization of wellbeing as ‘wellness’ in twenty-first century Southeast Asia, a region with one of the fastest growing wellness industries in the world. People from within and beyond Asia are travelling more than ever before in search of yoga, meditation and spa retreats, detoxifying diets, anti-ageing therapies, and emotionally-healing experiences. This growing interest in wellness takes shape in the context of increasing anxiety, longevity in a rapidly ageing world, and a growing global middle-class. WELL-ASIA examines the people and places involved in producing, sustaining, and contesting the idea of wellness in contemporary Asia. The project asks: What social, economic and moral transformations, and what new patterns of inequality does the pursuit of wellness generate? How are diverse interests brought into tension and negotiated in the transnational encounters between (i) those who labour in the industry, (ii) the travellers who consume its services, and (iii) the local communities involved? Situated in Southeast Asia, where multiple healing traditions circulate transnationally, often with deep historical roots, this multi-sited ethnographic study focusses on three sites that exhibit both the diversity and distinctiveness of wellness in the region: Singapore, Chiang Mai, and Ubud. The project will involve an interdisciplinary team working in the fields of social anthropology, political and economic geography, media and cultural studies. WELL-ASIA contends that the expansion of commercial wellness is unevenly transforming local economies, reconfiguring transnational mobilities, and bringing to light emergent, highly mobile, and marketable visions of what it means to be well in a hyper-capitalist and interconnected world, in ways that transcend the boundaries of health itself.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social sciencessociologyanthropologysocial anthropology
- social sciencessociologyglobalization
- social sciencessocial geographycultural and economic geography
- social sciencessociologydemographyhuman migrations
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
6200 MD Maastricht
Netherlands