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Trying to Measure Local Well-Being: Indicator Development as a Site of Discursive Struggles

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  • Karen Scott

    (Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England)

  • Derek Bell

    (Politics, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, 40-42 Great North Road, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England)

Abstract

The New Labour government in the UK encouraged all local authorities to develop quality-of-life indicators. Development of these indicators was intended to engage local people in a shared vision for their area and to effect improvements in local well-being and sustainability. However, international research has reported a failure of such instruments to generate concrete policy change. This paper reports on a three-year ethnographic study in one local authority in North East England which took a discursive approach to analysing indicator development. The research shows how indicator development acted as a ‘site of struggle’ between competing discourses. These discursive struggles may have hampered the development of a set of indicators, but they allowed different conceptions of well-being, participation, indicators, and the policy-making process to be discussed and deliberated, inducing discursive shifts in the political arena. Policy makers and scholars should therefore place more focus on the process of developing indicators rather than the indicators that are produced, as it is these which have the potential to produce longer term effects on policy making.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Scott & Derek Bell, 2013. "Trying to Measure Local Well-Being: Indicator Development as a Site of Discursive Struggles," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 31(3), pages 522-539, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:31:y:2013:i:3:p:522-539
    DOI: 10.1068/c10127
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Helene Rey-Valette & Francis Laloe & Jean Le Fur, 2007. "Introduction to the key issue concerning the use of sustainable development indicators," International Journal of Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 10(1/2), pages 4-13.
    2. Paul-Marie Boulanger, 2007. "Political uses of social indicators: overview and application to sustainable development indicators," International Journal of Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 10(1/2), pages 14-32.
    3. Milan Dluhy & Nicholas Swartz, 2006. "Connecting Knowledge and Policy: The Promise of Community Indicators in the United States," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 79(1), pages 1-23, October.
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