Final report - Integrated Land Management Bureau

(no equivalent objective) Social processes
4.4 DESCRIPTIONS OF HUMAN WELL-BEING COMPONENTS
Most researchers recognize that factors affecting human well-being are woven together in
a complex web and cannot be fully isolated from each other. While these components are
often studied as isolated individual factors, they have extensive feedback loops. Health
and education influence economics; social processes influence health status and so on.
However, for purposes of measurement and assessment, they are necessarily separated
into individual components.
4.4.1 Social processes
Social processes refer to the set of indicators that describe the community processes that
lead to other factors of HWB (“how things got to be this way”) (Beckley et. al 2002).
This includes social networks (capital), social cohesion, and sense of place that are
purported to exist in varying degrees within communities and are increasingly reported in
the literature to affect individual well-being factors such as economics and health.
Woolcock (2001) says, “well-connected people are more likely to be housed, healthy,
hired, and happy.” Woolcock found that individuals who report high levels of social
networks also perform better on indicators relating to economics, health, employment,
and life satisfaction. He adds that “the message rippling through the social capital
literature is that how we associate with each other, and on what terms, has enormous
implications for our well-being.”
Beckley et al. (2002) listed social capital, and sense of place, and leadership as among the
indicators for social processes. The Heartland Center for Leadership Development also
includes several social process indicators among their 20 Clues for Community Survival:
leadership, evidence of community pride, and a strong belief and support of education.
Social process indicators are increasingly recognized as key determinants in both human
and community well-being by a series of recent authors and researchers who are
conducting studies specifically in resource-dependent communities (Beckley et al.
(2002), Parkins et al. (2004), Matthews (2005), and others). Some authors assert that
social processes underpin and enable all other HWB processes.
Matthews (2005) and others at the University of British Columbia have been studying the
links between social capital, economic factors, and population health in coastal BC. In a
household survey across more than 20 communities on the B.C. coast between 2002 and
2004, Matthews et al.(2004) investigated the relationship between social capital and trust
and found that generalized trust (trust in other people) can serve as a proxy for social
capital. Matthews et al. also found a lack of correlation between civic engagement and
institutionalized trust (trust in institutions and political authorities), which may make
civic engagement a questionable indicator for social capital in the plan areas (disagree,
people may become engaged precisely because they don’t trust but any community
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