Yunji Kim

Exploring the Intersection of Community Well-Being and Community Development

Community well-being, defined as that state in which the needs and desires of a community are fulfilled, is the focus of this chapter. Additionally, the connections between community well-being and community development, an allied and complementary area of study and practice, is explored. Community development can serve a vital role in actualizing community well-being as defined by those who live it—the citizens and residents of villages, towns, cities and countries. Application in particular is where community development and community well-being intersect.

Searching for the Meaning of Community Well-Being

This chapter addresses definitions and meanings to provide a foundation for exploring dimensions of community well-being. It is compared and contrasted with similar terms such as happiness, quality of life, community development, and others. A framework for defining community well-being is provided, along with discussion of individual versus community levels.

Structure of Well-Being: An Exploratory Study of the Distinction Between Individual Well-Being and Community Well-Being and the Importance of Intersubjective Community Well-Being

Despite the popularity of well-being in public policy discourses, the meaning of well-being and how to use it in a public policy context is still unclear. In this chapter, we present a comprehensive framework of well-being that clarifies its meaning by distinguishing different types and aspects of well-being. First, we distinguish individual well-being and community well-being. Since public policy concerns public resources, we further explore the aspects of community well-being. Previous works only identified objective and subjective aspects of community well-being, leading to confusion in the measurement process regarding aggregation from individuals to the community. To address this issue, we identify a third aspect called intersubjective community well-being measured by evaluative questions. Using survey data from six districts in Seoul, South Korea, we show that individual well-being and community well-being can be distinguished empirically and that the relationship between intersubjective and objective community well-being is stronger than the relationship between subjective and objective community well-being. This suggests that policymakers can gain better insight for policymaking by paying more attention to intersubjective community well-being, which effectively bridges relevant objective measures to collective evaluation of citizens.

Modeling Community Well-Being: A Multi-dimensional Approach

This chapter aims to model community well-being as the appropriate value goal for effective local governance. The community well-being model is based on an analysis of related concepts and highlighting the uniqueness of community well-being. It is also connected to community development, defined as both a process and an outcome for achieving community goals.

Achieving Community Well-Being Through Community Participatory Governance: The Case of Saemaul Undong

Community well-being can be a more inclusive and comprehensive goal than economic growth or social progress. However, studies of community well-being and its related concepts, such as happiness, quality of life, sustainability, and well-being have failed to go beyond measurement and influencing factors. In order for community well-being to be useful for policy, an inquiry of appropriate governance structures for community well-being is essential. In this chapter, we explore community participatory governance – a governance structure that involves both citizens and the government with genuine participation at the community level – as a potential answer. For this purpose, we use the case of Saemaul Undong, a successful community movement that began in 1970 in South Korea. In particular, we focus on the early stages of the movement in the 1970s when community self-help and state support co-existed. This balance of community self-help and state support is not a theoretically novel idea but is difficult to find in practice. We illustrate how an effective division of labor and power in the form of production and provision was key to this balance.