Seminar title: An Amphitheater for Well-Being and Sustainability: Multidimensionality, Place, and Cultural Heritage as Constitutive Elements | Measuring complex social phenomena such as well-being and sustainability remains one of the most contested challenges in the social sciences. Despite decades of conceptual development and an expanding array of indicators, there is little agreement on how these meta-constructs should be operationalized, compared, or interpreted. Multidimensionality has become the default response to this challenge. Yet, it is often treated as a taken-for-granted solution rather than as a concept requiring careful epistemological scrutiny. What does it actually mean to measure something as “multidimensional”? At which levels of analysis do dimensions operate, and how are they selected, justified, and related to one another?
This seminar argues that multidimensionality is not merely a technical property of measurement frameworks but a constitutive feature of how well-being and sustainability are understood, negotiated, and enacted in place. Drawing on empirical work conducted in Valparaíso, Chile—a UNESCO World Heritage city marked by cultural richness, social conflict, and long-term decline—the seminar introduces the metaphor of an “amphitheater” to conceptualize how diverse dimensions, actors, and worldviews converge without necessarily producing consensus. Cultural heritage, sense of place, and memory are examined not as supplementary or “soft” dimensions, but as foundational elements shaping how people relate to development, sustainability, and collective futures. | Asbtract: By bridging scoping review methods, qualitative interviews, and quantitative modeling, the seminar highlights the epistemological tensions embedded in current measurement practices and questions the assumption that more dimensions automatically lead to better understanding. Ultimately, it proposes a place-sensitive and reflexive approach to measurement—one that acknowledges plurality without abandoning analytical rigor, and that treats indicators not only as tools for comparison, but as lenses through which societies articulate what they value and seek to sustain.
- Tags
-