About the conference

Social quality is a more multifarious policy-oriented way of approaching the quality of life. There are a number of themes implied within the quality of life and these include:

Social capital; Social cohesion; Participation and empowerment; Work and the economic environment; Social exclusion

These themes have important implications for governance and citizenship since  they are an outcome and a goal of new governance approaches.  They raise many questions about the cultural and social variations across Europe, including whether different elements are of equal importance in different locations and how they can best be understood or measured. Does quality of life mean the same thing everywhere, or does it have different meanings? How meaningful is it to adopt this as a general policy goal?

The conference would bring together a range of themes within CINEFOGO to look at the Social Quality in comparative perspective. This resonates with policy priorities in the European Union and in some member states (including countries as diverse as the UK and Romania).

The quality of life perspective puts together a range of subjective and objectives perspectives to get an overall picture of the quality of life in a given society. It is based upon an established body of knowledge, but the aim of this conferences is to pull these different aspects of the quality of life together and bring new theoretical impetus to make it into a significant policy tool as well as a sociological political and economic instrument.

Target groups

People from NGOs, and the European Commission to be invited.