Wellbeing machine: how health emerges from the assemblages of everyday life

Wellbeing Machine provides a precise, non-blaming and non-pathologising account of how wellbeing arises in the intimate processes of daily life. Well­being and illbeing are generally seen as interior states of the individual, which can readily be linked to individuals being blamed for the status of their well­being. This book expands the limits of human-based accounts of wellbeing by shifting attention away from the individual, and onto the collective body. Deleuze's assemblage is mobilised throughout this investigation of wellbeing, which contributes an innovative methodology called 'orientating to assem­bling'. This approach generates a conceptual entity called the Wellbeing Ma­chine. The Wellbeing Machine is made up of four assemblages which each represent different affective capacities and different responses to the challenges of everyday life experienced by people with depression. The Wellbeing Machine reveals fresh insight into wellbeing. It shows how wellbeing emerges from as­semblages that transform in a sustainable way over time and is experienced by the emergent ' well' individual as affective flux. In a series of changing assemblages, ergent 'well individual as affective flux. In a series of changing assem­blages, those associated with illbeing are repositioned as generative and vital to the production of wellbeing. This book specifies the ontological objects, practices, and the nonhuman and human labour involved in creating a series of modulating assemblages and emergent wellbeing. Wellbeing Machine shifts discussion about the wellbeing bioeconomy into new terrain. It investigates the intersections between emergent wellbeing, labour, power, and capitalism. This book contributes to debates about how to cultivate wellbeing. It suggests resourcing the formation of sustainable assemblages wherever they are needed or desired. Wellbeing Machine shows it is possible to produce knowledge about wellbeing that does not contribute negative associations about individuals' wellbeing levels.