Geographies of wellbeing: an introduction

This short introduction to the themed issue on ‘geographies of wellbeing’ first outlines the rise to prominence and power of wellbeing as a concept, and then summarises the diversified ways in which geographers have examined wellbeing. It argues that geographers have a key role to play in interdisciplinary and non‐academic debates about the governance of wellbeing, not least because they are uniquely positioned to reflect on the processes of abstraction that are inevitably involved in researching wellbeing, and on the potentially less‐than‐innocent implications of the normative connotations with which wellbeing can become imbued. A brief discussion of the papers brought together in the themed issue concludes this editorial introduction.