Accessing the wellbeing commons: therapeutic resource-ification of natural and historic environments and social exclusion in the UK and Inner Asia

This project will provide a new conceptual framework for understanding social inequalities arising from differential access to therapeutic environments. By analysing social exclusion as intimately connected to institutional relations, juridico-legal structures, and political economy, I will show how the process of converting natural and historic ‘commons’ into wellbeing-providing resources can lead to the creation of new inequalities. During a time of climate crisis when the wellbeing benefits of the natural environment are increasingly recognised on a global scale (WHO, 2017), and as barriers to access are considered in relation to naturalised social groups such as race, class, and ethnicity, it is critical to understand how social categories are configured in specific historical encounters and bound up with capitalist production of value. Spanning five and a half years and exploring mineral springs and their sanatoria in Mongolia, hot springs and medicinal plant pastures in Sikkim (India), and open swimming in Devon (England), this project will generate conceptual shifts in understanding the complexities of social exclusion.