Wellness in crisis: Theorizing wellbeing in unsettled times

Wellbeing research has proliferated in recent years, both in terms of affirmative, largely psychological research on its antecedents and consequences, and in terms of critical research that decries the ideological aspects of corporate wellbeing as a symptom of neoliberal workplaces. These literatures take special importance in time of social and economic turmoil, marked by global health crises, climate and environmental crises, and geopolitical crises. The current thematic issue collects diverse contributions around wellbeing in unsettled times, examining how wellbeing and its discourses shape how we think about work and life in the current conjuncture. We briefly summarize our motivation and background literature around wellbeing, after which we present and synthesize the works in the current collection. Finally, in a more speculative vein, we imagine a series of questions and topics that characterize the possibilities for wellbeing research in a future that is likely marked by ongoing social, cultural and economic transformations.