Dr. Anne Wilson is a Fellow of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

 

When communities or individuals are exposed to challenges, how do they sustain their well-being? How do institutions and culture affect a society’s resilience in difficult times? How are inequalities produced and what kinds of inequalities are most detrimental to social well-being? How are robust institutions and communities with strong collective capability generated and maintained?

These are a few of the diverse questions addressed by scholars in CIFAR’s Successful Societies Program. Mobilizing interdisciplinary enquiry, this program takes multiple approaches to investigating the question: what makes a society successful? By bringing together specialists in cultural and political sociology, political economy, epidemiology, history and social psychology, the researchers in this CIFAR program gain a better understanding of the multiple dimensions of social relations that bear on social resilience, inequality and population health. This broader perspective also carries important implications for public policies aimed at advancing the capacities of people and societies to prosper in the face of challenges.