Quality of Life in Argentina. Maps, Indexes and Regional Analysis from 2010.

CLAUDIA MIKKELSEN; LINARES, SANTIAGO; VELÁZQUEZ, G

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2023 p. 186

978-3-031-48211-3

This volume entitled Quality of Life in Argentina is a portion of a larger work, the “Historical and Geographical Atlas of Argentina”, edited by Dr. Guillermo Angel Velázquez who, in the company of an interdisciplinary group of researchers from Argentina, seek to reflect on the conceptual category quality of life in a historical, geographical, political, economic, sociological and demographic key.This third volume enquires into recovering one of the fundamental categories of the geographical discipline, i.e. the region. In this way, the regional perspective is attached as an addition to the debate on the concept of quality of life.Quality of life is a concept that takes into account the context in which people develop their lives. Its etymology dates from the 1930s (Tonon, 2009), although its development began in the 1970s with the emblematic text by Campbell, Converse and Rodgers, The American Quality of Life: Perceptions, Evaluations and Satisfactions, which became a classic of the matter (Tonon, Martínez and Mikkelsen, 2022, in press).From spatial studies, interpreting the quality of life of the population implies recognizing the coexistence and conflictive overlapping of populations, enterprises, states, non-governmental organizations, among other actors, using the territory in diverse, complex ways and not always in accordance with the common good, therefore unjust.To tend to a quality life is an objective that all societies have pursued and wanted. As Velázquez states “... it is a measure of achievement with respect to a level estab-lished as optimal taking into account socioeconomic and environmental dimensions dependent on the scale of values prevailing in society and that vary according to the expectations of historical progress” (Velázquez, 2001, p. 15). In general, it can be said that quality of life comprises, in the first place, the material basis on which life develops; secondly, the natural and built environment in which human beings operate; and ultimately, to all the relationships that come from the activities carried out, both work and other types of socio-political and cultural relations. This is an evaluative concept.