The relations between social policies, social exclusion, and social well-being in the Southeast Asia focusing on the case study of Papua, Indonesia is the main topic of this paper. The data discusses objective and subjective well-being. Both indicators can reflect the social well-being conditions of the region, and indicate the scale of social exclusion in the society of the studied area. West Papua is located in the Eastern Indonesia, and selection of this province as a case study is based on the consideration that welfare of the Eastern Indonesians can illustrate disparities in Indonesia overall. The data presented on West Papua province demonstrates the interrelationship between social policy, social exclusion, and social well-being taking place in this community. Social and economic policies in this context include two levels-that of the National Government and of the Provincial Government. The presented ase study provides insights on Eastern Indonesia, which is experiencing more disparities as compared to other parts of Indonesia, while the discussion on the case study is linked to a more general context-that of other Southeast Asian countries.
By analyzing the case of Indonesia and Thailand, this study fills the gap in quantitative studies on the importance of social factors at the community level. This research emphasized the relation of social exclusion and religious capital to quality of life, whereas previous researches generally used individual and economic factors as the basis. To elaborate the correlation between the three concepts above, this research used quantitative survey method with heads of households aged 18-64 years old as the population. The sample was drawn proportionally by means of multistage cluster sampling based on social class, religion and urban and rural sampling. For research in Indonesia, in-depth interviews were also conducted to obtain supporting data. The results show that social access and religious capital as social factors at the community level have different impacts on the quality of life in Indonesia and Thailand. Social access has more impact in Thailand, while it is religious capital in Indonesia. Theoretically, in heterogeneous society, religious capital plays important roles because it is primarily used to access resources. Trust and networking which are developed in a community will contribute to individuals' subjective meaning in accordance with their quality of life.
This research focuses on enriching the dynamics and contextual explanation of relational well-being as a representation of sustainable quality of life. Previous studies rely on economic explanations and have not shown an adequate synergy model with social factors in explaining social well-being conditions. This research intends to fill and enrich this gap by examining how vertical and horizontal forms of social inclusion have impacted on the well-being in its relational forms: the capacity to trust others, the degree of interaction, and proactivity in communal participation. By comparing the differing socio-economic conditions of Indonesian and South Korean society through correlation and multiple regression analysis, we found that a sustainable and balanced form of relational well-being does not only consist in economic attributes vertically, but also social-horizontal dimension, which is manifested through social capital and cohesion facilitated by cultural, religious and gender groups in local communities. Economic (material) factors are more dominant in explaining relational well-being at the individual level, while social (non-material) factors are dominant as explanations at the community level. This research presents a novelty related to the Easterlin Paradox thesis that the improvement of well-being in the context of societal development, does not only rely on economic attributes alone, however it is complemented and balanced by social dimension such as horizontal forms of social inclusion. The policy implications of this research show that inclusive government policies at the personal, relational, and societal level, is very fundamental to create sustainable well-being.
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