Thriving and equity are dynamically interdependent, cumulative, and culturally influenced. Our capacity to address one depends on our capacity to address the other. Interventions and decisions, however, often focus on one outcome, apply to one system, are timed for quick impact, and ignore cumulative effects. This is because conceptualizations, especially in the global North and in much of the global South, treat thriving and equity in a delimited, segmented, disciplinary-specific, ahistorical, culturally evasive, linear, individualist, and reductionist manner.
This paper synthesizes scholarship across multiple disciplines and review work from indigenous scholars and community-responsive researchers and practitioners. We present expansive definitions of thriving and equity separately and in their context-dependent and dynamically interdependent wholeness. We introduce robustness into our conceptualizations of both. We further address the collective, interpersonal, and intrapersonal processes and structures that contribute to or undermine thriving and equity, contrasting expansive and narrower definitions. We summarize key points that underlie both terms and use these definitions to examine the factors and conditions that promote or constrain thriving and equity.