Download or read book The Politics of Happiness written by Derek Bok and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the principal findings of happiness researchers, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of such research, and looks at how governments could use results when formulating policies to improve the lives of citizens.
Download or read book Happiness Economics and Politics written by Amitava Krishna Dutt and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those already drawn by the allure of happiness studies, Dutt and Radcliff here provide a rich tour of the frontier in the field. And for curmudgeons, this work goes far to defuse the skeptical reflex. It is subtle, intelligent, wide-ranging, informative and even readable throughout. James K. Galbraith, The University of Texas at Austin, US This timely and important book presents a unique study of happiness from both economic and political perspectives. It offers an overview of contemporary research on the emergent field of happiness studies and contains contributions by some of the leading figures in the field. General issues such as the history and conceptualization of happiness are explored, and the underpinning theories and empirics analyzed. The ways in which economic and political factors both separately and interactively affect the quality of human life are examined, illustrating the importance of a self-consciously multi-disciplinary approach to the field. In particular, the effects of consumption, income growth, inequality, discrimination, democracy, the nature of government policies, and labor organization on happiness are scrutinized. In conclusion, the contributors prescribe what can and should be done at individual and societal levels to improve human well-being and happiness. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary book makes a unique contribution to the literature. As such, it will prove a fascinating read for students and scholars of economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and of course, to those with a special interest in the analysis of happiness and human well-being.
Download or read book Politics of Happiness written by Ross Abbinnett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and engaging study argues that the Western concern with achieving happiness should be understood in terms of its relationship to the political ideologies that have emerged since the Enlightenment. To do so, each chapter examines the place that happiness occupies in the construction of ideologies that have formed the political terrain of the West, including liberalism, postmodernism, socialism, fascism, and religion. Throughout, Hegel's phenomenology, Nietzsche's genealogy, and Derrida's account of deconstruction as reactions to modernization are used to show that the politics of happiness are always a clash of fundamental ideas of belonging, overcoming, and ethical responsibility. Stressing that the concept of happiness lies at the foundation of political movements, the book also looks at its place in the current global order, analyzing the emergence of such ideas as affective democracy that challenge the conventional notions of privatized, acquisitive happiness. Written in a clear manner, the work will appeal to political theory students and researchers looking for a critical and historical account of contemporary debates about the nature of happiness and ideology.
Download or read book Mourning Happiness written by Vivasvan Soni and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work of rare scope and power that grapples with the big questions: Is happiness the proper end of life, as the Greeks conceived it to be, or is life, as it appears since the early English novel, an endless trial?"--Adam Potkay
Download or read book The Happiness Industry written by William Davies and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Deeply researched and pithily argued.” —New York Magazine “A brilliant, and sometimes eerie, dissection” of ‘the science of happiness’ and the modern-day commercialization of our most private emotions (Vice) Why are we so obsessed with measuring happiness? In winter 2014, a Tibetan monk lectured the world leaders gathered at Davos on the importance of Happiness. The recent DSM-5, the manual of all diagnosable mental illnesses, for the first time included shyness and grief as treatable diseases. Happiness has become the biggest idea of our age, a new religion dedicated to well-being. Here, political economist William Davies shows how this philosophy, first pronounced by Jeremy Bentham in the 1780s, has dominated the political debates that have delivered neoliberalism. From a history of business strategies of how to get the best out of employees, to the increased level of surveillance measuring every aspect of our lives; from why experts prefer to measure the chemical in the brain than ask you how you are feeling, to why Freakonomics tells us less about the way people behave than expected, The Happiness Industry is an essential guide to the marketization of modern life. Davies shows that the science of happiness is less a science than an extension of hyper-capitalism.
Download or read book Politics of Gross National Happiness written by Kent Schroeder and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the practices of governance in Bhutan and how they shape the implementation of the country’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) development strategy. The author examines whether Bhutan’s innovative GNH governance framework successfully navigates competing power dynamics and generates the intended human development outcomes of Gross National Happiness. The analysis is structured around a comparison of the implementation of four GNH development policies – tourism, media, farm roads and human/wildlife conflict – and their larger implications on power, governance and the human development paradigm in Bhutan and beyond.
Download or read book The Pursuit of Happiness written by Bianca C. Williams and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Pursuit of Happiness Bianca C. Williams traces the experiences of African American women as they travel to Jamaica, where they address the perils and disappointments of American racism by looking for intimacy, happiness, and a connection to their racial identities. Through their encounters with Jamaican online communities and their participation in trips organized by Girlfriend Tours International, the women construct notions of racial, sexual, and emotional belonging by forming relationships with Jamaican men and other "girlfriends." These relationships allow the women to exercise agency and find happiness in ways that resist the damaging intersections of racism and patriarchy in the United States. However, while the women require a spiritual and virtual connection to Jamaica in order to live happily in the United States, their notion of happiness relies on travel, which requires leveraging their national privilege as American citizens. Williams's theorization of "emotional transnationalism" and the construction of affect across diasporic distance attends to the connections between race, gender, and affect while highlighting how affective relationships mark nationalized and gendered power differentials within the African diaspora.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Human Happiness written by Benjamin Radcliff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Data, methods and theories of contemporary social science can be applied to resolve how political outcomes in democratic societies determine the quality of life that citizens experience. Radcliff seeks to provide an objective answer to the debate between left and right over what public policies best contribute to people leading positive and rewarding lives. Radcliff offers an empirical answer, relying on the same canons of reason and evidence required of any other issue amenable to study through social-scientific means. The analysis focuses on the consequences of three specific political issues: the welfare state and the general size of government, labor organization, and state efforts to protect workers and consumers through economic regulation. The results indicate that in each instance, the program of the Left best contributes to citizens leading more satisfying lives and, critically, that the benefits of greater happiness accrue to everyone in society, rich and poor alike.
Download or read book Happiness Is a Choice You Make written by John Leland and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller! An extraordinary look at what it means to grow old and a heartening guide to well-being, Happiness Is a Choice You Make weaves together the stories and wisdom of six New Yorkers who number among the “oldest old”— those eighty-five and up. In 2015, when the award-winning journalist John Leland set out on behalf of The New York Times to meet members of America’s fastest-growing age group, he anticipated learning of challenges, of loneliness, and of the deterioration of body, mind, and quality of life. But the elders he met took him in an entirely different direction. Despite disparate backgrounds and circumstances, they each lived with a surprising lightness and contentment. The reality Leland encountered upended contemporary notions of aging, revealing the late stages of life as unexpectedly rich and the elderly as incomparably wise. Happiness Is a Choice You Make is an enduring collection of lessons that emphasizes, above all, the extraordinary influence we wield over the quality of our lives. With humility, heart, and wit, Leland has crafted a sophisticated and necessary reflection on how to “live better”—informed by those who have mastered the art.
Download or read book Fuck Happiness written by Ariel Gore and published by Microcosm Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Happiness is big business. Books, consultants, psychologists, organizations, and even governments tout happiness secrets that are backed by scientific findings. The problem is that all of this science is done by and for cis white men. And some of the most vocal of these happiness experts were announcing that women could become happier by espousing "traditional" values and eschewing feminism. Skeptical of this hypothesis, Ariel Gore took a deep dive into the optimism industrial complex, reading the history, combing the research, attending the conferences, interviewing the thought leaders, and exploring her own and her friends' personal experiences and desires. Fuck Happiness is a nuanced, thoughtful examination of what happiness means and to whom, how it's played a role in defining modern gender roles and power structures, and how we can all have a more empowered relationship with the pursuit of joy in our lives.
Download or read book The Promise of Happiness written by Sara Ahmed and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.
Download or read book The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War written by Carl M. Cannon and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2005-09-15 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founders wrote in 1776 that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are unalienable American rights. In The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War, Carl M. Cannon shows how this single phrase is one of almost unbelievable historical power. It was this rich rhetorical vein that New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and President George W. Bush tapped into after 9/11 when they urged Americans to go to ballgames, to shop, to do things that made them happy even in the face of unrivaled horror. From the Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism, Americans have lived out this creed. They have been helped in this effort by their elected leaders, who in times of war inevitably hark back to Jefferson's soaring language. If the former Gotham mayor and the current president had perfect pitch in the days after September 11, so too have American presidents and other leaders throughout our nation's history. In this book, Mr. Cannon—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist—traces the roots of Jefferson's powerful phrase and explores how it has been embraced by wartime presidents for two centuries. Mr. Cannon draws on original research at presidential libraries and interviews with Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, among others. He discussed with the presidents exactly what the phrase means to them. Mr. Cannon charts how Americans' understanding of the pursuit of happiness has changed through the years as the nation itself has changed. In the end, America's political leaders have all come to the same conclusion as its spiritual leaders: True happiness—either for a nation or an individual—does not come from conquest or fortune or even from the attainment of freedom itself. It comes in the pursuit of happiness for the benefit of others. This may be one truth that contemporary liberals and conservatives can agree on. John McCain and Jimmy Carter both envision happiness as a sacrifice to a higher calling, embodied in everything from McCain's time as a prisoner of war to the N
Download or read book Gross National Happiness written by Arthur C. Brooks and published by . This book was released on 2008-04-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author analyzes evidence and empirical research to determine which groups are the happiest in America; and offers suggestions on how the government can help individuals maximize their happiness.
Download or read book Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness written by Charles R. Kesler and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 10 years, the Claremont Review of Books has become one of the preeminent conservative magazines in the United States, offering bold arguments for a reinvigorated conservatism that draws upon the timeless principles of the American Founding and applies them to the moral and political problems we face today. With essays by the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, Richard Brookheiser, James Q. Wilson, Allen C. Guelzo, Victor Davis Hanson, Ross Douthat, and many others, this collection surveys the range of issues addressed in the Claremont Review of Books first decade, from the conservative critique of American progressivism to foreign policy, politics, history, and culture. Liberally illustrated with art director Elliot Banfield's popular cartoons, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness provides the magazine's many devotees with a treasured keepsake of a tumultuous decade and will be of interest to all those who care about American politics and culture. Among the contributors are Hadley Arkes, Martha Bayles, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., Paul Cantor, James Ceaser, Joseph Epstein, Christopher Flannery, Harvey Mansfield, Wilfred McClay, Cheryl Miller, the late Jaroslav Pelikan, Joseph Tartakovsky, Michael Uhlmann, Algis Valiunas, William Voegeli, and the late James Q. Wilson.
Download or read book Radical Happiness written by Lynne Segal and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are we so obsessed by the pursuit of happiness? With new ways to measure contentment we are told that we have a right to individual joy. But at what cost? In an age of increasing individualism, we have never been more alone and miserable. But what if the true nature of happiness can only be found in others? In Radical Happiness, leading feminist thinker Lynne Segal believes that we have lost the art of radical happiness- the art of transformative, collective joy. She shows that only in the revolutionary potential of coming together it is that we can come to understand the powers of flourishing. Radical Happiness is a passionate call for the re-discovery of the political and emotional joy that emerge when we learn to share our lives together.
Download or read book Happiness as Enterprise written by Sam Binkley and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the contemporary discourse on happiness through the lens of governmentality theory. Recent decades have seen an explosion of interest in the phenomenon of happiness, as evidenced by self-help books, talk shows, spiritual mentoring, business management, and relationship counseling. At the center of this development is the expanding influence of positive psychology, which places the concern with happiness in a new position of professional respectability, while opening it to institutional applications. In settings as diverse as college education, business, military training, family, and financial planning, happiness has appeared as the object of a new technology of emotional self-optimization. As such, happiness has come to define a new mentality of self-governmentor a governmentality as the concept is developed in the work of Michel Foucaultone that Sam Binkley demonstrates is aligned closely with economic neoliberalism. Happiness as Enterprise blends theoretical argumentation and empirical description in an engaging and accessible analysis that brings governmentality theory into contact with sociological theories of practice and temporality, particularly in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This book invites readers not only to consider the new discourse on happiness for its relation to contemporary formations of power, but to rethink many of the assumptions of governmentality theory in a manner sensitive to the mundane practices and everyday agencies of government, and the unique and specific temporalities these practices imply.
Download or read book The Keys to Happiness written by Laura Engelstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revolution of 1905 challenged not only the social and political structures of imperial Russia but the sexual order as well. Throughout the decade that followed-in the salons of the artistic and intellectual avant-garde, on the pages of popular romances, in the staid assemblies of physicians, psychiatrists, and legal men—the talk everywhere was of sex. This eagerly awaited book, echoing the title of a pre-World War I bestseller, The Keys to Happiness, marks the first serious attempt to understand the intense public interest in sexuality as a vital dimension of late tsarist political culture. Drawing on a strong foundation of historical sources—from medical treatises and legal codes to anti-Semitic pamphlets, commercial fiction, newspaper advertisements, and serious literature—Laura Engelstein shows how Western ideas and attitudes toward sex and gender were transformed in the Russian context as imported views on prostitution, venereal disease, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and other themes took on distinctively Russian hues. Engelstein divides her study into two parts, the first focusing on the period from the Great Reforms to 1905 and on the two professional disciplines most central to the shaping of a modern sexual discourse in Russia: law and medicine. The second part describes the complicated sexual preoccupations that accompanied the mobilization leading up to 1905, the revolution itself, and the aftermath of continued social agitation and intensified intellectual doubt. In chapters of astonishing richness, the author follows the sexual theme through the twists of professional and civic debate and in the surprising links between high and low culture up to the eve of the First World War. Throughout, Engelstein uses her findings to rethink the conventional wisdom about the political and cultural history of modern Russia. She maps out new approaches to the history of sexuality, and shows, brilliantly, how the study of attitudes toward sex and gender can help us to grasp the most fundamental political issues in any society.
