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Happiness: Notes on History, Culture and Governance
Author(s) -
Catherine Kingfisher
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
health, culture and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2161-6590
DOI - 10.5195/hcs.2013.145
Subject(s) - happiness , corporate governance , set (abstract data type) , sociology , samoan , artifact (error) , work (physics) , social psychology , aesthetics , psychology , gender studies , management , philosophy , mechanical engineering , linguistics , neuroscience , computer science , engineering , economics , programming language

In this paper, I explore the emergence of happiness and well-being as keystones of contemporary EuroAmerican culture. Drawing on the relationship between disciplinary enterprises and forms of governance, as well as on cross-cultural comparison with fa’asamoa (the Samoan Way), I work to situate the current EuroAmerican obsession with happiness and well-being as a cultural formation – that is, as an artifact of a historically and culturally unique set of patterns and forces – thus problematizing its taken-for-granted status, in academic and policy-making circles, as a self-evident and universal goal with universal characteristics. I pay particular attention to the forms of governance that the contemporary orientation to happiness inaugurates and instantiates.

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