Cultural History, Sociology of Emotions and Critical Studies of Happiness

Abstract

In the last quarter of the 20th and early 21st centuries, happiness has become the object of analysis in numerous sociological, anthropological, and cultural studies. Within this “happiness turn”, the idea that happiness depends on the level of economic well-being has long prevailed. But several theoretical problems have attracted particular attention from researchers in recent years. First of all, the temporal components of happiness: the decline of the aspiration to the future and the growth of retrotopic nostalgia and presentism. Happiness turns out to be increasingly dependent on the “archives of happiness and unhappiness” — a vast complex of ideas, narratives, images—a wide range of everyday practices and interactions — that determine the space of our experience. Secondly, the interconnection of happiness with a large complex of negative emotions and feelings (primarily fears and anxieties), for which the normative model of happiness as wellbeing acts as a therapeutic “antidote”. Thirdly, for critical studies of happiness, it is important to find an adequate language for describing emotions and to recognize the need for its constant clarification. In this sense, the “happiness turn” acts as a performative — actions that establish new connections between words and feelings, between the past and a possible future. An important task of the dialogue between social theory and applied sociological and anthropological research is to determine the markers of verification of these hypotheses and their validity for different communities and generations.