Values of Happiness
Subtitle: Toward an Anthropology of Purpose in Life
Publisher: HAU
Published: Mar 15, 2017
Language: eng
Format: paperback
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780986132575
Description: How people conceive of happiness reveals much about who they are and the values they hold dear. Drawing on ethnographic insights from diverse field sites around the world, this book offers a unique window onto the ways in which people grapple with fundamental questions about how to live and what it means to be human. Developing a distinctly anthropological approach concerned less with gauging how happy people are than with how happiness figures as an idea, mood, and motive in everyday life, the book explores how people strive to live well within challenging or even hostile circumstances. Is happiness everywhere a paramount value or aim in life? How does it relate to other ideas of the good? What role does happiness play in orienting peoples' desires and life choices? Taking these questions seriously, the book draws together considerations of meaning, values, and affect, while recognizing the diversity of human ends.
Notes: Source title: Values of Happiness: Toward an Anthropology of Purpose in Life (Special Issues in Ethnographic Theory Series)