Introduction

Simon Burnett

A chapter in The Happiness Agenda, 2012, pp 1-14 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Contemporary Anglo-American society is awash with political, organizational and individual efforts to be happy. It is extant across the realms of: governmental debates and mandates, employment policies and management consultancy advice, news stories, television fiction and documentaries, psychology, self-help courses, and even school classrooms. This widespread cultural momentum towards happiness is a culmination of events that have transpired over the past circa three hundred “Industrialized” years since the Age of Enlightenment. Throughout this period up to the modern day, happiness has come to be defined as: pursuable and attainable, able to be measured scientifically and provided by legislation, spiritual, practicable, located within the individual and attainable in correlation with the surrounding capitalistic structure. Whereby a focus on one’s individual, hedonistic happiness is now morally defensible, and in accordance with what have become commonly accepted societal norms. This leads to the denouement of this book that, following on from the popularized coinage of Homo economicus (The Economist Online, 2005) and even Homo siliconvalleycus (Thrift, 2005h: 151): modern humankind is presently aspiring toward the neologistic genus of Homo happicus.

Keywords: Capitalistic Structure; News Story; Subject Position; Homo Economicus; Historical Epoch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1057/9780230348417_1

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