Values of Happiness
Toward an Anthropology of Purpose in Life
Distributed for HAU
With an Afterword by Joel Robbins
336 pages
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4 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2016
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction
Values of happiness
Harry Walker and Iza Kavedžija
Chapter One
Ambivalent happiness and virtuous suffering
C. Jason Throop
Chapter Two
Being careful what you wish for: The case of happiness in China
Charles Stafford
Chapter Three
The good life in balance: Insights from aging Japan
Iza Kavedžija
Chapter Four
Techniques of happiness: Moving toward and away from the good life in a rural Ethiopian community
Dena Freeman
Chapter Five
“Good without God”: Happiness and pleasure among the humanists
Matthew Engelke
Chapter Six
Mindful in Westminster: The politics of meditation and the limits of neoliberal critique
Joanna Cook
Chapter Seven
The path to happiness? Prosperity, suffering, and transnational migration in Britain and Sylhet
Katy Gardner
Chapter Eight
Militantly well
Henrik E. Vigh
Chapter Nine
Le Bonheur Suisse, again
Michael Lambek
Chapter Ten
Joy within tranquility: Amazonian Urarina styles of happiness
Harry Walker
Afterword
On happiness, values, and time: The long and short of it
Joel Robbins
Index
Introduction
Values of happiness
Harry Walker and Iza Kavedžija
Chapter One
Ambivalent happiness and virtuous suffering
C. Jason Throop
Chapter Two
Being careful what you wish for: The case of happiness in China
Charles Stafford
Chapter Three
The good life in balance: Insights from aging Japan
Iza Kavedžija
Chapter Four
Techniques of happiness: Moving toward and away from the good life in a rural Ethiopian community
Dena Freeman
Chapter Five
“Good without God”: Happiness and pleasure among the humanists
Matthew Engelke
Chapter Six
Mindful in Westminster: The politics of meditation and the limits of neoliberal critique
Joanna Cook
Chapter Seven
The path to happiness? Prosperity, suffering, and transnational migration in Britain and Sylhet
Katy Gardner
Chapter Eight
Militantly well
Henrik E. Vigh
Chapter Nine
Le Bonheur Suisse, again
Michael Lambek
Chapter Ten
Joy within tranquility: Amazonian Urarina styles of happiness
Harry Walker
Afterword
On happiness, values, and time: The long and short of it
Joel Robbins
Index
Review Quotes
Sherry B. Ortner, author of Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject
"Values of Happiness is a thoughtful, thought-provoking, and often very moving book. As we are taken through people’s reflections on happiness in a wide range of cultural contexts, we see the extent to which happiness is rarely—well—happy. The authors use the complexities and ambiguities of this state of being to explore the ways in which happiness as both idea and experience inescapably shapes time, personhood, and social life."
Joel Robbins, author of Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society
"It is a great accomplishment of this collection that it shows us that happiness without value appears to be a rare occurrence. Even if there are very few societies in which happiness itself is the primary, overriding value people seek to realize—it is rarely the supervalue that rallies all others to its cause—we now know that happiness is routinely tied up with the disclosure and realization of values, and hence with the complexities of the personal and social management of time. This unusually rich collection of articles puts this important point before us, and in doing so redeems its promise of showing why happiness is an important subject of anthropological investigation."
James Laidlaw, author of The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom
"This is wonderfully rich and stimulating collection of essays by some of the most creative and perceptive anthropologists writing at the moment. And the theme works brilliantly to cast questions about values and ideals, virtues and vices, aspiration, interdependence, and responsibility in a new and thought-provoking light."
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