ABSTRACT
Unmatched in originality, breadth, and scope, The Routledge History of Happiness features chapters that explore the history, anthropology, and psychology of happiness across the globe.
Through a chronological approach that ranges from the Classical and Postclassical to the twenty-first century, this volume balances intellectual-history treatments and wider efforts to deal with relevant popular culture and experience, including consumerism. It explores how and why the history of happiness has emerged in recent decades, as well as psychological and social science approaches to happiness, with a history of how relevant psychological research has unfolded. Chapters examine early cultural traditions concerning happiness, including material on Buddhist and Chinese traditions, and how they continue to influence ideas about happiness in the present day. Overall, each section emphasises wide geographical coverage, with particular attention paid to East Asia, Latin America, Europe, Russia, and Africa.
The Routledge History of Happiness is of great use to all undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the global history of emotions.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|68 pages
Continuity and change
part II|50 pages
Classical and postclassical
chapter 8|14 pages
Medieval happiness reconsidered
part III|64 pages
Early modern
chapter 10|21 pages
Family, care and the affective universe of Novohispanic baroque happiness
part IV|70 pages
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
chapter 15|18 pages
Definitions of happiness in Ottoman Syria
part V|70 pages
Twentieth century
chapter 17|19 pages
“We strive to make the people a little happier every day”
chapter 20|17 pages
Politics and happiness, an unhappy inheritance
part VI|50 pages
Twenty-first century
part VII|68 pages
Interdisciplinary contexts