ABSTRACT
The study of happiness presents a variety of exciting future directions for contemporary sociological research. This emerging field offers insights that are clearly differentiated from the more established branches of happiness research in philosophy, psychology, and economics. The sociology of happiness recognises the individual’s personal pursuits within cultural and historical contexts that reveal dynamics of power and hegemony, as well as alternate futures and reimagined life courses. This chapter will begin with an overview of happiness as an emotion in sociology and an analysis of contemporary happiness in neoliberalism, before contrasting two significant positions in the field of critical happiness studies from Sara Ahmed and Hartmut Rosa. The chapter aims to show the diversity and complexity of socially grounded happiness perspectives, as well as the importance of happiness to the sociology of emotion and to sociology more generally.
