Book ID: CBB410296742

The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (2016)

unapi

Davies, William (Author)


Verso


Publication Date: 2016
Physical Details: 320 pp.
Language: English

In winter 2014, a Tibetan monk lectured the world leaders gathered at Davos on the importance of Happiness. The recent DSM-5, the manual of all diagnosable mental illnesses, for the first time included shyness and grief as treatable diseases. Happiness has become the biggest idea of our age, a new religion dedicated to well-being. In this brilliant dissection of our times, political economist William Davies shows how this philosophy, first pronounced by Jeremy Bentham in the 1780s, has dominated the political debates that have delivered neoliberalism. From a history of business strategies of how to get the best out of employees, to the increased level of surveillance measuring every aspect of our lives; from why experts prefer to measure the chemical in the brain than ask you how you are feeling, to why Freakonomics tells us less about the way people behave than expected, The Happiness Industry is an essential guide to the marketization of modern life. Davies shows that the science of happiness is less a science than an extension of hyper-capitalism.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Patric Plesa (2017) Review of "The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 391-393). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB410296742/

Similar Citations

Book Christopher Milnes; (2018)
A History of Euphoria: The Perception and Misperception of Health and Well-Being (/isis/citation/CBB730926938/)

Article Jeffrey S. Adler; (2021)
“I’m at My Rope’s End”: Suicide in New Orleans, 1920–1940 (/isis/citation/CBB997404519/)

Review Timothy Barr; (2019)
Review of "Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism" (/isis/citation/CBB359004357/)

Article Trãni, Christophe; Häberlen, Joachim C.; Spinney, Russell A.; (2014)
Opposing Scientific Cruelty: The Emotions and Sensitivities of Protestors against Experiments on Animals (/isis/citation/CBB001550388/)

Book Friedman, Lawrence Jacob; Schreiber, Anke M.; (2013)
The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love's Prophet (/isis/citation/CBB001214616/)

Book Jonathan Flatley; (2008)
Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (/isis/citation/CBB614815373/)

Article Häberlen, Joachim C; Spinney, Russell A; (2014)
Introduction: “Emotions in Protest Movements in Europe since 1917“ (/isis/citation/CBB001550386/)

Book Thomson, Mathew; (2006)
Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (/isis/citation/CBB000773679/)

Book Franco Fabbro; (2023)
Ipnosi e cervello sociale. Neuroscienze e filosofia politica (/isis/citation/CBB237713944/)

Article Sigrid Vertommen; Vincenzo Pavone; Michal Nahman; (January 2022)
Global Fertility Chains: An Integrative Political Economy Approach to Understanding the Reproductive Bioeconomy (/isis/citation/CBB344538475/)

Article Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton; (2010)
Rival Ecologies of Global Commerce: Adam Smith and the Natural Historians (/isis/citation/CBB001035008/)

Book Torben Iversen; David Soskice; (2019)
Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism through a Turbulent Century (/isis/citation/CBB358752240/)

Article William J. Novak; (Winter 2019)
Institutional Economics and the Progressive Movement for the Social Control of American Business (/isis/citation/CBB921649138/)

Book Hoogvelt, Ankie M. M.; (1997)
Globalization and the postcolonial world: The new political economy of development (/isis/citation/CBB798407336/)

Article Strub, Harry; (1989)
The theory of panoptical control: Bentham's Panopticon and Orwell's Ninteen eighty-four (/isis/citation/CBB000037156/)

Book Brian Phillips Murphy; (2015)
Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic (/isis/citation/CBB610727332/)

Article Sophus A. Reinert; Robert Fredona; (Spring 2020)
Political Economy and the Medici (/isis/citation/CBB505158631/)

Authors & Contributors
Spinney, Russell A.
Häberlen, Joachim C
Barr, Timothy
Flatley, Jonathan
Hoogvelt, Ankie M. M.
Sigrid Vertommen
Concepts
Psychology
Capitalism
Political economy
Emotions; passions
Science and society
Globalization; internationalization
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
Modern
18th century
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
United States
Georgia (Republic)
Palestine
Romania
Florence (Italy)
Spain
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment