SOCIOLOGY OF HAPPINESS

概要

Happiness Studies is a new field of scholarship which has gained much attention over the past two decades. Triggered by the insight that economic growth does not result in higher levels of well-being once a certain baseline of wealth is passed (the so-called Easterlin paradox), economists, sociologists and psychologist have joined forces to find out what makes individuals and societies happy. In this class, I will introduce different concepts of well-being and discuss to what extent objective and subjective measures for individual and societal happiness can be an indicator for the quality of a society. We will compare different societies and analyze how culture impacts understandings of happiness and discuss what the role of happiness can be for public policy.

目標

You will study about basic concepts of well-being and achieve an awareness of measurement difficulties - regarding the complexity of the concept itself as well as in international comparison. This will enable you to accurately interpret results of studies on well-being often presented in the media. You will learn the relevance of well-being indicators for public policy. By the end of the semester you will be familiar with the most recent research on individual and societal happiness and be able to judge its merit for evaluating the quality of a society.

授業外の学習

Prepare class readings or write a reaction paper.

所要時間: At least 190 minutes per lecture.