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Title details for The Happiness Industry by William Davies - Available

The Happiness Industry

by William Davies
ebook
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“Deeply researched and pithily argued.” —New York Magazine

“A brilliant, and sometimes eerie, dissection” of ‘the science of happiness’ and the modern-day commercialization of our most private emotions (Vice)

Why are we so obsessed with measuring happiness?
 
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.
 
Here, 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.
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Publisher: Verso Books

Kindle Book

  • Release date: May 12, 2015

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781781688472
  • File size: 428 KB
  • Release date: May 12, 2015

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781781688472
  • File size: 428 KB
  • Release date: May 12, 2015
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Business Politics Nonfiction

Languages

English

“Deeply researched and pithily argued.” —New York Magazine

“A brilliant, and sometimes eerie, dissection” of ‘the science of happiness’ and the modern-day commercialization of our most private emotions (Vice)

Why are we so obsessed with measuring happiness?
 
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.
 
Here, 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.
Expand title description text
Business Politics Nonfiction