Regimes of Happiness: Comparative and Historical Studies

(Hardback)

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Regimes of Happinessis a comparative and historical analysis of how human societies have articulated and enacted distinctive notions of human fulfilment, determining divergent moral, ethical and religious traditions and incommensurate and conflicting understanding of the meaning of the 'good life'.

Presented in two parts, Regimes of Happinessprovides a historical view of the way in which Western societies, the descendants of the Latin Roman Empire, created languages and institutions that established specific and occasionally antithetical conceptions of a fulfilled human life or 'happiness' in the first part. The second part explores how non-Western societies and non-Christian religions have conceived and established their own ideals of human perfection. Regimes of Happinessis a critical reflection on modern notions of happiness which are typically focused on individual feelings of pleasure.

Author Bio

Yuri Contreras-Vejar is professor of sociology at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. He is also a member of the Committee for the Study of Religion at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA.

Joanna Tice Jen is a member of the political science faculty at Las Positas College, USA. She received her PhD in political science from the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA, in 2017.

Bryan S. Turner is professor of sociology at the Australian Catholic University, emeritus professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA, and honorary professor, Social Science Faculty, Potsdam University, Germany. He won the Max Planck Award in 2015.