Constructions of Happiness / Konstruktionen des Glücks: Introduction

The ideal of human happiness is doubtless as old as mankind itself and the history of this tradition is rich and varied. However, across the globe, particularly in the postindustrial ‘developed’ world, people are preoccupied, perhaps more than they have been at any other point in history, with the “unquestioning certainty” that they should be happy. This “duty to be happy” is reflected in the huge amount of research literature on the topic, carried out in diverse fields such as neurology, psychology, sociology and, particularly, in economics, where the number of scholarly articles has increased exponentially, especially in the early years of the twenty-first century. The heightened scientific interest in what makes happy individuals and happy societies, and in how such happiness is to be measured, certainly seems set to continue, as is indicated by international, longitudinal studies monitoring life satisfaction and ‘social well-being’.