Positive psychology’s promise of happiness: A new form of human capital in contemporary neoliberal governmentality

Abstract

The article seeks to contribute to governmentality studies by looking anew at the subjectivities posited by neoliberalism and especially by positive psychology. Focusing in particular on Sam Binkley’s critical work on this psychological sub-discipline, we offer a political analysis of the new ways of becoming a subject it proposes. For Binkley, positive psychology operates as a subjectivising vector by promoting a specific kind of work on oneself. His approach, we suggest, rests on a conception that relies on the classical disjunction between production and effort, on the one hand, and consumption and satisfaction, on the other. With references to Foucault, Marx, Becker, and Schultz’s conceptions of work and subjectivity, the article shows that positive psychology’s novelty is to enable a new happy subjective perspective from where happiness, rather than a long-term objective, is considered to be a precondition of work, a radical new form of human capital.

The Psychology of Neoliberalism and the Neoliberalism of Psychology

“…Hegemonic perspectives of psychological science typically impose a neoliberal individualist construction of happiness as high arousal positive affect (Tsai, ). According to this standard, it is not sufficient to achieve contentment or absence of negative feelings; in addition, psychologists tend to prescribe the more active or energetic form of happiness that fulfills requirements of neoliberal affect management: namely, to motivate entrepreneurial risk and to counter anxiety associated with responsibilization of failure (De La Fabian & Stecher, ).…”

‘I always have fun at work’: How ‘remarkable workers’ employ agency and control in order to enjoy themselves

“…Work-based resilience initiatives, discussed above, often incorporate related ‘positive’ coping strategies (Bardoel et al, 2014; Pykett, Jones, & Whitehead, 2016). Indeed, some critics argue that happiness at work, as promoted through positive psychology, has become a valuable form of cultural capital that equips those who are already successful to become even more so (De La Fabián & Stetcher, 2017). So the workers in our study might be said to possess both cultural capital and work environments that best set them up for workplace success and happiness.…”

What is work good for? A positive organizational psychology perspective

“…It could be argued that positive psychology itself betrays an individualistic bias that reflects neoliberalism and governmentality, and indeed such criticisms have been leveled (e.g., Cabanas, 2018;De La Fabián & Stecher, 2017). However, it has also been suggested that the critical perspective may represent an over-intellectualization of economic rationalization (Fleming, 2014).…”