Positive Sociology and Appreciative Empathy: History and Prospects

Abstract

This paper explores the contributions of sociology (and overlapping disciplines such as anthropology, social policy, and cultural studies) to happiness scholarship from the Enlightenment through to the present day. Pre-20th century thinkers whose work led to the formation of social science tended to take the theme of happiness seriously as a central challenge of social scholarship. Over the past century, sociologists have made important contributions to understanding happiness, although its absence from textbooks, encyclopedias, and conferences suggests that happiness has never been a major theme in mainstream sociology. The discipline's role in happiness scholarship could be greatly strengthened through more systematic and explicit approaches, especially in qualitative research. These will doubtless be developed soon, as sociology catches up with the other social sciences (most notably psychology and economics) that have already made great progress in convincing general publics and politicians that something so elusive as happiness can be analysed and assessed in robust and illuminating ways. A ‘happiness lens’ is recommended as a way of making sociology more transparent regarding its contributions to understanding and promoting good societies and good lives. This lens complements pathologism with positivity; insists on empathic effort to respect first-person subjectivity; and promotes holism and lifecourse perspectives.

Happiness Research: A Review of Critiques

“…Whilst it has become customary for proponents of disciplinary turns towards happiness to lament the traditional focus upon pathology, numerous analyses have described how happiness research itself unwittingly propounds negative, problematised images of human beings (Burnett ; Cieslik and Bartram ; Ecclestone ; Held ; Matthews and Zeidner ; Thin ). For instance, Thin (, , ) claims emphasis on problems blinds researchers from considering how people find happiness. ‘Happiness is implicitly assumed to exist in the absence of the various problems […] and the work of promoting mental health is implicitly assumed to be the work of preventing, alleviating and curing mental illness’ (Thin, :13).…”

“…1 It has also become an increasingly significant object of public policy both domestically and internationally with governments around the world considering measures of happiness, or 'subjective well-being,' as progress indicators and tools for appraising policy (Helliwell et al 2013;OECD 2013; Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 2012; Stiglitz et al 2009;UN General Assembly 2011). Responding to these trends, there have been calls for sociologists to contribute to this growing field by producing sociological research on happiness (Bartram 2012;Cieslik and Bartram 2014;Firebaugh and Schroeder 2009;Stebbins 2009;Thin 2012Thin , 2014. It has been suggested that a key benefit of a 'sociological lens' (Thin 2014) would be to refocus analyses away from overly individualistic, biological or otherwise de-contextualised considerations emerging from other disciplines (Bartram 2012;Carlisle and Hanlon 2007;Horwitz 2002;Schnittker 2008;Thin 2012).…”

“…Responding to these trends, there have been calls for sociologists to contribute to this growing field by producing sociological research on happiness (Bartram 2012;Cieslik and Bartram 2014;Firebaugh and Schroeder 2009;Stebbins 2009;Thin 2012Thin , 2014. It has been suggested that a key benefit of a 'sociological lens' (Thin 2014) would be to refocus analyses away from overly individualistic, biological or otherwise de-contextualised considerations emerging from other disciplines (Bartram 2012;Carlisle and Hanlon 2007;Horwitz 2002;Schnittker 2008;Thin 2012). In turn, literature has begun to focus more upon the 'social determinants' of subjective well-being and happiness (Chan and Lee 2006;Deeming 2013;Graham 2009;Wadsworth 2014;Wilkinson and Pickett 2010).…”

‘Unhappy News’: Process, Rhetoric, and Context in the Making of the Happiness Problem

“…Similarly, much of the problematisation of happiness is implicit. For instance, Thin (2014) has argued that where psychology and economics have monopolised the happiness industry, social scientists should ‘develop their own ways of paying “positive” attention to the social facilitation of wellbeing’. But if happiness and well-being are not a problem, one wonders why they need to be ‘promoted’ or ‘facilitated’.…”

Finding the missing voices of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP): using a ‘Participatory Social Interaction Research’ methodology and anthropological perspectives within African developing countries

“…We believe that academic enquiry has the opportunity -arguably a moral obligation -to deconstruct and contextualize the terminology of operational SDP into the specific workings of complex social and cultural systems. By critically engaging with these understandings through anthropologically sound fieldwork and methods, a humanistic approach to research in the first-person (Thin 2014) is established that allows researchers to engage in a (re)conceptualizing of SDP language from the perspective of the local, not simply recycling assumptions for the sake of academic exercise.…”