Values of Happiness

336 Pages·2017·1.29 MB·English

Values of Happiness
Hau
Books
executive editor
Giovanni da Col

Managing editor
Sean M. Dowdy
editorial Board
Anne-Christine Taylor
Carlos Fausto
Danilyn Rutherford
Ilana Gershon
Jason Throop
Joel Robbins
Jonathan Parry
Michael Lempert
Stephan Palmié
www.haubooks.com
Values of Happiness
TowARD An AnTHRoPoLoGy
oF PuRPoSe In LIFe
Special Issues in Ethnographic Theory Series
edited by

iza kavedžija and Harry Walker

Hau Books
Chicago
© 2016 Hau Books
Hau Books Special Issues in ethnographic Theory Series (Volume 2)
The Hau Books Special Issues in Ethnographic Theory Series prints paperback versions of
pathbreaking collections, previously published in Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
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Table of Contents
List of Contributors vii
introduction
Values of happiness
Harry Walker and Iza Kavedžija 1
chapter one
Ambivalent happiness and virtuous suffering
C. Jason Throop 29
chapter two
Being careful what you wish for: The case of happiness in China
Charles Stafford 59
chapter three
The good life in balance: Insights from aging Japan
Iza Kavedžija 83
chapter four
Techniques of happiness: Moving toward and away from the good
life in a rual ethopian community
Dena Freeman 109
vi Values of Happiness
chapter five
“Good without God”: Happiness and pleasure among the humanists
Matthew Engelke 133
chapter six
Mindful in westminster: The politics of meditation and the limits
of neoliberal critique
Joanna Cook 163
chapter seven
The path to happiness? Prosperity, suffering, and transnational
migration in Britain and Sylhet
Katy Gardner 191
chapter eight
Militantly well
Henrik E. Vigh 215
chapter nine
Le bonheur suisse, again
Michael Lambek 237
chapter ten
Joy within tranquility: Amazonian urarina styles of happiness
Harry Walker 267
afterword
on happiness, values, and time: The long and short of it
Joel Robbins 293
Index 317
list of Contributors
Joanna Cook is an anthropologist at university College London. She is the au-
thor of Meditation in modern Buddhism: Renunciation and change in Thai monastic
life (Cambridge university Press, 2010) and the coeditor of The state we’re in:
Reflecting on democracy’s troubles (Berghahn Books, 2016), Detachment: Essays on
the limits of relational thinking (Manchester university Press, 2015) and South-
east Asian perspectives on power (Routledge, 2012).
Matthew engelke is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of
economics and Political Science. He is the author of A problem of presence: Be-
yond scripture in an African church (university of California Press, 2007), which
won the 2008 Geertz Prize for Anthropology of Religion and the 2009 Turner
Prize for ethnographic writing, and God’s agents: Biblical publicity in contem-
porary England (university of California Press, 2013). He is coeditor, most re-
cently, of Global Christianity, global critique (with Joel Robbins), a special issue
of South Atlantic Quarterly (2010). He has run Prickly Paradigm Press with
Marshall Sahlins since 2002, and was editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthro-
pological Institute from 2010 to 2013.
Dena freeman is a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthro-
pology at the London School of economics. She has carried out research in
ethiopia for over twenty years and has written about cultural change, inequality,
marginalization, happiness, religion, and development. Her most recent book
viii Values of Happiness
is Pentecostalism and development: Churches, NGOs and social change in Africa
(Palgrave 2012).
katy Gardner is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of
economics where she is currently Head of Department. Her published works
include Global migrants, local lives: Travel and transformation in rural Bangladesh
(oxford university Press, 1995); Age, narrative and migration: The life histories
and the life course amongst British Bengali elders in London (Berg, 2002); and Dis-
cordant developments: Global capitalism and the struggle for survival in Bangladesh
(Pluto Press, 2012). She has also written a book on Anthropology and Devel-
opment (Anthropology and development: Challenges for the twenty first century,
with David Lewis, Pluto Press, 2015) and is the author of several novels and a
collection of short stories.
iza kavedžija has worked in Japan on meaning in life, motivation, life choices,
aging, and the life-course. She is currently a Lecturer in Anthropology at the
university of exeter. Her monograph Meaning in life: Tales from aging Japan,
based on her work with older Japanese, exploring their experiences of aging,
narrativity, and wellbeing, is forthcoming with university of Pennsylvania Press.
She is currently carrying out research examining practices of contemporary art
production among a community of young avant-garde artists in the Japanese
city of osaka.
Michael lambek holds a Canada Research Chair and is Professor of Anthro-
pology at the university of Toronto. He carries out the majority of his fieldwork
in the western Indian ocean and is the author or editor of a dozen books, most
recently The ethical condition (university of Chicago Press, 2015), A companion
to the anthropology of religion (edited with Janice Boddy; wiley-Blackwell, paper
edition 2015), and Four lectures on ethics: Anthropological perspectives (with Veena
Das, Didier Fassin, and webb Keane; Hau Books, 2015).
Joel Robbins is Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology at the univer-
sity of Cambridge. Much of his recent work has focused on the anthropological
study of values.
Charles stafford teaches anthropology at the London School of economics
and is also the publisher and editor of Anthropology of this Century. He is a
LIST oF ConTRIBuToRS ix
specialist in cognitive anthropology and the author of The roads of Chinese child-
hood (Cambridge university Press, 1995) and Separation and reunion in modern
China (Cambridge university Press, 2000), and the editor of Ordinary ethics in
China (Bloomsbury, 2013).
C. Jason Throop is Professor of Anthropology at university of California,
Los Angeles. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on pain, suffering, em-
pathy, and morality on the island of yap in the western Caroline Islands of
Micronesia. He is the author of Suffering and sentiment: Exploring the vicissi-
tudes of experience and pain in Yap (university of California Press, 2010) and the
coeditor of the volumes Toward an anthropology of the will (Stanford university
Press, 2010) and The anthropology of empathy: Experiencing the lives of others in
Pacific societies (Berghahn Books, 2011).
Henrik Vigh is Professor of Anthropology at the university of Copenhagen.
He has researched issues of youth and conflict in both europe and Africa and
has written extensively on issues of social crisis, conflict, and mobilization. He
is the author of Navigating terrains of war: Youth and soldiering in Guinea-Bissau.
His current research investigates the intersection between war and crime focus-
ing on the transnational movement of cocaine through militant networks in
west Africa.
Harry Walker has worked in the Peruvian Amazon on a range of topics includ-
ing personhood, materiality, exchange, shamanism, law, sport, and social change.
He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the London
School of economics and Political Science. His monograph on the Amazonian
urarina, Under a watchful eye: Self, power and intimacy in Amazonia (university
of California Press, 2013), explores the emergence of personal autonomy
through intimate but asymmetrical relations of nurturance and dependency. He
has recently published on the apprehension of formal law and its relationship to
ritual practice, and coedited a recent special issue on Amazonian appropriations
of documents and bureaucracy. He is currently carrying out research on concep-
tions of justice and injustice.