Where is happiness? A cultural analysis of the emotional practices

Abstract: Happiness is an affect. Affects are thought to be part of our subjective experiences. In the past, human beings have constructed complex relationships with happiness outside of ourselves. Since sociocultural values laden to happiness established various linkages with objects, happiness seemed to become materialised and accessible, which is expressed, for example, as the UN’s World Happiness Report. Simultaneously, the usage of happiness by the UN, connecting countries (objects) and happiness, is detached from happiness as an affect. If every human being’s goal is to be happy (Ahmed, 2007, p 7), it is time to pay attention to our relationships with happiness. From an ethnological perspective, I investigate where and how happiness resides in performing everyday behaviours. I aim to explore how happiness, an affect, is experienced and expressed, through “doings and sayings” (Scheer, 2012, p 209) as practices in everyday life, by conducting ethnographic, individual interviews with my friends and acquaintances in Lund, a town in Sweden. In the analysis, I go through the knowledge of happiness cultivated in society, i.e. habitus of Sweden, how the informants actually express happiness in everyday life, and how the informants physically perceive happiness. I sort and analyse the collected materials by the theories and concepts of emotional practices by Monique Scheer (2012) which is built upon the practice theory by Pierre Bourdieu, happy objects by Sara Ahmed (2010) and Spinoza by Nils Gilje (2016). By investigating people’s “doings and sayings”, I seek linkages between ‘happiness’ disengaged by society and ‘happiness’ as an affect of individuals. Ultimately, I intend to reconnect them, and find where and how happiness resides in everyday life.