Living Well Together: On Happiness, Social Goods and Genuinely Progressive Sociology

Abstract

Sociologists, planners, and activists are prone to treating society as if it were an enemy of wellbeing. This ‘disapproval addiction’ seriously inhibits our ability to understand and foster the social goods that make happiness possible. Instead of focusing mainly on social pathologies, we could instead cultivate more deliberately appreciative and aspirational approaches to social qualities. Appreciation and positive promotion of happiness and social goods could then become our core concern. This chapter proposes the deliberate and explicit adoption of a ‘happiness lens’ in social scholarship and planning so as to emphasise positivity, empathy, and integrative linkages between life domains through the life course. This lens is used to explore different kinds of claim to foster ‘social progress’: remedial; preventive; provisional; and ultimately genuine moral progress. It is proposed that this could make our social learning strategies more appreciative and our social plans more aspirational and uplifting. Conversely, and more provocatively, it is argued that we cannot claim to be ‘ethical’, or ‘progressive’, or even ‘politically engaged’ if we don’t make happiness an explicit and central concern in social research and social planning. Overall, these arguments are intended to highlight the ‘disruptive’ potential of a happiness lens.