The Practices of Happiness

The Practices of Happiness PDF Author: Ian Steedman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136937544
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. There is growing evidence that rising levels of prosperity in Western economies since 1945 have not been matched by greater incidences of reported well-being and happiness. Indeed, material affluence is often accompanied instead by greater social and individual distress. A growing literature within the humanities and social sciences is increasingly concerned to chart not only the underlying trends in recorded levels of happiness, but to consider what factors, if any, contribute to positive and sustainable experiences of well-being and quality of life. Increasingly, such research is focusing on the importance of values and beliefs in human satisfaction or quality of life; but the specific contribution of religion to these trends is relatively under-examined. This unique collection of essays seeks to rectify that omission, by identifying the nature and role of the religious contribution to wellbeing. A unique collection of nineteen leading scholars from the field of economics, psychology, public theology and social policy have been brought together in this volume to explore the religious contribution to the debate about happiness and well-being. These essays explore the religious dimensions to a number of key features of well-being, including marriage, crime and rehabilitation, work, inequality, mental health, environment, participation, institutional theory, business and trade. They engage particularly closely with current trends in economics in identifying alternative models of economic growth which focus on its qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions. This unique volume brings to public notice the nature and role of religion’s contribution to wellbeing, including new ways of measurement and evaluation. As such, it represents a valuable and unprecedented resource for the development of a broad-based religious contribution to the field. It will be of particular relevance for those who are concerned about the continuing debate about personal and societal well-being, as well as those who are interested in the continuing significance of religion for the future of public policy.

The Practices of Happiness

The Practices of Happiness PDF Author: Ian Steedman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136937544
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. There is growing evidence that rising levels of prosperity in Western economies since 1945 have not been matched by greater incidences of reported well-being and happiness. Indeed, material affluence is often accompanied instead by greater social and individual distress. A growing literature within the humanities and social sciences is increasingly concerned to chart not only the underlying trends in recorded levels of happiness, but to consider what factors, if any, contribute to positive and sustainable experiences of well-being and quality of life. Increasingly, such research is focusing on the importance of values and beliefs in human satisfaction or quality of life; but the specific contribution of religion to these trends is relatively under-examined. This unique collection of essays seeks to rectify that omission, by identifying the nature and role of the religious contribution to wellbeing. A unique collection of nineteen leading scholars from the field of economics, psychology, public theology and social policy have been brought together in this volume to explore the religious contribution to the debate about happiness and well-being. These essays explore the religious dimensions to a number of key features of well-being, including marriage, crime and rehabilitation, work, inequality, mental health, environment, participation, institutional theory, business and trade. They engage particularly closely with current trends in economics in identifying alternative models of economic growth which focus on its qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions. This unique volume brings to public notice the nature and role of religion’s contribution to wellbeing, including new ways of measurement and evaluation. As such, it represents a valuable and unprecedented resource for the development of a broad-based religious contribution to the field. It will be of particular relevance for those who are concerned about the continuing debate about personal and societal well-being, as well as those who are interested in the continuing significance of religion for the future of public policy.

Economics of Happiness

Economics of Happiness PDF Author: Bruno S. Frey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319758071
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Book Description
This book focuses on what makes people happy. The author explains methods for measuring subjective life satisfaction and well-being by discussing economic and sociodemographic factors, as well as the psychological, cultural and political dimensions of personal happiness. Does higher income increase happiness? Are people in rich countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries, happier than those living elsewhere? Does losing one’s job make one unhappy? What is the role of genetic endowments inherited from our parents? How important are physical and emotional health to subjective life satisfaction? Do older people tend to be happier, or younger people? Are close social relationships necessary for happiness? Do political conditions, such as respect for human rights, democracy and autonomy, play a part? How can governments contribute to the population’s happiness? This book answers these questions on the basis of extensive interdisciplinary research reflecting the current state of knowledge. The book will appeal to anyone interested in learning more about the various dimensions of personal well-being beyond the happiness-prosperity connection, as well as to policymakers looking for guidance on how to improve happiness in societies.

Religion and Economics

Religion and Economics PDF Author: Resit Ergener
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030444554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This book allows the reader to have an overview of the relations between religion and economics throughout history. It starts with the beginnings of early modern humans, when dreams (of dead ancestors), animism, synchronous movements and a propensity to exchange, led to the emergence of religion, which then contributed to the coordination and pooling of labor and to the definition of groups. This book surveys the various roles played by religion in economic life through the ages, which include the justification of the exploitation of nature, the expansion of trade, the emergence of inequality and of charity, the definition, enhancement and attenuation of hierarchies of dominance, the provision of various services and of the impact religion has had on economic performance at the micro and macro levels.

Handbook on the Economics of Happiness

Handbook on the Economics of Happiness PDF Author: L. Bruni
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1847204155
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
This book is a welcome consolidation and extension of the recent expanding debates on happiness and economics. Happiness and economics, as a new field for research, is now of pivotal interest particularly to welfare economists and psychologists.

The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics

The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics PDF Author: Paul Oslington
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199729719
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
The new interdisciplinary field of Christianity and economics deals with the important and difficult questions that cluster at the boundary of these disciplines, drawing on contemporary theory and empirical findings in both fields, with roots in older discourses. This landmark volume surveys the field and advances the discussion. It deploys historical, economic, and theological analysis to search for answers.

Happiness and Economics

Happiness and Economics PDF Author: Bruno S. Frey
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400829267
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Curiously, economists, whose discipline has much to do with human well-being, have shied away from factoring the study of happiness into their work. Happiness, they might say, is an ''unscientific'' concept. This is the first book to establish empirically the link between happiness and economics--and between happiness and democracy. Two respected economists, Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer, integrate insights and findings from psychology, where attempts to measure quality of life are well-documented, as well as from sociology and political science. They demonstrate how micro- and macro-economic conditions in the form of income, unemployment, and inflation affect happiness. The research is centered on Switzerland, whose varying degrees of direct democracy from one canton to another, all within a single economy, allow for political effects to be isolated from economic effects. Not surprisingly, the authors confirm that unemployment and inflation nurture unhappiness. Their most striking revelation, however, is that the more developed the democratic institutions and the degree of local autonomy, the more satisfied people are with their lives. While such factors as rising income increase personal happiness only minimally, institutions that facilitate more individual involvement in politics (such as referendums) have a substantial effect. For countries such as the United States, where disillusionment with politics seems to be on the rise, such findings are especially significant. By applying econometrics to a real-world issue of general concern and yielding surprising results, Happiness and Economics promises to spark healthy debate over a wide range of the social sciences.

Happiness

Happiness PDF Author: Richard Layard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101117710
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. We all want more money, but as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not speculation: It's the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. The central question the great economist Richard Layard asks in Happiness is this: If we really wanted to be happier, what would we do differently? First we'd have to see clearly what conditions generate happiness and then bend all our efforts toward producing them. That is what this book is about-the causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it. Until recently there was too little evidence to give a good answer to this essential question, but, Layard shows us, thanks to the integrated insights of psychology, sociology, applied economics, and other fields, we can now reach some firm conclusions, conclusions that will surprise you. Happiness is an illuminating road map, grounded in hard research, to a better, happier life for us all.

Aquinas and the Market

Aquinas and the Market PDF Author: Mary L. Hirschfeld
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674988604
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Economists and theologians usually inhabit different intellectual worlds. Economists investigate the workings of markets and tend to set ethical questions aside. Theologians, anxious to take up concerns raised by market outcomes, often dismiss economics and lose insights into the influence of market incentives on individual behavior. Mary L. Hirschfeld, who was a professor of economics for fifteen years before training as a theologian, seeks to bridge these two fields in this innovative work about economics and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. According to Hirschfeld, an economics rooted in Thomistic thought integrates many of the insights of economists with a larger view of the good life, and gives us critical purchase on the ethical shortcomings of modern capitalism. In a Thomistic approach, she writes, ethics and economics cannot be reconciled if we begin with narrow questions about fair wages or the acceptability of usury. Rather, we must begin with an understanding of how economic life serves human happiness. The key point is that material wealth is an instrumental good, valuable only to the extent that it allows people to flourish. Hirschfeld uses that insight to develop an account of a genuinely humane economy in which pragmatic and material concerns matter but the pursuit of wealth for its own sake is not the ultimate goal. The Thomistic economics that Hirschfeld outlines is thus capable of dealing with our culture as it is, while still offering direction about how we might make the economy better serve the human good.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion PDF Author: Robert A. Segal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470656565
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Explore a rigorous but accessible guide to contemporary approaches to the study of religion from leading voices in the field The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion delivers an expert and insightful analysis of modern perspectives on the study of religion across the humanities and the social sciences. Presupposing no knowledge of the approaches examined in the collection, the book is ideal for undergraduate students who have yet to undertake extensive study in the humanities or social sciences. The book includes perspectives from those in fields as diverse as globalization, cognitive science, the study of emotion, law, esotericism, sex and gender, functionalism, terror, the comparative method, modernism, and postmodernism. Many of the topics covered in the book clearly hail from religious studies, while others are grounded in other areas of academia. All of the chapters contained within are written by recognized authors who show how their chosen discipline contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon of religion. This book also includes topics like: A comprehensive exploration of multiple approaches to religious study, including anthropology, economics, literature, phenomenology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology A review of various topics germane to the study of religion, including the study of the body, cognitive science, the comparative method, death and the afterlife, law, magic, music, and myth A selection of subjects touching on modern trends in extremism and violence, including chapters on terror and violence, fundamentalism, and nationalism A discussion of the influence of modernism and postmodernism in religion Ideal for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students in humanities and social science programs taking courses on religion and myth, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion will also earn a place in the libraries of specialists working in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, History, and Philosophy.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness PDF Author: Carol L. Graham
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 081572439X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
In The Pursuit of Happiness, renowned economist Carol Graham explores what we know about the determinants of happiness and clearly presents both the promise and the potential pitfalls of injecting the "economics of happiness" into public policymaking. While the book spotlights the innovative contributions of happiness research to the dismal science, it also raises a cautionary note about the issues that still need to be addressed before policymakers can make best use of them.