Manufacturing Happy Citizens How the Science and Industry of Happiness Control Our Lives

'excellent... a clear-sighted critique of capitalism's current obsession with happiness and of the shaky science allowing a well-meaning ideal to be so easily subverted by governments and companies.'
New Scientist
 
'This brilliantly researched and beautifully argued book offers a devastating critique of the contemporary obsession with happiness. Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz interrogate the flaws, inconsistencies and generalizations of happiness "science" and positive psychology, showing how it has become central to a blame culture in which structural inequalities are made over as psychological deficits. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the way that neoliberalism increasingly operates through psychological modes promoting confidence, resilience and "positive" feelings.'
Rosalind Gill, City, University of London
 
'How have the science and industry of happiness transformed our expectations about what a good life means, and at what cost? In their critical inquiry, Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz powerfully demonstrate the pervasive neoliberal logics and pernicious social consequences of the contemporary politics of happiness.'
Didier Fassin, Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton