Culture And Emotion Essay: A Hope For Happiness - University Of New South Wales, ARTS2874 - Essay

2069 words - 9 pages

Essay: A Hope for Happiness
As stated by Ahmed “Everybody wants to be happy. There is probably no other goal in life that
commands such a high degree of consensus”. The general consensus of happiness, is that
happiness is considered to be a positive emotional state or wellbeing that is constantly the object of
our pursuit. In today’s society, the hegemony of Capitalism, has had an influence on the social ideals
of happiness and the ways to attain it. Ahmed argues in ​The promise of happiness,​ that the idea of
happiness, is essentially a culturally and socially produced notion, which we strive towards. Using
extracts from Hage’s ​Against Paranoid Nationalism ​to extend upon this idea, Hage proposes that
hope is the human condition that pushes us to attain the socially and culturally produced ideals of
happiness, by giving us the will to persevere and continue our pursuit towards it. The purpose of this
essay is to argue that the interaction between culture and emotion, specifically the socially and
culturally produced notion of happiness and the emotion of hope, is a social fact. This would be
dubbed as the process of hoping for happiness. To illustrate the interaction between hope and
happiness, the essay will firstly discuss what happiness and hope is, before linking the two concepts
through theory and an example. I would also assess the process and the implication that emerge
from this.
Ahmed’s idea of happiness, within the process of hoping for happiness comes from the quote
“Attributions of happiness might be how social norms and ideals become affective, as if relative
proximity to those norms and ideas create happiness” (Ahmed 2010:12). This implies that happiness
is defined as a socially and culturally produced notion, because it is attributed to norms and ideas
created by society. It’s considered to be an object of our pursuit because the ability to conform to the
social norms and ideas, allows for happiness to be created. It’s what gives humans “purpose,
meaning and order” (Ahmed 2010:1) in their lives. She continues to state “Happiness depends on
other forms of capital (background, personality networks) as well as acquiring or accumulating
capital for the individual subject” (Ahmed 2010:11). This demonstrates that this social and cultural
construct can be normative, as it produces certain ideas of objects, behaviours and biographies,
which are associated with the attainment of happiness for the individual. Therefore, Ahmed’s
argument suggests that happiness can only be achieved, when the individual tries to embody these
certain social biographies and behaviours and try to attain objects with connotations of happiness.
This demonstrates the sociality of happiness, as a social and cultural construction, which influences
members of society.
In conjunction, the idea of hope that Hage describes in ​Against Paranoid Nationalism​, is that hope is
an aspirational state of feeling, thinking and behaving, which is associated with the expectat...

More like Culture And Emotion Essay: A Hope For Happiness - University Of New South Wales, ARTS2874 - Essay

Legal System In New South Wales - Yr 10 Commerce - Essay

1105 words - 5 pages ... (lower house) to legislative council (upper house). Parliament creates new laws, process laws and change existing law. Two houses of parliament are Legislative council and Legislative assembly. Legislative assembly drafts the bill, first reading of a drafted bill, ministers in charge of the house read and debates with council whether the bill is useful or not. If the results are majority for the bill, it’s approved, then it’s sent to the upper ...

Hope In The Great Gatsby And The Hunger Games - English 102 - University Of South Carolina - Essay

2129 words - 9 pages ... Rose 1 Savannah Rose Dr. Bland English 102 16 April 2018 Hope in The Great Gatsby and The Hunger Games When one thinks of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Suzanne Collins, his/her mind is immediately drawn towards their respective novels, The Great Gatsby and The Hunger Games. While at first glance these novels could not appear to be any more different, it is the theme of hope that they are connected; hope for a better future, hope for a better life ...

A Consumer's Buying Behaviour Essay - University Of Wales Trinity Saint David - Essay

768 words - 4 pages ... for marketers in order to develop suitable marketing mixes to appeal to the target customer. CULTURAL factors include a consumers culture, subculture and social class. These factors are often inherent in our values and decision processes. SOCIAL factors include groups (reference groups, aspirational groups and member groups), family, roles and status. This explains the outside influences of others on our purchase decisions either directly or ...

Culture Through The Lens Of Art - New York University Cultural Foundations II - Essay

1078 words - 5 pages ... distinct cultures. The cultures that have formed in the societies of Greece and South Asia differ greatly, resulting in the existence of differing forms of art and representation. Ancient Greek society was centered around the ideology of human perfection. While the culture did consist of godly figures, many of the faces in infamous pieces of Greek art are nameless, merely serving as a physical representation of human capacity and power. The ancient ...

A Vision For A Good Society - South African Context - Ethics - University - Essay

1153 words - 5 pages ... , corruption, crime, racism, unemployment, HIV among others. These factors slow down the economic growth of the state and undressing such crisis enables the state have effective progress. Bibliography Dugard, J., 2015. Human rights and the South African legal order (Vol. 1240). Princeton University Press. Goldstone, R.J., 1997. The South African bill of rights. Tex. Int'l LJ, 32, p.451. Oldfield, S. and Greyling, S., 2015. Waiting for the state: a politics of housing in South Africa. Environment and Planning A, 47(5), pp.1100-1112. Constitution of The Republic of South Africa, 1996 ...

A Cold War Culture: A Philosophical Dissection Of Counter Culture And Its Root In The Cold War - American History; Colorado Christian University - Essay

835 words - 4 pages ... not more, impactful during development than you and your family’s religious views. The Church then, is placed in a bit of a conundrum. They can not sit by idly, as secular culture devours the morals of their young minds, defying all that the Church stands for. So what can they do? The Evangelical church’s answer has been simple, fire and brimstone and fear. Throughout the years the church has been adamant about the dangers of lust, premarital sex ...

Pursuit For Happiness - High School - Essay

833 words - 4 pages ... Happiness is a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment. Happiness is not found through the material things in life. People should approach the idea of achieving happiness by having a positive outlook on life and being willing to work hard for what they want. Truly happy people perceive that happiness does not return from one event. It comes from a positive outlook and specific daily actions, that reinforce a contented perspective. As ...

Strategies Of Increasing Happiness - Alexander College And 100 - Essay

1377 words - 6 pages Free ... ” (Gadsby). Volunteering is not just a source of getting happiness but also a positive habit anyone can grow within. Volunteering for me is a simple approach to find our own interests and to grow new ones. Participating lifts self confidence and increases leadership skills as it provides the opportunity to replay the roles such as cooperating, leading, time managing and critical thinking that are essentials in any leader. It gives an achievement of ...

Buddhism And Ethics Of Happiness - Intro To Ethics 2306 - Essay

855 words - 4 pages ... , and won their path to Nirvana in their current life. In conclusion, Buddhists who are following the four levels of teaching, live their lives focused on avoiding evil at all costs. Seeking happiness and freedom from sorrow is the gap between good and evil. Thus meaning, that a person must be responsible for their own decisions and actions. If you choose your decisions the right way you can make yourself worthy in the eyes of the gods. Furthermore, filling oneself with hope will grant them unending freedom and happiness. ...

Civil War Essay - Differences Of The North And South - Monash University, ATS1320: Nations At War - Essay

1649 words - 7 pages ... emphasise the gulf between the North and South making it impossible for them to co-exist as a single nation. Northern political discourse was mainly centred around the support for the free-labour ideology. At the centre of this belief system was the desire to limit the expansion of slavery into new territories to provide wage earners with the ability to “rise to property-owning independence”.[footnoteRef:1] The North, specifically the Republican party ...

Culture Shock Paper: A Paper That Defines Culture Shock And What It Means To Have Culture Shock - Troy University, Diversity - Essay

701 words - 3 pages ... 1 Culture Shock Sarah Bradley Troy University After being in the United States for a long time, or even for your entire life, adjusting to a new way of living can be quite difficult. This can be especially true if you are going to be living in this new place for an extended period of time like a college student studying abroad for a semester. If you have ever experienced culture shock, you’ll know it is quite interesting in how it manifests ...

Liberty Recycling Strategic Analysis - University Of South Australia, MBA - Essay

2114 words - 9 pages Free ... industry are costs and processing advantages, both from new or differing technologies and methods, and from economies of scale. The future trend for the industry is bleak, whilst there will always be a need for Metal Recycling, as manufacturing slows in developed countries the economies of scale offered by buying large quantities direct from source dwindle, seeing a higher percentage of scrap arising’s being generated at a household or light ...

Daoism And Its Link To Chinese Culture - University Of Oklahoma/ Humanities - Essay

1255 words - 6 pages ... Cassandra Snow LSTD-3113-401 Unit One Essay Daoism and Its Link to Chinese Culture Daoism has been a part if Chinese culture since 1000 B.C.E., maybe even earlier. In equal parts being a philosophy and a religion, Daoism is an expression filled with many practices. All these practices are centralized around prolonging and enriching life. The definition of Daoism can be confusing to some but those that follow the belief explain it as living with ...

Marketing – The Ethics Of Emotion From A Can - Thompson Rivers University - BUSN 6011 - Assignment

1747 words - 7 pages ... Assignment 3: Marketing – The Ethics of Emotion from a Can BUSN 6011 Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility - Winter 2018 Dwight Linton - TXXXXXXX Page | 1 Assignment Overview Read Ethics in Action 8.1, “Marketing—The ethics of emotions from a can,” and answer the Think Theory question on page 349. Assignment 3 Question: • In the light of the normative ethical theories discussed in Chapter 3, how can we evaluate the use of the ...

Applied Anthropology Final Essay - University Of New England And 2021 - Essay

1433 words - 6 pages Free ... , then they know how to speak the language. They do not take learning grammar into consideration. People see it as if they think of a certain sentence that the words would go in the exact order and way in another language. Which this is shown to be wrong. Some languages do not have words for certain words in another language. When one learns another language they also learn a new way of looking at the world. By knowing another language, you must learn ...