Mark Cieslik

‘Not Smiling but Frowning’: Sociology and the ‘Problem of Happiness’

Mainstream British sociology has curiously neglected happiness studies despite growing interest in wellbeing in recent years. Sociologists often view happiness as a problematic, subjective phenomenon, linked to problems of modernity such as consumerism, alienation and anomie. This construction of ‘happiness as a problem’ has a long history from Marx and Durkheim to contemporary writers such as Ahmed and Furedi. Using qualitative interview data, I illustrate how lay accounts of happiness suggest it is experienced in far more ‘social’ ways than these traditional subjective constructions. We should therefore be wary of using crude representations of happiness as vehicles for our traditional depictions of modernity. Such ‘thin’ accounts of happiness have inhibited a serious sociological engagement with the things that really matter to ordinary people, such as our efforts to balance suffering and flourishing in our daily lives.

Skills for Life? Basic Skills and Marginal Transitions from School to Work.

This paper reports on a qualitative research project that explored the influence of basic skills on the school-to-work transitions of young adults. Large numbers of young people have poor skills yet it is a neglected area of study. We document how skill competencies act as barriers to learning and labour market opportunities, illustrating that some individuals are ‘reticent’ about accessing opportunities and that individual decision-making and agency are important to transitions. The paper illustrates the relationships between decision-making and the structuring effects of prior learning experiences and indicates therefore how structural conditioning and agential processes are linked and together shape transition routes.

Education Action Zones, empowerment and parents

This paper focuses on one aspect of the work of Education Action Zones (EAZs) that has been neglected by emerging research, namely their efforts to tackle social exclusion and empower a more representative set of parents to become involved in policy-making processes for education in their localities. Data from three EAZs across the country are presented to demonstrate that empowerment of parents through zones is restricted. Instead, the interests of educational professionals, and to a lesser extent those parents who have previously been socially and politically active, predominate across EAZs. The paper claims that the assumptions pervading the discourses of powerful coalitions across EAZs and their discursive competencies are actually presenting a barrier to wider parental empowerment in the form envisaged in policy texts and the rhetoric of ministers.

Basic skills and transitions to adulthood

This article reports on the findings of a qualitative research project conducted in the North East of England. This project involved interviews with 55 young adults in an attempt to explore the impact of poor basic skills on transitions to adulthood. Poor basic skills have been identifued across Europe as a problem facing nation states, groups and individuals. But apart from large-scale survey-based studies (Bynner and Parsons, 2001), previous youth research has neglected the process through which basic skills play a role in transitions to adulthood. Proposing a social theory of situated basic skills as communal and individual resources, the authors develop an approach that is sensitive to both structure and agency in theorizing the role of literacy, numeracy and oracy in transitions. They claim that the mobilization of basic skills resources and their role across the life-course can best be understood by using a conceptualization of agency that recognizes the importance of reflexivity as a mediating link between subjective (agential) and objective (structural) dimensions of transition.

Basic skills, literacy practices and the 'Hidden Injuries of Class'

This paper draws on qualitative data from three research projects that examined the impact of poor skills on the life chances of adults living in two disadvantaged areas of England. We employed the theories of Goffman and Bourdieu to document how problems with literacy have a corrosive effect on the identities of interviewees, threatening their wellbeing. Though learning difficulties occur across all social backgrounds, the poor family resources and educational opportunities of our respondents meant they struggled to overcome their literacy problems when young, thus shaping later life course transitions. Thus the origins of the shame that our adults felt about their poor skills lie in part in the distinctive classed experiences they had when young. However, the resourcefulness of our respondents meant that many had secured employment, bought homes and become parents which obscured the ongoing psychic problems that a lifetime of poor skills had bestowed on our sample. The disjuncture between the apparent material standing of our sample and the ‘hidden injuries of class’ raises questions about how we understand the operation of class across the life course and the role of literacy, learning and wellbeing in the shaping of social identities.

The Happiness Riddle and the Quest for a Good Life

This book examines the meaning of happiness in Britain today, and observes that although we face challenges such as austerity, climate change and disenchantment with politics, we continue to be interested in happiness and living well. The author illustrates how happiness is a far more contested, social process than is often portrayed by economists and psychologists, and takes issue with sociologists who often regard wellbeing and the happiness industry with suspicion, whilst neglecting one of the key features of being human – the quest for a good life. Exploring themes that question what it means to be happy and live a good life in Britain today, such as the challenges young people face making their way through education and into their first jobs; work life-balance; mid-life crises; and old age, the book presents nineteen life stories that call for a far more critical and ambitious approach to happiness research that marries the radicalism of sociology, with recent advances in psychology and economics.

Happiness in Mid Life

This chapter examines the lives of five people in their late forties and early fifties, using interview material to chart the influences on their wellbeing. Some experienced a mid-life crisis which involved failed marriages and changes of career, whilst others were able to avoid these upheavals in life. Questions are posed about these different transitions through life and the sources of good wellbeing such as affluence, friendships, love and beliefs. The life stories illustrate that at times affluence can aid good wellbeing but that meaning in life and good quality relationships underpin better wellbeing.

Happiness in Old Age

This chapter examines the challenges that old age poses for four individuals and how they attempted to live well. Cieslik compares men and women in later life and how some appear much more successful than others in living well. Key to better wellbeing was a range and quality of activities and social relationships and that these needed to be developed well before retirement. Hence good wellbeing in later life requires lifelong investment in networks and relationships and good work-life balance when younger.

Positive Psychology and Happiness

This chapter examines some key ideas in positive psychology around the nature of happiness, its sources and how to research subjective wellbeing. It discusses ideas such as the hedonic treadmill, fallibility and flow events. It poses questions about the measurement of happiness, calling for more qualitative approaches that would allow for a greater appreciation of the complex meanings and narratives that people employ when experiencing happiness.

Happiness and Young People

This chapter draws on interviews with five young people and explores their different experiences of happiness charting the impact of class and gender on their wellbeing. Many discuss the challenges of making transitions to adult independence and how poor quality jobs and expensive education and housing have been a source of uncertainty. Yet despite these threats to their wellbeing, good friendship networks, leisure activities and supportive family meant they were still positive about their lives and optimistic about their futures. Adolescence for them, growing up in a time of austerity had been ‘the best of times and the worst of times’.