Harare Review of Books

360 pages.

First published on May 9, 2023 (Columbia University Press)

Non-fiction.

Stop feeling bad if your country consistently does poorly in the World Happiness Review and similar; in fact, if anyone tells you some nation is happier than another, throw this book at them.

I wanted this galley specifically because Zimbabwe consistently scores poorly whenever national happiness is measured, and because I find the idea of happiness indexes very suspect, even if they are a good counter to only using GDP to measure national progress. This book helps enormously to make sense of all my scoffing.

With arguments “against happiness” from a multidisciplinary perspective, the authors examine the concept of happiness from concepts in philosophy (Aristotelian eudaimonia etc) to definitions of happiness and well-being across cultures. They examine various ways of measuring “happiness” (infamously, “Did you smile yesterday?” as one of the questions used) and the problems therein—the danger of creating a tool that works in one’s own culture, that may not be applicable in another. I particularly enjoyed the sections on how data is collected and the explanations of the flaws in those methods (such as self-reporting); too often, happiness reports seem scientific, and it is useful to have specific and scientific criticisms of them.

Against Happiness is a very thorough examination of the happiness “agenda”, even including critical responses at the end of the book (I particularly appreciated Jeanne L. Tsai’s essay). I am very glad to have my copious notes from it as a reference for when I argue Zimbabwe’s—and many other “Global South” nations’—case against happiness as a measure of well-being, and our consistent humiliation when those reports are released.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Columbia University Press for this ARC.