The Happiness Industry
Good Fit
- Readers wanting to approach positive psychology and the "happiness industry" from a critical, economic-sociological perspective
- Anyone curious about the power dynamics behind corporate wellbeing programs, meditation apps, and neuroscience-based marketing
- Readers who enjoy critical analyses of neoliberalism, seeking academically grounded but accessible nonfiction
Not a Fit
- Readers looking for practical techniques or advice to increase their own happiness — this book, on the contrary, critiques the very industry of "happiness techniques"
- Readers favorably disposed toward positive psychology and meditation, unwilling to engage with critique of these fields
- Readers wanting a simple, fast read, without patience for economic-sociological argumentation (references to Aristotle, Nietzsche, political-economic context)
Davies recalls that the World Economic Forum has, since 1971, served as a barometer of the global economy's mood — the 1970s focused on production efficiency, the 1980s on market liberalization, the 1990s on the internet, and the years after 2008 largely on how to return to the old order. In 2014, an unexpected guest appears: the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, leading delegates in morning meditation.
Ricard is no ordinary monk — a former biologist, the Dalai Lama's French interpreter, a TED speaker, and the man who earned the official title "the world's happiest man" after scoring "-0.45" in a University of Wisconsin neuroscience study. His presence at Davos comes to symbolize a broader shift in the priorities of the corporate world.
The conference isn't limited to talks — all delegates are handed wearable "wellbeing" devices that track bodily activity and send constant notifications to their phones. Davies notes that types of data once obtainable only in specialized institutions like laboratories or hospitals could now be gathered simply by walking around Davos.
Davies lays out his core thesis: this trend is no accident, but an agenda that has for years been steadily drawing in politicians and executives — countries like the US, UK, and France now publish official "national wellbeing" reports, and major corporations employ "happiness officers." He poses an open question: can one object to happiness? A concept Aristotle regarded as humanity's ultimate moral purpose, and Nietzsche viewed with suspicion, has now become a measurable, manageable technical variable — Davies's central claim is that this "scientization" in fact serves specific economic and political interests.
- Davies opens his academic thesis with a concrete, vivid scene (the Buddhist monk at Davos), turning an abstract economic critique into an accessible narrative
- The author explicitly frames his own position not as diminishing the moral value of happiness, but as critiquing the entanglement of hope and joy with infrastructures of measurement and control — a nuanced, non-one-sided critical stance
Already in the site's archive, a popular example of precisely the kind of "happiness/success technique" genre Davies critiques
Another popular title in the site's archive proposing an individual "self-support habit," comparable to the trend Davies's book critiques
The book's main body traces the history of technologies for "understanding how you feel" (mood-tracking apps, sentiment-analysis algorithms), then shows in "The Price of Pleasure" how neuromarketing shapes consumer behavior.
The chapters on the "psychosomatic worker" and "social optimization" examine how workplace wellbeing programs have become a form of control that turns even employees' inner emotional states into productivity metrics, and the book closes with a critical look at this condition of "living in the laboratory."
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