Conclusions: Making Sense of the Happiness Riddle

Abstract

Cieslik draws on the life stories of the 19 interviewees to offer some conclusions about the nature of happiness and a good life. He suggests that a cross-disciplinary approach that employs biographical methods can offer an insight into the everyday practices that people use in their efforts to live a good life. At times individual lives and wellbeing are structured through class and gender relationships but people also contest and challenge these processes so that there are complex patterns of happiness and suffering across biographies. Interviewees developed different ways to live well—reframing expectations, making new friends and establishing new interests and activities. But governments can also make a significant difference to people’s wellbeing as we see in Scandinavian societies and Britain can learn much from their example.