"Values of Happiness is a thoughtful, thought-provoking, and often very moving book. As we are taken through people’s reflections on happiness in a wide range of cultural contexts, we see the extent to which happiness is rarely—well—happy. The authors use the complexities and ambiguities of this state of being to explore the ways in which happiness as both idea and experience inescapably shapes time, personhood, and social life."

Sherry B. Ortner, author of Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject

"It is a great accomplishment of this collection that it shows us that happiness without value appears to be a rare occurrence. Even if there are very few societies in which happiness itself is the primary, overriding value people seek to realize—it is rarely the supervalue that rallies all others to its cause—we now know that happiness is routinely tied up with the disclosure and realization of values, and hence with the complexities of the personal and social management of time. This unusually rich collection of articles puts this important point before us, and in doing so redeems its promise of showing why happiness is an important subject of anthropological investigation."

Joel Robbins, author of Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society

"This is wonderfully rich and stimulating collection of essays by some of the most creative and perceptive anthropologists writing at the moment. And the theme works brilliantly to cast questions about values and ideals, virtues and vices, aspiration, interdependence, and responsibility in a new and thought-provoking light."

James Laidlaw, author of The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom