scholarly journals The Good Life and the Ideal of Flexibility

Human Affairs ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanka Šulavíková
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Continuous Stream ◽  
Strong Ideal ◽  
Fundamental Requirement ◽  
People Today ◽  
The Ideal

The Good Life and the Ideal of FlexibilityThe author focuses on the issue of the "good life" in relation to a strong ideal of flexibility that operates in contemporary western culture. The era we live in may be called a "continuous stream of innovations" and can be characterized by a fundamental requirement "to adapt flexibly and cope with the new". The need for such flexibility is mentally and physically demanding; the demands also mark the approach to values, the ideas of the good life and the project of the paths in life. Contemporary people in western civilization are exposed to the pressure of modern culture that has caused problems in the past decades as a result of the incompatibility of its fragmentary value systems. People today apply their abilities in a never-ending whirl of activities and effort where there is no more space available for becoming aware of and for perceiving the deeper meaning of and formulating their specific ideal of the good life.

The pace of “the good life”: Connecting past, present, and future in the context of a housing affordability crisis

2021 ◽  
pp. 0961463X2098781
Author(s):  
Petr Kubala ◽  
Tomáš Hoření Samec
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Housing Affordability ◽  
General Question ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
The Ideal

This article focuses on the topic of the young adult’s cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult’s relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent price increase. The general question addresses if and how social inequalities, sharpened by the current housing affordability crisis, affect the process of narrative life course coherence creation (the connection of past, present, and future) in relation to an orientation toward a vision of “the good life.” We furthermore complement the already existing ideal types of the young adult’s relation toward time— confident continuity and cautious contingency—with two other two types— cautious continuity and total contingency—defined on the basis of our data. We argue that the ability of young adults to envision a coherent future is related to the feeling of secured housing and that the idea of the good life is depicted to a large extent through the ideal of homeownership, although the precarity of the housing market makes homeownership harder to reach for those from unprivileged backgrounds.

Materialisation of the Good Life in the New House

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Lan Wei
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Intergenerational Relationships ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rural Architecture ◽  
Family House

Abstract Over the past two decades, Chinese rural architecture has experienced dramatic changes through the Building the Chinese Socialist New Village movement. Thousands of new houses, particularly in the model of the New Village, have risen abruptly out of the ground. These Western-style new houses with a garden (huayuan yangfang), which often appear in the media as typical family houses in Western society, largely represent the image of the good life of the state and the peasant in contemporary China. In this article, I focus on how the family house is produced and consumed in Baikou New Village in south China. By presenting the materiality of the dwelling space, this paper probes the intertwined processes of the materialisation of the blueprint of the good life and how the new houses influence family life (especially intergenerational relationships) in post-socialist Baikou New Village.

Living the Good Life?

Waste ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Eiko Maruko Siniawer
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Financial Wealth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Affluent Society

With the ever increasing sense in the 1980s that Japan had arrived as an economic power, attention was newly focused on what beyond financial wealth and material abundance constituted an affluent life, on what constituted “true affluence” or an “affluence of the heart.” Affluence—and waste along with it—came to be conceived in more psychological, spiritual, and emotional terms than in the past, with an attention to a well-being and self-fulfillment which extended beyond the purely financial. What was often being sought was yutori, or leisure, relaxation, space, and unconstricted time. Financial and material prosperity made possible self-reflection about what a good life could and should be in an affluent society.

Ecocritique and Anecdote

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-48
Author(s):  
Sean Cubitt
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Living Well ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Notion

Section 1 starts by considering the central notion of this book: a “ecocritique”. The ecocritique recognises that the good life for all includes the well-being of the world we are involved in at every level from the cellular to the cosmic. It is all encompassing. Section 1 then considers how the term “anecdote” relates to ecocritique. Anecdotes provide a peculiarly powerful tool for finding out the meaning of living well, as well as the answering the oft-asked question: who is this “we”? The beauty of anecdotes is that they operate in a non-contemporaneous time. They operate equally well in the past, present, and future. A primary political and ecocritical task of anecdotal method, therefore, is to recognise this hybrid temporality, and to free and maintain its capacity to generate new futures and new pasts.

Values, Value Systems, and the Good Life

1964 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 129-131
Author(s):  
Roderick Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
The Good Life

scholarly journals Understanding culture as a project

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata M. Leitão ◽  
Solen Roth
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Participatory Research ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Action Project ◽  
Research Action

This article argues that, in collaboration with Indigenous [and non-Western local] communities, social designers should approach “culture” not only as a form of heritage that should be preserved and transmitted, but also as a project that weaves together heritage, current material circumstances, and desirable ideas for the future. We therefore examine the notion that every culture is intrinsically oriented towards the future, representing a trajectory that links the past to a projected ideal of well-being. Thus, cultural diversity leads to numerous trajectories and distinct futures, contrary to the colonial ideology according to which only one trajectory is possible: that which adheres to the project of eurocentric modernity. Based on a participatory research action project called Tapiskwan, which focused on the aspirations of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok, we propose that the ultimate goal of social designers should be to nurture local communities’ capacity to (re)create their own autonomous trajectories, in pursuit of the good life as their culture defines it. 

Single Mothers’ Livelihoods in Rural North Central Vietnam

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Tuan Anh Nguyen ◽  
Cam Ly Thi Vo ◽  
Binh Minh Thi Vu
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Married Women ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
North Central ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
Central Vietnam ◽  
Happy Family ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Single mothers in rural North Central Vietnam face many difficulties in earning their livelihoods. Since they deviate from the norms of the patriarchal family, many do not find it easy to obtain support from their own relatives or access livelihood assets from their parents. As units of production, their households lack the support from the relatives of spouses that are normally available to married women and face discrimination in accessing livelihood capital. Finally, the stigma induced by the state-sponsored notion of the ‘Happy Family’ acts as a social deterrent to their pursuit of the good life. Thus, regardless of their efforts to make a living, many single mothers find themselves unable to improve their income and reduce poverty. Despite greater social acceptance of single motherhood, their experiences suggest that the good life in Vietnam today remains invested in the ideal of heterosexual marriage reproduced by state discourses and enduring patriarchal ideas and practices.

Grasping the Jellyfish of Music Making and Leisure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Mantie ◽  
Gareth Dylan Smith
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Community Music ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Leisure Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Death Metal

This chapter sets out the editors’ rationale for the book, and walks readers through the structure of this rich, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary volume. Music making as leisure has in the past and in some contexts been construed as vital to the pursuit of the good life, yet today the notion has become marginalized, and music making is frequently regarded as a dyadic domain for only professionals and consumers. Chapters include perspectives from psychology, sociology, ethnomusicology, community music making, and leisure studies in physical, online, and hybrid environments. Contributors provide rich analyses of a broad range of topics, including guitar playing, gaming, hip-hop, happiness and fulfillment, motivation, death metal, DIY and DAW (digital audio workstations), illegal raves, and reconnecting with former musician identities. Music making and leisure is a dynamic and vital framework for understanding more about the ways in which music making plays a part in the day-to-day lives of people.

scholarly journals In Search of the “Good Life”: The Appeal of the Tiny House Lifestyle in the USA

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Severin Mangold ◽  
Toralf Zschau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Meaningful Experiences

Over the past decade, tiny houses and the lifestyle they promote have become a world-wide phenomenon, with the trend especially impactful in the United States. Given their broad appeal and increasing prominence within popular culture, it is surprising how little research exists on them. To help to better understand what motivates people to adopt this lifestyle, this paper presents insights from an exploratory study in the United States and offers the first contours of a new conceptual framework. Situating the lifestyle within the larger economic and cultural forces of our times, it argues that going “tiny” is seen by tiny house enthusiasts as a practical roadmap to the Good Life: A simpler life characterized by more security, autonomy, relationships, and meaningful experiences. The paper ends with a brief discussion of broader implications and directions for future research.

Well, Does Leviathan…?

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
David Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Past ◽  
General Welfare ◽  
The Common ◽  
Comparative Government

In the October 1973 issue of this Journal, John Orbell and Brent Rutherford published an article which sought to test the central thesis of Hobbes’ Leviathan. Although I shall try to show that as a piece of research it was fatally flawed, the authors deserve acclaim for their boldness, and for showing the way back to serious comparative government research in the Aristotelian manner. To test the basic principles of constitutions against the claims made for them is so obviously worthwhile that it is inexplicable and sad that their article stands virtually alone. In part its rarity reflects the unspoken assumption in modern political science that, after the behavioural revolution, anyone taking constitutions seriously was bound to be returning to the discredited legalism of the past. This overreaction has had its worst excess in political theory, for we seem all to have forgotten that political theory used to be an attempt to devise constitutional frameworks within which human nature would be led to produce the good life. As a theorist I hope we will return to that, and as an empirical researcher I hope we take up Orbell and Rutherford's lead and start to test such general constitutional claims. There are plenty of examples to go on with, starting perhaps with the claim that the United States Constitution is apt to ‘establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty’.

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