Abstract
The book under review is a timely attempt by Derne to unravel the wider scope of Sociology of Well-being. It is an exercise to explain that the fundamentals of well-being rests neither in circumstances nor in individual traits rather it depends on individual abilities to find meanings and day-to-day pleasures in life. He argues that people themselves create well-being by interacting with other people and mutually increase well-being in a self-reinforcing spiral method. It bases the further work on interactionist approach, which revolutionised the understanding of emotions by attaching it with interactions and meanings. This is an exploration based on three aspects mainly, that is, well-being is not confined to income, political freedom, objective circumstances or particular activity. But it is based on felicitous interactions which are happiness focused, abilities to handle troubles and ability to find pleasure in life. So, the source of well-being is multiple and it cannot be pinned down to any particular thing. For instance, he cites that some researchers may identify singing, camping, surfing, meditating, running and so on, as contributors of well-being. But in general, it is not about these particular activities, but about the individual’s general pleasure seeking commitment out of these activities, which make them related to well-being. Second, he explains that it is not conditions that determine well-being but it is the approach towards such kind of a condition which brings well-being. For instance, on his journey of interviews, he interacted with two men who were about 80 years old and both were abandoned by their respective families. He found that one was grumpy and focusing on his sad condition and the other focused on positive cultivation of circumstances and tried to be happy. This encouraged the well-being of the second person. Third aspect deals with the fact that since well-being is not rooted within organism and is arising through interactions and meanings, so one cannot have well-being in a complete or holistic manner. People often receive well-being in one arena and lose well-being in other arena. For instance, wife and husband staying at distance places for their respective job locations may bring well-being in job functioning but both may lose their well-being for satisfactory conjugal life. Similarly, a mother entering into higher education after child birth may bring well-being for her aspiration of educational accomplishment but she may lose her security for her child as she has to leave her at home.
Empirical evaluation of the work reveals that Derne has conducted in-depth interviews with 203 respondents across two spotlight years, that is, 2007 and 2011. Out of the total respondents he interviewed, 112 were men and 91 were women (ranging from 18 to 70 years). The study was based in capital state of Uttarakhand, that is, Dehradun, India. And the religious composition of respondents included Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. The interviews were mainly open-ended and it lasted for 20–35 minutes. He further explains that his interviews were supplemented with ethnographic interactions and observations at public places which included tea stalls, barber shops, cinema halls and so on. In enlarging his experiences in conducting interviews, he referred to his difficulties in interacting with female respondents, as they were sexually segregated and considered as pride of the community, so whenever he interacted with the women, there were men to interpret the exchange of word, further women were considerably busy in their household activities, therefore female respondents were less. Thus, he explains that his sense of understanding of male well-being and male means of pleasure derivation was better as compared to the female well-being and female means of pleasure derivation. Derne’s empirical framework has been widely influenced by Gordon Mathew’s (1996), most recent work on well-being of American and Japanese people by comparing 52 American and 52 Japanese people on the parameters of daily well-being.
Derne aims to introduce the goodness in studying sociology by focusing on the methodological and epistemological changes in the approach of studying sociology. It has been extensively derived from American Sociologist such as Andrew Greeley and Pitrim Sorokin. He further tries to mark an indological grounding of such an approach and refers to Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949), Radhakamal Mukharjee (1889–1968) and D. P. Mukerji (1894–1961). His structure of the work broadly runs into three parts such as universals, where he examines his learning about men and women and generates the basics that even if income, health and so on is present but troubles and difficulties would arise in life and situations can be enduring only by developing a mental approach to deal the trouble and commitment to pursue pleasure must be present, which can help one to escape from day-to-day necessities and trouble. Thus, well-being for him is both inner-developing and outer bodily pleasure pursuance. The second section is regarding variations, which examine well-being as varying in terms of gender, age, class and traditions. According to him Indian traditions are more oriented towards such understanding of well-being of body–mind, purpose–purposelessness, work–non-work and so on. And the last but not the least, third section describes about lessons from India, where he suggests how to do better sociology by understanding goodness of life and drawing similarities between the researcher and the researched.
In the conclusion, Derne is more philosophically oriented, and he tries to bring in a Western philosopher, William Irwin Thomas’ (1981) idea of Wissenkunst, which means playful mixing of art with science (social), to transform consciousness, surroundings and truths and make readers lives better to construct better societies. Further, he refers to Daya Krishna (2007), an Eastern philosopher, who explains that arts unlike science conceive truth and reveal a deeper sense of transform and transcendence. Thus, the book is a fantastic piece of work in the wide discipline of sociology of introspection (Ellis, 1991), where a researcher sociologically thinks about his and her own experiences. Derne’s work is, thus, the result of his introspective evaluation of his own well-being in India (over last 25 years), his respondent’s well-being in their own lives and similarities of well-being responses between his own self and the respondents.