Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth Youth, class, and happiness Avihu Shoshana Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Happiness Class Youth Psychological discourse Emotions ABSTRACT Through in-depth interviews with youth from different socioeconomic (SES) classes, this article examines how they talk about happiness, how they experience and act in relation to it, and whether and how class-related cultural repertoires affect subjective definitions of happiness. The study's findings reveal significant differences between the various classes with regard to the definition of the concept of happiness, specific characteristics of happiness, the orders of discourse that support happiness-talk, and practices for achieving happiness. Ways in which SES-related cultural repertoires influence the differences in the youths' descriptions are discussed, as well as the implications of these findings for therapeutic and educational work with youth. One of the key findings is the relative absence of use of psychological discourse among low SES youth and its hyper-use among upper SES youth. These findings thus highlight a need for culture-sensitive therapy and education to enhance the daily experiences of schoolchildren. 1. Introduction The happiness emotion has acquired a special status throughout history and within various cultures as an object of desire, or perhaps even as the summum bonum, the highest good, the goal of life. At the same time, today's dramatic cultural and psychological preoccupation with happiness, especially since the emergence of positive psychology in the early 2000s––also referred to as the “happiness turn”––or as Sarah Ahmed (2010, p. 137) formulated: “the freedom to be happy is thus a directive.” The cultural-psychological imperatives about happi- ness convey both overt and covert messages that “to choose not to be happy is to choose against oneself” (Binkley, 2014, p. 18). An analysis of contemporary research literature also shows that psychologists examine happiness mainly through deductive-quantita- tive research based on surveys and self-reports (on the transition from philosophical to psychological engagement in the study of happiness, see Marar, 2003). Moreover, this research orientation is influenced by the utilitarian perspective and assumes that there is something called happiness, that happiness is good and can be measured (what is termed a hedonometer by several scholars; see Ahmed, 2010; Nettle, 2005). While these studies are rich and complex, qualitative studies that ex- amine the phenomenology of happiness are scarce (but see Cieslik, 2015; Delle Fave, Brdar, Freire, Vella-Brodrick, 2009). Furthermore, we do not have enough empirical studies that examine the effects of spe- cific cultural repertoires 1 related to structural positions (e.g., socio- economic class) on emotions within the same culture 2 . This study, which proposes to examine how youth from different economic classes define and experience happiness in everyday life, offers to deal with these research lacunae. Class is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences (Lareau, 2003). Many researchers describe how class (in terms of eco- nomic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital; see especially, Bourdieu, 1984) permeates daily life, establishes self-concepts, emotions and tastes, and influences life opportunities. At the same time, the study of class (and related concepts, such as stratification and inequality) in the social sciences is mainly addressed by a structural approach that em- phasizes political, economic, and cultural factors (Rivera, 2016). In recent years, cultural sociologists (Lamont, 2000; Swidler, 2001) and social psychologists (Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012) have expressed a growing interest in the phenomen- ological study of class. Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, and Keltner (2012) highlight in this context, for instance, the research lacuna concerning the question of how social classes shape specific emotional processes and agendas. Several researchers, having recently uncovered this link between class, attribution, and emotion have reported how upper socioeconomic https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.01.034 Received 21 June 2018; Received in revised form 23 January 2019; Accepted 24 January 2019 E-mail address: avihush@gmail.com. 1 Cultural repertoires express units of organized symbolic meanings that help individuals give significance to their lives and self-understandings (see Lamont, 2000). 2 This article uses the Bourdieuian definition of class. This definition describes class as more than an aggregation of income, education, and profession. Class means the internalization of tendencies (habitus, in Bourdieu's terms) that influence personal and social values (Bourdieu, 1984). Children and Youth Services Review 99 (2019) 64–73 Available online 25 January 2019 0190-7409/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T