Browsing by Subject "Happiness"

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    Rabindranath’s idea of alienation : interpretation of raktakarabi
    (University of North Bengal, 31-03-2017) Ghosh, Sayantan
    Pen of the social thinker Rabindranath Tagore reflects the pain of human beings in any social order that is exploitative and alienating, be it industrial capitalism or traditional religious order. He was in favour of cooperation - cooperation in production, cooperation in consumption and cooperation in celebration. He advocated reaching the state of “Ananda”/happiness – creative happiness and collective happiness. He criticised any social order that alienates man from the product he produces, from other human beings and from his own creative self. He emphasised on the role of senses in alienation. This paper would try to outline Tagore’s idea of alienation and the process of liberation of an alienated self to humane self. This concept is reflected in many of his writings but this paper would particularly focus on Raktakarabi. Regarding the idea of alienation, there are certain similarities between Tagore and Marx but there also exists significant uniqueness in Rabindrik philosophy.
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    Understanding Happiness: Secrecy and Fantasy as Modes
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Bhowmick, Arunima
    Happiness as a social concern, extending into a field of study, has been a phenomenon of the last three to four decades. This departure was seen with economists finding correlates to patterns in consumption and psychologists locating social indicators of happiness to support mental wellbeing. In fact, the term “wellbeing” became a more precise and acceptable one for providing a holistic understanding of happiness 1970s onwards. My focus in this paper is to travel back from this era of social indicative research and locate the position of classical thinkers of Sociology with regard to happiness. Thereby finding a platform to address the epistemological problematics in handling “happiness” as an object of social research presently. Sociology has seen a long absence of research in subjective wellbeing, though there has been perennial enquiry into the position of the individual in construction of society. The debates brought to focus by economists like Richard Layard on happiness fosters enough challenge to the ideas of subjective wellbeing and the objective social indicators used to explain the same. However, this position has a very strong emphasis on one’s “understanding” and “expectations”, both indicative of a regular journey between objective attributes of happiness and subjective negotiations. This paper tries to find ways into this negotiated world of secrets that lies on the other side of the objective reality, arriving at a social that offers its own methodological tools and ontological position for explaining the disjuncture and convergence in ideas of happiness.
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