Food Sovereignty/ Food Security Paper instructions:

You will write a paper on a country or group of people (If you want to write about the United States you must find a distinct culture and have instructor approval) which explores issues of food security and/or food sovereignty for these people. Begin your paper with clear definitions of food security and food sovereignty (p. 17-18, Seeking Food Rights), and then briefly introduce the people or culture you are discussing. Clearly explain the issue and why you chose this particular people or culture.

Look up the food sovereignty principles of Via Campesina on the web so that you understand the many aspects of life that can be considered in relation to food sovereignty. Your paper should include statistics, but these need to be fleshed out with details about people’s lives in a social, political, and economic context. You should choose certain aspects of the food system or food life to discuss. Make sure that they are relevant to questions of food security and/or food sovereignty. Be able to explain briefly why you chose this particular aspect for your paper.

Seeking Food Rights is a good model because it suggests different areas of life that are significant to food security and food sovereignty in Uzbekistan (Chapters 1-7) and in the US in Chapter 8. Note that in the Uzbek case, questions of inequality by class, urban-rural differences, gender, and ethnicity are important to food security and food sovereignty for various people and groups. The government and/or market’s control over agriculture, land, and people’s shopping opportunities are also important to consider. On a global scale, the amount of food and kinds of food that are imported and exported from a country influences food security and food sovereignty. For example, if farmers mostly grow coffee or bananas, there is little land to grow their own food to eat.

When investigating a country think about such questions as the following. But be careful to pick a few to answer as you will not be able to answer all of them.

· What kinds of food are most preferred and who gets to eat them?

· How do food habits differ between rich and poor? Are health differences related to this?

· What kinds of crops do farmers grow? Why? Has that changed in the last twenty or thirty years?

· Do people eat food that is grown in their country or in their region?

· Do men and women relate differently to food in its growth, preparation, eating, etc? How does this affect their relation to food?

· Are minority ethnic groups able to access enough food and the kind of food that they want to eat from a cultural point of view? Why or why not?

· How do minority and majority ethnic groups participate in the process of producing, processing, and serving food?

· Is the country able to grow enough food to feed its population? In what areas does it lack food? On whom is it dependent for food?

· Do people feel that their food is safe?

Acceptable references:

In addition to course materials the paper must be based on at least two out-of-class articles—one of at least 2-3 pages and one of at least 5 pages—that are found in peer-reviewed journals and also one book. Peer review means that the research in the paper has been reviewed by other researchers and is accepted by other academics. These papers may be found in the Library’s databases or in hard copy in academic journals. Wikipedia and other on-line sites and resources are not acceptable. If you need help with research the Valley Library on campus has an anthropology librarian who can help you to find materials. The help desk at the library can also show you how to access academic journals. You must provide a complete “works cited”/bibliography with the paper.

Book chapters are acceptable, but likely longer. Make sure that you reference in your actual paper (in-text) each of the sources you use with the author, year of publication, and page number (Smith 2000:35). Only references used in the paper should be listed in the bibliography, and all references used in the paper must be included in the bibliography. Make a bibliography following MLA style. If there is another style you would like to practice (one, for example, that your major requires you to use) contact your instructor in advance of submitting your paper. Remember, the bibliography does not count toward the three to four pages.

You will deliver this paper to your instructor on Wednesday of Week Ten.

advertisement | your ad here PrintThisArticle Back to Article SHAME OF THE CITY A Rugged Refuge Many homeless men would rather sleep on the street than in San Francisco's most notorious shelter, calling it a dangerous drug haven. Kevin Fagan, C hronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, December 2, 2003 (Third in a five-day series) Many homeless men would rather sleep on the street than in San Francisco's most notorious shelter, calling it a dangerous drug haven. But for the regular inhabitants at Fifth and Bryant streets, the shelter offers a warm place to sleep, a solid meal and a chance to be with friends. The big metal doors at Multi-Service Center South opened with a clang at 4:30 p.m. The line of men leaning against the beige outside wall began shuffling through. MSC, they call it on the street. The homeless who refuse to set foot in here believe this is the toughest of San Francisco's emergency shelters, a filthy, violent drug den where everything not tied down is stolen. You wouldn't have known it from the looks of the men clumping up the concrete steps toward the registration desk, bags or backpacks in their hands. "Can't wait to eat," said one skinny man in a tattered, brown leather jacket. He slapped a high-five with a fellow in line next to him. "Man, could I use some sleep," his friend replied. Fifty were in this line, and it was just the beginning. Three hundred more would filter in throughout the warm July evening as MSC South, the two-story hulk at Fifth and Bryant streets, slowly filled up. At the front desk, everyone was handed a thin, gray wool blanket. In 15 minutes, the whole line was logged inside --including a Chronicle reporter and photographer, beginning a two-night undercover stay. "Go pick your mat," the clerk said. He pointed to a large gymnasium-like room with ceilings about 20 feet high and gray-tile floors mopped to a shine. On the floor were 150 plastic mats --each about 3 inches thick and slightly smaller than a single-bed mattress. The 5 o'clock news droned to 20 men sitting on chairs or mats on one side of the room. On the other � side, the TV was broken. One man lay on his mat, propped on one elbow, smoking a filtered Camel and taking in the scene. Like most of the men in the shelter, he offered only his first name; it was Lawrence. "Just remember where you are, and how you got here," said Lawrence, a middle-aged trucker who hadn't been behind a wheel since the beginning of the year. "You got people of all walks here, and a lot of their trouble is of their own making, but that doesn't mean they don't all want to get out of that trouble. "We mostly want to work. Something just got in our way." He said he expected to have a trucking job in a few days. Lawrence's wife died a year ago, he said, pitching him into a tailspin that sent him wandering from his South Carolina home. He drove his truck through several states looking for work, finding little. "Why did I come here?" he mused. "Well, I was driving in New York and heard (talk show host) Michael Savage on the radio saying any nut can land in San Francisco without a penny, and they'd take care of him. So I turned the wheel and drove here." A young man dumped his Hefty bag of belongings on the floor with a loud smack and sat down. "I hear you know what goes on around here," he said nervously. Lawrence stared at him. "All I can tell you is get your business together and get out of here as fast as you can," Lawrence said, "because you don't want to spend too long around the wrong guys." Four men drifted upstairs to the second floor. Two were middle-aged. They had crack pipes in their pockets. Behind them were Jason and Dale. They were younger. They carried two six-packs of beer in paper bags. "What, you think they want to go through our bags?" Dale said incredulously when asked how he got the beer inside. "I put it right in with my socks." The two big rooms upstairs had a total of 150 single beds, not mats, and each had a drawer underneath. Wooden privacy walls surrounding three sides of each bed were 5 feet high, easy for ducking from the occasional staff member coming by on patrol. Jason and Dale picked a corner bed, and in 10 minutes, they slammed down four 211 brand brews each. Two beds over, the other two men sat hunched over, watching the beds around them from the corners of their eyes as they took deep hits off a crack pipe. They handed it to a third man in a red, white and blue striped shirt. "Need some? Cheap," the man in the striped shirt asked. "Shut up," snapped one of the two men smoking. "Don't sell our crack." � Back downstairs, a big white sign of rules posted on the wall prohibited drugs and alcohol. It also listed other prohibitions that were ignored. A man strolled the mats in front of the sign selling cigarettes at 25 cents apiece; the rules said no selling. Several men sprawled over two chairs or bagged a couple of blankets; the sign said only one chair and one blanket per person. Upstairs, radios pulsed rap or jazz; the sign said you had to use earphones. The vibe was: Just don't be obnoxious, and nobody will come down on you hard. "This isn't the street, and you won't catch me sleeping out there," said Claude Adams, a 55-year-old disabled warehouse worker. "Out there, it's rough. Here, it's clean. No one's going to stab you while you sleep." Once the doors clanked shut at 7, you were stuck inside until wakeup call at 5:45 the next morning. No coming, no going --no exceptions. The half-dozen attendants patrolled constantly. "This is where the city sends the dopers or boozers who say they don't want to clean up," said one late night attendant. "We get a lot of innocents here, too, but --I guess it's OK. If they don't want to buy the crack and booze --yeah, we know it's here, we just don't hunt for it so hard --they don't have to. "Nobody gets hurt bad. It's all anybody can ask, really." Dinner was at 6 p.m., and the line snaked from the downstairs cafeteria up the stairs into the main room. "Fried rat today!" joked Byron, a ponytailed man with a street-hard face and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt. Joe, a young man with baggy black pants, chuckled and punched Byron's arm. "Beats that Dumpster you dove this morning!" he fired back. As the line moved ahead, the metal food bins came into view; Byron and Joe fell silent, shifting their weight anxiously from one foot to the other. The steaming bins offered yellow squash, peas, mashed potatoes and hamburger patties. The spartan dining room filled with the universal smell of stewed institutional food. At the end of the array of bins were chocolate pudding cups and an ice-water jug. Everything was behind a long glass counter. Three workers filled plates and trays and slid them to a server, who handed them out at the end of the counter. "Better eat it all. There's no seconds," the server, a thin woman with a hair net, warned as she handed a full plate to Byron. He grimaced and she gave him a big smile. "OK, honey, we might have some potatoes left over later. Y ou just come back and ask." The tables were cafeteria foldouts, arrayed side by side to seat about 50 men. A waterfront mural covered the back wall, and another wall held a memorial collage to Bill Hansen, a cook who died of cancer. Byron and Joe sat down alongside Nick, who was shoveling peas into his mouth with his head bent low to the spoon. He glanced quickly at Joe's tray, then back to his plate. � "Want your pudding cup?" Nick asked Joe, who promptly batted the cup to the side of his tray near Nick. Nick snatched it without looking up, and put the cup in his lap. He was into his hamburger patty now. It all tasted like college dorm food. Bland. And nobody left a speck on his plate. After dinner, everyone filtered back upstairs, singly or in groups to plop down on the mats or hit the two big --and clean --shower rooms. Shampoo and soap were free, just like the room and food. There was plenty for everyone. "Look at those guys over there, just standing around in their skater shorts looking as happy as you please," grumped 56-year-old Gordon, meticulously checking his thinning black hair to make sure it was slicked right. He pointed to six young men, lolling at the entrance to the main room bathroom. "They're dealing crack, up to no good, and if the city got together enough medical students, it could give all those guys a lobotomy and solve the homeless problem," he said. Gordon had just showered, and he sat at his mat organizing his backpack: socks, "Lord of the Rings" paperback trilogy, toiletry kit in the right pocket. His wife died a few years ago, he said, and he was laid off around 2001 after 19 years as a warehouse manager. Been in shelters or cheap hotels most of the time since, he said. "Worked all my life, and I'm not proud of being here, but I worked," Gordon said. "Not like that scum that deals drugs." At the counter, tall and lean Joseph stood with his five pals and beckoned with his eyes toward the bathroom door. Inside, he went into a stall and shut the door. With one foot planted on the toilet, he opened his scruffy blue coat to reveal his wares: "Crack, $5 a rock; pot, $1 a joint," he said. What about beer? "That's $1 a can, but you gotta go to someone else," he said. "Not my department." By 8 p.m., the main room was quiet except for a few conversations. Men lay snoring on mats. Most watched TV. Paul, white-haired with a pot belly, lay on his mat reading "The Talisman" by Stephen King. "Hemingway is really my favorite, but I haven't found one in a while," he said. A few men walked around wearing one of three looks: beaten down, defensive defiance or lost in their own world. Harry, a skinny, older man, wore a thick coat and black knit cap --and on his back was a full pack with a sleeping bag as he paced up and down the length of the main hall. "I missed my appointment at the clinic so I didn't get my meds, and I'm paranoid and can't let anyone steal my stuff, and do you have a cigarette, and I hope I get a good bed," Harry said in one stream when asked what he was doing. He turned to his right and murmured to the air, "Get out of my head, I'm right here, get away from my stuff." � At the front desk, a white-haired, elderly woman in a long, brown overcoat --buttoned to the throat despite the warm night --began slamming her bag against the check-in counter. She wanted to get into the 30-bed women's room of the MSC, a separate shelter downstairs kept rigidly apart from the men's section. "You don't know what I've been through just to get here!" she screamed. "I want a bed! Give me a bed!" The head clerk stared impassively at her. "I'm sorry, you have to be registered. Just be patient." "Damn you! Give me a bed!" the woman screamed. "Now how do you think we feel with you yelling at us?" the clerk coolly responded. Four other staff members surrounded her, trying hard to look impassive. The woman ranted for about a half-hour until, still screaming, she was sent to another shelter that had an open spot. Lights out came at 9 p.m., but the televisions kept playing cable broadcasts of "Waiting to Exhale" with Whitney Houston and "Murder at 1600" with Wesley Snipes until midnight. Then it was nothing but snores and the whirring of a soda machine in the corner of the main room. Most slept in their clothes, curled on the skinny mattresses under their blankets, side by side like disaster victims in a Red Cross shelter. The stench of dirty feet and unwashed clothes filled the air. Outside, the lights along the Interstate 80 on-ramp shone harshly all night, alongside snappy ads for Travel Smith clothing and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. "Reveille, gentlemen!" called out a burly attendant at 5:45 a.m. sharp. Every man lurched to his feet and stacked his mat in the center of the room. Within 15 minutes, the floor was clear. Breakfast was another 20-minute line, at the end of which was cereal, toast and coffee. And it was here that the men got another jolting reminder -- in addition to the ranting woman, the locked doors and the wandering mental patient --that this was no youth hostel. On the stairs leading down to the cafeteria, the jostling between two friends named Eugene and Eric turned ugly. Eugene insulted his pal, police later said, and Eric poked a piece of metal into Eugene's abdomen and shoulder, drawing blood. Shelter staff called the cops, but by the time they got there, Eric had fled and Eugene was saying he wouldn't press charges. It was just a dustup between friends. "It started fast and ended fast, with no sense to it,'' said Lawrence, who was in line. It was the worst fight anyone had seen in a year, a shelter attendant said. � By 7 a.m., the place was silent and empty. Everyone had headed to the street. At 4:30 p.m., it was the same drill all over again. The line, the mat, the mushy food, and many of the same men settling in to wait out the night. But around 7 p.m., a young counselor in a gray scarf strolled three times all around the bottom floor calling out cheerily, "Support group? C'mon, guys, sit with us." She got no takers until one fellow stood up on her last stroll. They headed to an office to talk. One sign on the wall offered acupuncture clinics, another chiropractic. There also was massage, breathing therapy and Reiki Energy Healing --all free, as was the once-a-week wound clinic, mostly offered for abscesses from the ravages of dope needles. Nearby, a notice read, "Sleeping in a congregate setting like a shelter puts you at high risk for tuberculosis! Get tested every Tuesday." Upstairs, Med pored over a textbook titled "Unified Modeling Systems." He was the neatest dressed in the place, with pressed black slacks, a gray polo shirt, and smart, new-looking wire-rim glasses. "I lost my job as a computer programmer a year ago in Tennessee, and now I've come here to look because everyone says California has jobs," Med said. "So far, no job." Next to him, Phillip, a 25-year-old with Celtic cross tattoos on his arms, read a Bible. "See here, in Corinthians 13, it says we must give charity to the poor," he said, pointing urgently to the page. "I like the versions that say 'love' better, but it's still the same, really." Claude Adams ambled up, and the two traded road stories. "Ventura --the cops are terrible. You sit, they move you on," Adams complained. "Kick you out, throw you in jail faster than you can think." "It's a bad place," Phillip said. "Cops don't want you, people don't want you. Not like here." Adams brightened. "That's right --San Francisco, you gotta love it," he said. "Even the cops love us here." He spread his arms wide. "Everyone loves us here!" he said, and Phillip grinned. The next morning, Adams skipped breakfast and grabbed a cup of coffee at All Stars Donuts two blocks from the shelter. He was headed to a park to watch a softball game --and as he left the shop, he looked across the street and shook his head at what he saw. There, at the I-80 off-ramp to Fifth Street, Israel Benjamin, 58, held out a cup to traffic, with a sign reading, "Starvin Like Marvin." Others of the MSC crowd filtered past Benjamin as they ambled downtown. He didn't look at them. They didn't look at him. "Stay there? Are you nuts?" Benjamin said when asked if he was going to check into MSC that night. "No, sir, they beat you up in there. Never been there, but that's what I've heard. � "Too scary for me. I'll take the outside." Most inhabitants satisfied with shelter Emergency shelters have been at the heart of the debate over how to best house the homeless in San Francisco. Organizations and leaders ranging across the political spectrum --from the Homeless Coalition to Supervisors Gavin Newsom and Chris Daly --say too many shelters are unsafe and unsavory, and they say they would prefer permanent housing with counseling services. But according to the city Department of Human Services figures, three-quarters of shelter inhabitants say they're satisfied with their stays. And they record only about a dozen minor criminal incidents throughout the whole shelter system every year. The Chronicle sent a reporter and a photographer into Multi-Service Center South, the biggest and reputedly toughest of the city shelters, to see what life was like there. They did this using their full names. But they did not disclose that they were researching a story, so they would get the most direct, unfiltered view. There are 11 emergency shelters, totaling 1,350 beds, for single adults, who constitute a majority of the city's homeless population of 8,600 to 15,000. In the rough caste system of the down and out, those who stay in the shelters are a cut above the most desperate people on the streets --a middle class of homelessness, if you will. Many work during the day or are in job-training programs. Perhaps because of the shelters' bad reputation on the street --many homeless, particularly the hard core, say they are afraid to stay in them --there are usually a few vacancies every night. Systemwide, according to the Department of Human Services, not a single person was turned away for a bed between Oct. 6 and Nov. 2. The shelter network had 134 beds unfilled for the night of Nov. 2. --Kevin Fagan KPIX-TV Channel 5 continues its coverage of San Francisco's problems with homelessness, in conjunction with The Chronicle, tonight at 11.. To view more photographs and to read previous Chronicle stories on the homeless, go to www.sfgate.com/homeless/ ... Join staff writer Kevin Fagan and photographer Brant Ward for an online chat about the homeless series at 11 a.m. Thursday on sfgate.com. Send your letters and comments about this series to [email protected]. Shame of the city San Francisco has the nation's worst problem with hard-core homelessness. Thousands of people are without shelter and as many as 5,000 spend virtually all their time on the street. Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan and photographer Brant Ward spent four months among the homeless and those who deal � with them. In a five-day series, they explore how one of the nation's wealthiest and most cultured cities came to have so many people living on its streets. Sunday Life is a hand-to-mouth ordeal for the hard core on Homeless Island. Monday The Silver family is a rarity among San Francisco's 930 homeless families --despite living in its van, the children do well at school. Today Word on the street is that homeless shelters are dangerous drug dens, but that's not what The Chronicle found. Wednesday The aid San Francisco provides the homeless perpetuates the problem. Thursday San Francisco knows how to solve its problem with homelessness, but it needs decisionmakers to agree on a plan. E-mail Kevin Fagan at [email protected]. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/02/MNGB13E11F1.DTL This article appeared on page A-1 of the San Francisco Chronicle © 2011 Hearst Communications Inc. | Privacy Policy | Feedback | RSS Feeds | FAQ | Site Index | Contact �

mind&bodyhappinessmind&bodyhappiness The New Science of HAPPINESS What makes the human heart sing? Researchers are taking a close look. What they’ve found may surprise you By CLAUDIA WALLIS S S ugary white sand gleams under the bright yucatán sun, aquamarine water teems with tropical fish and lazy sea turtles, cold Mexican beer beckons beneath the shady thatch of palapas— it’s hard to imagine a sweeter spot than Akumal, Mexico, to contemplate the joys of being alive. And that was precisely the agenda when three leading psychologists gathered in this Mexican paradise to plot a new direction for psychology. For most of its history, psychology had concerned itself with all that ails the human mind: anxiety, depression, neurosis, obsessions, paranoia, delusions. The goal of practitioners was to bring patients from a negative, ailing state to a neutral normal, or, as University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman puts it, “from a minus five to a zero.” It was Seligman who had summoned the others to Akumal that New Year’s Day in 1998—his first day as president of the American Psychological Association (A.P.A.)—to share a vision of a new goal for psychology. “I realized that my profession was half-baked. It wasn’t enough for us to nullify disabling conditions and get to zero. We needed to ask, What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?” Every incoming A.P.A. president is asked to choose a theme for his or her yearlong term in office. Seligman was thinking big. He wanted to persuade substantial numbers in the profession to explore the region north of zero, to look at what actively made people feel fulfilled, engaged and meaningfully happy. Mental health, he reasoned, should be more than the absence of mental illness. It should be something akin to a vibrant and muscular fitness of the human mind and spirit. Over the decades, a few psychological researchers had ventured out of the dark realm of mental illness into the sunny land of the mentally hale and hearty. Some of Seligman’s own research, for instance, had focused on optimism, a trait shown to be associated with good physical health, less depression and mental illness, longer life and, yes, greater happiness. Perhaps the most eager explorer of this terrain was University of Illinois psychologist Edward Diener, a.k.a. Dr. Happiness. For more than two decades, basically ever since he got tenure and could risk entering an unfashionable field, Diener had been examining what does and does not make people feel satisfied with life. Seligman’s goal was to shine a light on such work and encourage much, much more of it. To help him realize his vision, Seligman invited Ray Fowler, then the long-reigning and influential ceo of the A.P.A., to join him in Akumal. He also invited Hungarian-born psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced cheeks sent me high), best known for exploring a happy state of mind called flow, the feeling of complete engagement in a creative or playful activity familiar to athletes, musicians, video-game enthusiasts—almost anyone who loses himself in a favorite pursuit. By the end of their week at the beach, the three had plans for the first-ever conference on positive psychology, to be held in Akumal a year later—it was to become an annual event—and a strategy for recruiting young talent to the nascent field. Within a few months, Seligman, who has a talent for popularizing and promoting his areas of interest, was approached by the Templeton Foundation in England, which proceeded to create lucrative awards for research in positive psych. The result: an explosion of research on happiness, optimism, positive emotions and healthy character traits. Seldom has an academic field been brought so quickly and deliberately to life. WHAT MAKES US HAPPY So, what has science learned about what makes the human heart sing? More than one might imagine—along with some surprising things about what doesn’t ring our inner chimes. Take wealth, for instance, and all the delightful things that money can buy. Research by Diener, among others, has shown that once your basic needs are met, additional income does little to raise your sense of satisfaction with life (see story on page A32). A good education? Sorry, Mom and Dad, neither education nor, for that matter, a high IQ paves the road to happiness. Youth? No, again. In fact, older people are more consistently satisfied with their lives than the young. And they’re less prone to dark moods: a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people ages 20 to 24 are sad for an average of 3.4 days a month, as opposed to just 2.3 days for people ages 65 to 74. Marriage? A complicated picture: married people are generally happier than singles, but that may be because they were happier to begin with (see page A37). Sunny days? Nope, although a 1998 study showed that Midwesterners think folks living in balmy California are happier and that Californians incorrectly believe this about themselves too. On the positive side, religious faith seems to genuinely lift the spirit, though it’s tough to tell whether it’s the God part or the community aspect that does the heavy lifting. Friends? A giant yes. A 2002 study conduct- Reprinted through the courtesy of the Editors of Time Magazine © 2004 Time Inc. � mind&bodyhappinessmind&bodyhappiness ed at the University of Illinois by Diener and Seligman found that the most salient characteristics shared by the 10% of students with the highest levels of happiness and the fewest signs of depression were their strong ties to friends and family and commitment to spending time with them. “Word needs to be spread,” concludes Diener. “It is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social support in order to be happy.” MEASURING OUR MOODS Of course, happiness is not a static state. Even the happiest of people—the cheeriest 10%—feel blue at times. And even the bluest have their moments of joy. That has presented a challenge to social scientists trying to measure happiness. That, along with the simple fact that happiness is inherently subjective. To get around those challenges, researchers have devised several methods of assessment. Diener has created one of the most basic and widely used tools, the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Though some schol ars have questioned the validity of this simple, five-question survey, Diener has found that it squares well with other measures of happiness, such as impressions from friends and family, expression of positive emotion and low incidence of depression. Researchers have devised other tools to look at more transient moods. Csikszentmihalyi pioneered a method of using beepers and, later, handheld computers to contact subjects at random intervals. A pop-up screen presents an array of questions: What are you doing? How much are you enjoying it? Are you alone or interacting with someone else? The method, called experience sampling, is costly, intrusive and time consuming, but it provides an excellent picture of satisfaction and engagement at a specific time during a specific activity. Just last month, a team led by Nobel- prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University unveiled a new tool for sizing up happiness: the day- reconstruction method. Participants fill out a long diary and questionnaire detailing everything they did on the previous day and whom they were with at the time and rating a range of feelings during each episode (happy, impatient, depressed, worried, tired, etc.) on a seven-point scale. The method was tested on a group of 900 women in Texas with some surprising results. It turned out that the five most positive activities for these women were (in descending order) sex, socializing, relaxing, praying or meditating, and eating. Exercising and watching TV were not far behind. But way down the list was “taking care of my children,” which ranked below cooking and only slightly above housework. That may seem surprising, given that people frequently cite their children as their biggest source of delight—which was a finding of a Time poll on happiness conducted last month. When asked, “What one thing in life has brought you the greatest happiness?”, 35% said it was their children or grandchildren or both. (Spouse was far behind at just 9%, and religion a runner-up at 17%.) The discrepancy with the study of Texas women Just How Happy Are We? ... TIME POLL FEELING GOOD IN THE U .S. Do you consider yourself an optimist? Based on their own assessment, Americans are overwhelmingly happy and optimistic people, regardless of income Over $100,000 a year $50,000 to $99,999 $35,000 to $49,999 Under $35,000 a year 68% 24% 14% 13% 11% 7% 5% 2% 1% 81% 37% 13% 33% 15% 2% 85% 88% 78% 16% 5%U.S. total ... not very often?... some of the time... most or all of the timeWould you say you are happy ... Would you say that so far you have lived the best possible life that you could have, a very good life, a good life, a fair life or a poor life? Best possible Very good Good Fair Poor Do you generally wake up happy? Yes 79% No 15% Depends/ don’t know: 6% Yes 80% No 14% Depends/ don’t know: 6% This TIME poll was conducted by telephone Dec. 13-14, 2004, among 1,009 adult Americans by SRBI Public Affairs. Margin of error is ±3 percentage points. “Not sure” omitted for some questions All of the time Most of the time ... And What Makes Us That Way? Most people find happiness in family connections and friendships 63% 55% 51% 45% 47% 38% 24% 29% 24% 20% 21% 25% 27% 30% 30% 35% 39% 38% 52% 51% 18% 25% Talk to friends/family Pray/meditate Have sex Take a drive in a car Eat Go out with friends Exercise/work out Play with a pet Take a bath or shower Help others in need Listen to music Do you often do any of the following to improve your mood? Your relationship with your children Your friends and friendships Contributing to the lives of others Your relationship with spouse/partner or your love life Your degree of control over your life and destiny The things you do in your leisure time Your relationship with your parents Your religious or spiritual life and worship Holiday periods, such as Christmas and New Year’s What are your major sources of happiness? 35% 17% 11% 9% Children/grandchildren Family God/faith/religion Spouse What one thing in your life has brought you the greatest happiness? Top four answers Top eight answers Women Men 77% 76% 75% 73% 66% 64% 63% 62% 50% TIME, JANUARY 17, 2005 � mind&bodyhappinessmind&bodyhappiness points up one of the key debates in happiness research: Which kind of information is more meaningful—global reports of well-being (“My life is happy, and my children are my greatest joy”) or more specific data on enjoyment of day-to-day experiences (“What a night! The kids were such a pain!”)? The two are very different, and studies show they do not correlate well. Our overall happiness is not merely the sum of our happy moments minus the sum of our angry or sad ones. This is true whether you are looking at how satisfied you are with your life in general or with something more specific, such as your kids, your car, your job or your vacation. Kahneman likes to distinguish between the experiencing self and the remembering self. His studies show that what you remember of an experience is particularly influenced by the emotional high and low points and by how it ends. So, if you were to randomly beep someone on vacation in Italy, you might catch that person waiting furiously for a slow-moving waiter to take an order or grousing about the high cost of the pottery. But if you ask when it’s over, “How was the vacation in Italy?”, the average person remembers the peak moments and how he or she felt at the end of the trip. The power of endings has been demonstrated in some remarkable experiments by Kahneman. One such study involved people undergoing a colonoscopy, an uncomfortable procedure in which a flexible scope is moved through the colon. While a control group had the standard procedure, half the subjects endured an extra 60 seconds during which the scope was held stationary; movement of the scope is typically the source of the discomfort. It turned out that members of the group that had the somewhat longer procedure with a benign ending found it less unpleasant than the control group, and they were more willing to have a repeat colonoscopy. Asking people how happy they are, Kahneman contends, “is very much like asking them about the colonoscopy after it’s over. There’s a lot that escapes them.” Kahneman therefore believes that social scientists studying happiness should pay careful attention to people’s actual experiences rather than just survey their reflections. That, he feels, is especially relevant if research is to inform quality-of-life policies like how much money our society should devote to parks and recreation or how much should be invested in improving workers’ commutes. “You cannot ignore how people spend their time,” he says, “when thinking about well-being.” Seligman, in contrast, puts the emphasis on the remembering self. “I think we are our memories more than we are the sum total of our experiences,” he says. For him, studying moment-to-moment experiences puts too much emphasis on transient pleasures and displeasures. Happiness goes deeper than that, he argues in his 2002 book Authentic Happiness. As a result of his research, he finds three components of happiness: pleasure (“the smiley-face piece”), engagement (the depth of involvement with one’s family, work, romance and hobbies) and meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential, he insists: “This is newsworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure. It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important.” CAN WE GET HAPPIER? One of the biggest issues in happiness research is the question of how much our happiness is under our control. In 1996 University of Minnesota researcher David Lykken published a paper looking at the role of genes in determining one’s sense of satisfaction in life. Lykken, now 76, gathered information on 4,000 sets of twins born in Minnesota from 1936 through 1955. After comparing happiness data on identical vs. fraternal twins, he came to the conclusion that about 50% of one’s satisfaction with life comes from genetic programming. (Genes influence such traits as having a sunny, easygoing personality; dealing well with stress; and feeling low levels of anxiety and depression.) Lykken found that circumstantial factors like income, marital status, religion and education contribute only about 8% to one’s overall well-being. He attributes the remaining percentage to “life’s slings and arrows.” Because of the large influence of our genes, Lykken proposed the idea that each of us has a happiness set point much like our set point for body weight. No matter what happens in our life—good, bad, spectacular, horrific—we tend to return in short order to our set range. Some post-tsunami images last week of smiling Asian children returning to school underscored this amazing capacity to right ourselves. And a substantial body of research documents our tendency to return to the norm. A study of lottery winners done in 1978 found, for instance, that they did not wind up significantly happier than a control group. Even people who lose the use of their limbs to a devastating accident tend to bounce back, though perhaps not all the way to their base line. One study found that a week after the accident, the injured were severely angry and anxious, but after eight weeks “happiness was their strongest emotion,” says Diener. Psychologists call this adjustment to new circumstances adaptation. “Everyone is surprised by how happy paraplegics can be,” says Kahneman. “The reason is that they are not paraplegic full time. They do other things. They enjoy their meals, their friends. They read the news. It has to do with the allocation of attention.” In his extensive work on adaptation, Edward Diener has found two life events that seem to knock people lastingly below their happiness set point: loss of a spouse and loss of a job. It takes five to eight years for a widow to regain her previous sense of well-being. Similarly, the effects of a job loss linger long after the individual has returned to the work force. When he proposed his set-point theory eight years ago, Lykken came to a drastic conclusion. “It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller,” he wrote. He has since come to regret that sentence. “I made a dumb statement in the original article,” he tells Time. “It’s clear that we can change our happiness levels widely—up or down.’’ Lykken’s revisionist thinking coincides with the view of the positive-psychology movement, which has put a premium on research showing you can raise your level of happiness. For Seligman and like- minded researchers, that involves working on the three components of happiness— getting more pleasure out of life (which can be done by savoring sensory experiences, although, he warns, “you’re never going to make a curmudgeon into a giggly person”), becoming more engaged in what you do and finding ways of making your life feel more meaningful. There are numerous ways to do that, they argue. At the University of California at Riverside, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky is using grant money from the National Institutes of Health to study different kinds of happiness boosters. One is the gratitude journal—a diary in which subjects write down things for which they are thankful. She has found that taking the time to conscientiously count their blessings once a week significantly increased subjects’ overall satisfaction with life over a period of six weeks, whereas a control group that did not keep journals had no such gain. Gratitude exercises can do more than lift one’s mood. At the University of California at Davis, psychologist Robert Em- mons found they improve physical health, raise energy levels and, for patients with neuromuscular disease, relieve pain and fatigue. “The ones who benefited most tended to elaborate more and have a wider span of things they’re grateful for,” he notes. Another happiness booster, say positive psychologists, is performing acts of altruism or kindness—visiting a nursing home, helping a friend’s child with homework, mowing a neighbor’s lawn, writing a letter to a grandparent. Doing five kind acts a week, especially all in a single day, gave a measurable boost to Lyubomirsky’s subjects. Seligman has tested similar interventions in controlled trials at Penn and in huge experiments conducted over the Internet. The single most effective way to turbocharge your joy, he says, is to make a “gratitude visit.” That means writing a testimonial thanking a teacher, pastor or grandparent—anyone to whom you owe a debt of gratitude—and then visiting that person to read him or her the letter of appreciation. “The remarkable thing,” says Seligman, “is that people who do this just once are measurably happier and less depressed a month later. But it’s gone by three months.” Less powerful but more lasting, he says, is an exercise he calls three blessings—taking time each day to write down a trio of things that went well and why. “People are less depressed and happier three months later and six months later.” TIME, JANUARY 17, 2005 � mind&bodyhappinessmind&bodyhappiness Eight Steps Towarda More Satisfying Life Want to lift your level of happiness? Here are some practical suggestions from University of California psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, based on research findings by her and others. Satisfaction (at least a temporary boost) guaranteed 1. Count your blessings. One way to do this is with a “gratitude journal” in which you write down three to five things for which you are currently thankful—from the mundane (your peonies are in bloom) to the magnificent (a child’s first steps). Do this once a week, say, on Sunday night. Keep it fresh by varying your entries as much as possible. 2. Practice acts of kindness. These should be both random (let that harried mom go ahead of you in the checkout line) and systematic (bring Sunday supper to an elderly neighbor). Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects—it makes you feel generous and capable, gives you a greater sense of connection with others and wins you smiles, approval and reciprocated kindness—all happiness boosters. 3. Savor life’s joys. Pay close attention to momentary pleasures and wonders. Focus on the sweetness of a ripe strawberry or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade. Some psychologists suggest taking “mental photographs” of Seligman’s biggest recommendation for lasting happiness is to figure out (courtesy of his website, reflectivehappiness. com) your strengths and find new ways to deploy them. Increasingly, his work, done in collaboration with Christopher Peterson at the University of Michigan, has focused on defining such human strengths and virtues as generosity, humor, gratitude and zest and studying how they relate to happiness. “As a professor, I don’t like this,” Seligman says, “but the cerebral virtues—curiosity, love of learning—are less strongly tied to happiness than interpersonal virtues like kindness, gratitude and capacity for love.” Why do exercising gratitude, kindness and other virtues provide a lift? “Giving makes you feel good about yourself,” says Peterson. “When you’re volunteering, you’re distracting yourself from your own existence, and that’s beneficial. More fuzzily, giving puts meaning into your life. You have a sense of purpose because you matter to someone else.” Virtually all the happiness exercises being tested by positive psychologists, he says, make people feel more connected to others. That seems to be the most fundamental finding from the science of happiness. “Almost every person feels happier when they’re with other people,” observes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “It’s paradoxical because many of us think we can hardly wait to get home and be alone with nothing to do, but that’s a worst-case scenario. If you’re alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets.” But can a loner really become more gregarious through acts-of-kindness exercises? Can a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist learn to see the glass as half full? Can grat pleasurable moments to review in less happy times. 4. Thank a mentor. If there’s someone whom you owe a debt of gratitude for guiding you at one of life’s crossroads, don’t wait to express your appreciation—in detail and, if possible, in person. 5. Learn to forgive. Let go of anger and resentment by writing a letter of forgiveness to a person who has hurt or wronged you. Inability to forgive is associated with persistent rumination or dwelling on revenge, while forgiving allows you to move on. 6. Invest time and energy in friends and family. Where you live, how much money you make, your job title and even your health have surprisingly small effects on your satisfaction with life. The biggest factor appears to be strong personal relationships. 7. Take care of your body. Getting plenty of sleep, exercising, stretching, smiling and laughing can all enhance your mood in the short term. Practiced regularly, they can help make your daily life more satisfying. 8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardships. There is no avoiding hard times. Religious faith has been shown to help people cope, but so do the secular beliefs enshrined in axioms like “This too shall pass” and “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” The trick is that you have to believe them. itude journals work their magic over the long haul? And how many of us could keep filling them with fresh thankful thoughts year after year? Sonja Lyubomirsky believes it’s all possible: “I’ll quote Oprah here, which I don’t normally do. She was asked how she runs five miles a day, and she said, ‘I recommit to it every day of my life.’ I think happiness is like that. Every day you have to renew your commitment. Hopefully, some of the strategies will become habitual over time and not a huge effort.” But other psychologists are more skeptical. Some simply doubt that personality is that flexible or that individuals can or should change their habitual coping styles. “If you’re a pessimist who really thinks through in detail what might go wrong, that’s a strategy that’s likely to work very well for you,” says Julie Norem, a psychology professor at Wellesley College and the author of The Positive Power of Negative Thinking. “In fact, you may be messed up if you try to substitute a positive attitude.” She is worried that the messages of positive psychology reinforce “a lot of American biases” about how individual initiative and a positive attitude can solve complex problems. Who’s right? This is an experiment we can all do for ourselves. There’s little risk in trying some extra gratitude and kindness, and the results—should they materialize— are their own reward. —With reporting by Elizabeth Coady/Champaign-Urbana, Dan Cray/ San Francisco, Alice Park/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles Measure Your Happiness How happy are you? Sure, you may think you know, but this little test will help you keep score. The Satisfaction with Life Scale was devised in 1980 by University of Illinois psychologist Edward Diener, a founding father of happiness research. Since then the scale has been used by researchers around the world. Read the following five statements. Then use a 1-to-7 scale to rate your level of agreement. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 In most ways my life is close to my ideal. The conditions of my life are excellent. I am satisfied with my life. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing. Not at all true Moderately true 2 3 4 5 1 Total score _____________ Absolutely true Scoring:•31 to 35: you are extremely satisfied with your life•26 to 30: very satisfied•21 to 25: slightly satisfied•20 is the neutral point•15 to 19: slightly dissatisfied•10 to 14: dissatisfied•5 to 9: extremely dissatisfied TIME, JANUARY 17, 2005 �