Next City Event: The Happiness Industry: Book Discussion with Will Davies and Nikil Saval

Celebrate the publication of The Happiness Industry with author William Davies. Will and Nikil Saval will discuss the history of workplace design and management/behavioral sciences and what methods corporations have been using to increase worker efficiency throughout the ages.

“In a heady mixture of psychology, economics, sociology, and philosophy, this book reveals the misguided nature of the currently popular intellectual project to make people happier and improve society through ‘scientific’ understanding – and manipulation – of human beings. With many governments and corporations hell-bent on control promoting it aggressively, this project is increasingly depriving our societies of true social bonds, democratic participation, critical thinking, and even happiness itself. An eye-opening, head-spinning, and mind-expanding book,” says Ha-Joon Chang of the University of Cambridge and author of 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism.

About the Speakers

William Davies is the author of The Happiness Industry and The Limits of Neoliberalism. His writing has appeared in BBC Online, The Daily Beast, New Left Review, Financial Times, and Open Democracy. His website was featured in the New York Times. He is a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Nikil Saval is the author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace and an editor at n+1. He is based in Philadelphia.