A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF HAPPINESS IN CHINESE SINGAPOREAN COLLEGE GRADUATES

Abstract

What does happiness mean to you? This question seems to be a fundamentally important question for various parties. I interview twenty-one young Chinese Singaporean college graduates and ask for their stories about happiness. I wanted to understand how this group of Singaporeans understood happiness in their own words. I theorize that for Singaporean college graduates, happiness is constructed as a “self-Other” relation in a continuum of “Otherness”—Familiar, Unfamiliar, and Imagined. Familiar, in the sense that happiness is constructed through relationships with family, partners (boyfriend/girlfriend), friends; Unfamiliar, in the sense that happiness is constructed through relationships with colleagues, government, nation; Imagined, in the sense that happiness is constructed through the relationships with non-human entities such as God, music, and pets. Respondents group these Others according to the social distance that they feel with these relationships and define their subjective wellbeing according to how they interact with each group of Others.