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March 18, 2013鈥擶ith a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Assistant Professor has assembled a team of sociologists to discover what happiness means to different people.

A professor in the , Hsu studies religion, economic sociology, and organizations as her . For the past two years, she has been laying the groundwork for her second book, which will analyze the ancient Chinese concept of fu.

Precursor to xingfu, the modern Chinese adjective for 鈥渉appy,鈥� fu has a variety of connected meanings that change as society in China changes.

鈥淔u can be translated as 鈥榟appiness,鈥� but it鈥檚 a lot deeper and more multifaceted than a nice feeling. A lot of times, people have equated fu with the Greek eudaemonia, which is something that Aristotle talked about. It鈥檚 the notion of what makes something 鈥榯he good life,鈥欌�� Hsu explained.

鈥淭raditionally, fu is very family-centered in the Chinese notion. There鈥檚 this saying that goes, 鈥楬appiness is four generations under one roof,鈥� from the great-grandparent to the great-grandchild,鈥� she continued. 鈥淏ut Chinese society has undergone so much change. There was the socialist era with the Communist Party, then there was the government trying to regulate the family, and now, there鈥檚 globalization. What does fu mean in China after all of that?鈥�

Hsu was first inspired to research the notion of happiness in Chinese culture two years ago. As a fan of the seminal sociological work Habits of the Heart, which examines the relationship between religion and morality in American society, Hsu thought it would be fascinating to ask similar questions of a country sometimes seen as the religious opposite of the United States.

She was also intrigued by the recent trend in international politics for countries to rank and compare the level of happiness of their citizens, despite the fact that the measurements are scientifically suspect.

鈥淲hen you see these studies, answers are based on data from one question asked to people from all over the world: 鈥楬ow happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10?鈥欌�� Hsu said. 鈥淥bviously, there are problems with that. What does 鈥榟appiness鈥� mean? What is the difference between 6 and 7? I want to make these surveys better.鈥�

For her project, Hsu has assembled a dream team of collaborators, including Deborah Davis and Anna Sun from Yale University and Kenyon 海角论坛, respectively, and Georgetown鈥檚 , professor of sociology and senior fellow at the .

Casanova, who had already presented research on cultural notions of happiness, introduced Hsu to Richard Madsen, 鈥渢he premier scholar on China and religion,鈥� said Hsu, and original co-author of Habits of the Heart.

鈥淎fter I put the team together in fall 2011, my first year at Georgetown, I was able to get funding from the Office of International Initiatives in the provost鈥檚 office,鈥� Hsu said. She then wrote a proposal that was approved by the , which awarded her $850,000 to continue the research.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a three-year timeline. It starts now. The first year we鈥檙e going to do some trial fieldwork in Hong Kong this summer, where we鈥檒l meet with religious leaders and talk about what kinds of moral ideas we might look for when we do interviews with normal people,鈥� Hsu explained.

鈥淲e鈥檒l be talking to people in the north, middle, and south of China and only in urban areas, since you can argue that whatever people are doing in the urban areas will spread out and become the standard.鈥�

Hsu hopes that her upcoming book can inspire 鈥渆mpathy鈥� between China and the United States, which have long seemed culturally antagonistic. She plans to publish the results in both English and Chinese, so that Chinese readers can better understand how Americans view Chinese society.

鈥淗appiness is a topic everyone can relate to, and yet there are going to be differences,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 think those differences should help everybody understand what motivates people to do what they鈥檙e doing and why they say what they鈥檙e saying.鈥�
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