El deporte de la felicidad extrema. Una sociología de las políticas de crecimiento ‘endógeno’

Abstract

This work sketches a sociological approach to the new science and politics of ‘endogenous economic growth’ from the point of view of contemporary culture. The standard economic analysis of market activities considered in terms of quantitative productivity and strategic competitivity has a weird companion in the unorthodox keynesian vision of the market economy as a variety of ‘beauty contest’ sui generis. The paper opens up with an introductory part on the modern economic science of economic growth. Next we examine the ‘sport-like’ spirit of fashionable economic policies targeting long-term economic outcomes. In the final part, building on sociological research about a distinctive topic of contemporary haedonistic consumption – the search for states of ‘extreme happiness’-, we conclude that the mass aesthetics of ‘kitsch’ is a necessary correlate that accounts for the existence of the so-called ‘knowledge society’.