Happiness is an A3 page and a sharpie. I have made a start on mapping various theorists I’m reading against disciplinary areas. Two distinct camps are emerging: those that look at gratitude as a form of capital (the Maussian ‘gift’ literature, Bourdieu) and those that see moral generosity as a refusal of reciprocity (Levinas, and to some extent Bakhtin). The first camp sees gratitude as a form of accrual and the second a form of sacrifice. The ‘accrual’ camp as being quite cynical about gratitude: it is characterised as self-interested (although not always consciously). In contrast, those that view generosity as a form of moral perfectionism for which the recipient need not enact gratitude are very idealistic.
