Happy people generate bonds; unhappy people buy compulsively.

Very interesting reflection for those of us who are working to change awareness, lifestyles and responsible consumption.

**Defender of the idea of "responsible happiness", the interviewee bets on healthy and affective human relationships as a formula to get out of any crisis.

One day sociologist Roberta Paltrinieri stopped window-shopping. She reviewed her consumption habits and stopped buying clothes, among other habits she abandoned. "It was a journey into what was happening in the crisis of the society of abundance that made me and those around me aware," says Paltrinieri, who holds a PhD in Sociology and teaches Sociology of Consumption at the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the Western world. It was thus that she set out to orient her life and that of her family towards responsible happiness, the term with which she baptized her latest book. My subject of study arises from my self-reflection on my daily behavior and that of my family," she says frankly. And we decided to start, as a small nucleus, a search for sustainable consumption behaviors." Her children - aged 8 and 12 - grow up knowing that they should not waste water, that garbage should be separated according to its raw material - organic, paper, plastic, glass - and that bartering with other families is fun, sustainable and feels good. "My life has not been impoverished. As a public employee teacher, it is true that my salary has been frozen for three years, but I also have the security of receiving my paycheck month after month. I admit that I have not felt the crisis I see around me, but this does not imply that I have not activated modes of research to find more virtuous forms of consumption," says the sociologist who also directs the Center for Advanced Studies on Consumption and Communication at the Alma Mater Studiorum of the University of Bologna and is part of the Research Network Sociology of Consumption. And there Paltrinieri went behind responsible happiness which, according to her, "is a different way of thinking about individual and collective well-being. It is the overcoming of a cultural model that made 'I consume, therefore I am' the leitmotiv of the last thirty years, in favor of a cultural model that values relationships rather than status symbols".

**Where does today's society look for happiness?

From the Aristotelian point of view, the concept of happiness refers to obtaining pleasure through an action. It is on the basis of this Aristotelian dimension that the consumer society has been built. In this system, through objects of consumption, men should obtain that pleasure which, in some way, is presupposed for a certain happiness. The consumer society as we have known it in Europe, since the post-war period, that is, from the 1950s until the beginning of this crisis in 2008, promised the attainment of pleasure based paradoxically on mechanisms that constantly produce unhappiness. The desire to buy has been an imperative for the European consumer society. Consuming and desiring to continue to do so no matter how many goods one already possesses. The problem is not the possession of goods but insatiability: a constant promise of something to be desired and that once obtained does not give satisfaction and therefore leads to the constant need to continue in this action. This is the origin of compulsive consumption processes. European and North American society are sick societies from the point of view of compulsiveness, because through this act we try to calm a craving that is within us and that is the existential state of subjectivity in a society that has progressively made other forms of pleasure disappear.

**With this diagnosis, is it possible to be happy today?

It is necessary to overcome the instrumental dimension of individual well-being in order to stimulate a new model that places collective well-being at the center, understood as a relationship that develops trust and reciprocity. Happy societies are those that produce relationships and bonds. Unhappy societies are those that sell products instead of relationships. In short: happy people generate bonds; unhappy people buy compulsively.

You have pointed out that happiness and well-being have not been adequately measured.

The first text that attempts to overcome the idea of GDP as the sole indicator of well-being is the study that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy commissioned in 2008 from economist Joseph Stiglitz, which uses a series of indicators that shed light on how to measure well-being. From this, in Italy we have developed the Sustainable Equal Welfare index -Benessere Equo e Sostenibile (BES)-. It is interesting because it focuses on the relational good. In a way it says that the protection of the environment and relationships are fundamental to measure well-being. A fundamental element that is at the basis of this new model of responsible happiness that I am trying to promote is the dimension of participation. People who participate in active terms within their own community are happier people.

**How do we talk about collective well-being in a society with so much inequality?

The economic model to which the consumer society has accustomed us is a model in which the determining factor is individual well-being measured economically. The real problem is that individual wellbeing must be substituted for collective wellbeing. In fact, people do not live alone, in isolation. But the real possibility of producing collective welfare arises from the possibility of producing relational goods. An important thing within a community to develop welfare is not so much money as a good quality of human relationships. Collective welfare must be produced through qualitatively good human relations. Relational goods produce trust, exchange, reciprocity. Relationships become important also in terms of inequality: if I produce relationships within a system, I produce forms of solidarity and the form of solidarity produces social cohesion. Where inequality exists, these mechanisms of solidarity can be activated. If I produce individualism, I do not produce social cohesion.

**It seems that in today's society only those who have the time or those who embrace a cause and militate in favor of it participate actively. How do you create this awareness of shared responsibility in the average citizen?

In Italy we are not in an ascending phase of democracy but a decreasing one. Crisis of governance, high levels of distrust, issues that may be familiar to you ... That is why it is necessary to create a new pact of trust. And shared social responsibility as a response to the crisis is incumbent on all of us. We need to make the leap to a collective theory of relationships. We need to look at how we can respond to the crisis through our specific capabilities.

**What is the main characteristic of social behavior today?

Today it is difficult to speak of a theory of collective action because in fact we live in a society where socialization processes have regressed in their capacity to guide relationships. Today more than ever, and in this I also see the reflection of the dominant neoliberal economic paradigm, we speak of individualized subjects. In fact, man is increasingly alone and must respond to the challenges of a global society. We have lost the normative values that used to guide us. It is as if the individual has to constantly reflect on his own actions. The mediation of structure has diminished. In thinking, social behavior has regressed. This means that there is no longer a normative frame of reference, but one must proceed by self-reflection. It is a constant need to find within oneself the forces, the capacities to respond to the emergency or the urgency that the social environment imposes on it.

**For you, the crisis was an opportunity to rethink your behavior as a consumer. Can the idea of crisis as an opportunity be applied to all social classes?

It is clear that from a systemic point of view this can be an opportunity for the middle and upper classes to rethink their own behavior. As a matter of unsustainability, it is necessary to think of a new model for the consumer society as we know it today. It is clear that the middle and lower sectors, which today are experiencing a great attrition, do not have the same possibility. The crisis as an opportunity also confronts us with the problem of inequality. In Italy, as is certainly also the case in Argentina, what is happening compared to the past is that we are seeing that the mechanisms of social ascent linked, for example, to education, no longer work. While in the past it was normal for the son of a peasant or worker to become a doctor, today this social ascent no longer exists. We are witnessing a self-reproduction of castes and there is no longer a mechanism for upward mobility between generations. It is an inevitable destiny: the children of the lower classes will have no possibility of overcoming their own status. The new generations are experiencing living conditions worse than those of their parents.

**Does this apply to rich and poor alike?

Yes, the central element in this process of poverty is that the children of the upper-middle social classes, the children of the bourgeoisie, are also experiencing worse living conditions than their parents. I am sure that, if my children do not go abroad and stay in Italy, they will not have the living conditions and opportunities that I have had.

**From the Argentinean point of view, it is as if Europe, that First World of our imagination, were discovering something that we, unfortunately, already know in our own flesh in terms of crisis.

In fact, what many Latin American countries, Argentina in the first place, have experienced as survival techniques in a globalized world -always in favor of a First World which, as a consequence of this unequal exchange, was favored-, today became the techniques we are observing to respond to our own crisis. Argentines can teach us a lot in this respect.

Article by MARINA ARTUSA, seen in clarin.com