Resumo do trabalho

The essay problematises the relationship between consumption and happiness, highlighting how the promise of well-being is selective and unequal in hyper-consumer societies. Vulnerable consumers face material and symbolic difficulties that prevent them from accessing the experiences associated with the ideal of happiness promoted by the market. The analysis investigates the effects of economic and representational exclusion on subjective well-being, and how these subjects resist the normative impositions of ‘being happy’.

How the market invisibilises vulnerable consumers in narratives of happiness and what strategies these individuals adopt to resist and emotionally cope with the pressure for well-being in contexts of deprivation?

The aim of this essay is to critically discuss how market dynamics produce the invisibilization of vulnerable subjects in the narratives of happiness associated with consumption.

The text explores the concept of subjective happiness based on authors such as Diener, Lyubomirsky and Seligman, highlighting its limitations by ignoring structural contexts. It criticises the ‘happiness industry’, which turns well-being into a commodity and imposes exclusionary normative models. The theory of consumer vulnerability is articulated with notions of intersectionality to highlight how race, class and gender intensify forms of exclusion in consumption and discourses of happiness.

The discussion is based on the idea that happiness has become a privilege. Vulnerable consumers are invisibilised in advertising campaigns and prevented from experiencing consumer experiences that promote status and belonging. The analysis emphasises the role of symbolic exclusion and compensatory consumption in the production of psychological suffering. The culture of positivity functions as symbolic violence by denying legitimacy to the negative emotions of these subjects, intensifying their sense of social inadequacy.

The essay reveals how consumption, instead of promoting universal well-being, deepens inequalities by symbolically and materially excluding vulnerable subjects. Happiness, captured by a market logic, disregards the social determinants of life. Criticising the neoliberal model of happiness proposes rescuing a relational, collective and political conception of living well. Authentic happiness, in this context, is linked to resistance, dignity and social transformation.

Academically, the essay contributes by integrating criticisms of positive psychology with theories of vulnerability and consumption. Socially, it denounces the mechanisms of emotional and symbolic invisibilisation that affect marginalised groups, and proposes alternative forms of well-being. In the managerial field, it points to the urgency of ethical marketing practices that respect diversity and avoid exploiting the emotional fragility of vulnerable consumers.

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Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological bulletin, 95(3), 542.
Mérida-López, S., Quintana-Orts, C., Rey, L., & Extremera, N. (2022). Teachers’ Subjective Happiness: Testing the Importance of Emotional Intelligence Facets Beyond Perceived Stress. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 317–326.