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Stella Hudson posed an intriguing question in The Bahai Chairs’ recent Book Discussion: Infrastructure, Well-being, and the Measurement of Happiness. She inquired what the true meaning of happiness is and asked what it meant in the context of the edited volume.

It was such an exciting opportunity to speak with the editors of the recently published volume “Infrastructure, Well-being, and the Measurement of Happiness.” I sat down on Zoom with contributors Hoda Mahmuodi, Jenny Roe, and Kate Seaman. They shared their insight into the origins of the volume and how it came together, as well as delving into the contents, highlighting why happiness is an emerging measure for well-being, climate change, systemic injustice, and the communities around us.

The next chapter of the new edited volume is titled “The Geography of Desperation in America: Labor Force Participation, Mobility, Place, and Well-Being” Contributors Carol Graham and Sérgio Pinto describe the rise of desperation and associate premature deaths and link it to lower geographical mobility, especially for less than college-educated whites. Despite worse objective conditions, Black and Hispanic respondents reported more hope for the future.

The introductory chapter for this volume is titled “Building Happier Cities” by Dr. Aubrilyn Reeder. She describes how people have been moving into cities in unprecedented numbers. This has also led private investors and development banks to be more interested in long-term infrastructure and real estate investments. This has presented an opportunity to build cities that enable social, environmental, and economic well-being for residents, workers, and visitors.

I feel incredibly lucky to have been working with the Chair as we celebrated our 30th Anniversary. It was exciting to be able to see a tangible representation of the impact of the amazing work that has been ongoing for three decades. Due to the impact of Covid, it was my first opportunity to see such a large gathering of scholars, friends, and supporters.

In her chapter “Race and Feminist Care Ethics: Intersectionality as Method,” Dr. Parvati Raghuram describes care as the things we do to maintain, contain, and repair our world. She defines our world as our bodies, ourselves, and our environment. Feminist ethics draw on women’s caring roles as the basis for thinking of care as a universal good.

In November 2020, Professor Joseph Richardson shared a lecture titled “Life After the Gunshot: A Digital Storytelling Project.” This project chronicles the lives of 10 black men who were victims of gun violence and treated at UMDs Prince George’s hospital center, where they participated in the Capital Region Violence Intervention Project.

In her chapter “Making Rights Rhetoric Work: Constructing Care in a Post-Liberal World,” Dr. Alison Brysk notes that the rhetoric surrounding human rights is based on an ethos, which she describes as a form of discourse that seeks to shape public action. The human rights ethos is the justification of human rights and their greater purpose, whether that be moral or pragmatic. Dr. Brysk sees human rights as essentially the idea that all humans have inherent and equal moral worth, that social orders exist to promote the humanity of their members, and that authority should be guided and bounded by its impacts on human dignity.