The Rise of the Joyful Economy

The Rise of the Joyful Economy by the German cultural economist-partially-turned-sociologist Michael Hutter is about as far as you can get from a standard monograph in cultural or economic sociology. Drawing on insights from art history, cultural economics and economic sociology among others, the book is hard to categorize. The claims which the book makes are as sweeping as the evidence provided for them is a-typical: the analysis of works of art, selected from a 600-year timespan. But for readers who are not daunted by these deviations, The Rise of the Joyful Economy is a highly original analysis of artistic and economic transformations since the Middle Ages. Moreover, the book sheds news lights on contemporary debates in economic and cultural sociology. [...] it enriches our thinking of the ways in which societal spheres have an impact on each other. The main contribution, however, and it is on the verge of cliche to write this, is that the book supports one of its own key hypotheses: the irritation hypothesis. Written by a scholar who was trained in mathematics and economics, and who later shifted his career in the direction of sociology, turning himself into an art historian in the meantime, The Rise of the Joyful Economy proves that novel, surprising insights are to be gained at the interface of different disciplinary perspectives. — Olav Velthuis, European Journal of Sociology, 57, 3 (2016), pp. 518–523