Catherine Kingfisher Knihy

Focusing on urban cohousing communities, this book explores Kankanmori in Tokyo and Quayside Village in Vancouver as models for social and subjective wellbeing. It challenges conventional notions of happiness that prioritize individualism, presenting these communities as innovative alternatives that promote collaborative living. By examining how these diverse groups foster a sense of community, the book highlights their potential to address the crises of social and environmental sustainability in an increasingly urbanized world.

Focusing on the dynamic nature of neoliberal welfare reform in New Zealand, this ethnography examines the interactions of various stakeholders, including policymakers, service providers, and recipients. It employs frameworks of policy translation and assemblage to depict policy as both a cultural artifact and a battleground for power dynamics. By viewing policy engagement as a process of production and transformation, the study challenges conventional notions that portray policy as merely technical and devoid of cultural context.

Understudied relative to other forms of intentional community, and under-recognized in policy-making circles, urban cohousing communities situate wellbeing as simultaneously social and subjective, while catering for groups of people so diverse in age. Collaborative Happiness looks at two such urban cohousing communities: Kankanmori, in Tokyo; and Quayside Village, in Vancouver. In expanding beyond mainstream approaches to happiness focused exclusively on the individual, Quayside Village and Kankanmori provide an alternative model for how to understand and practice the good life in an increasingly urbanized world marked by crisis of both social and environmental sustainability.