Felicidade territorializada em espaços místicos: o índice de Felicidade Interna Bruta (FIB) na comunidade Ilé Àse Ojú Oòrún em Caetité (BA)

Abstract

This dissertation proposed to measure and analyze the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) as a measure of well-being in contexts of traditional peoples and communities, taking into account not only the estimation of the indicator, but also the understanding of its meaning for the universe of investigation, based on qualitative information. The study was carried out based on field research carried out with members of the territory-terreiro Ilé Àse Ojú Oòrún, an afro-religious community located in the municipality of Caetité, Bahia, Brazil. The research is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected through the application of a questionnaire with questions related to the dimensions or domains necessary to estimate the GNH (standard of living, education, health, environment, governance, use of time, culture, vitality community, and psychological well-being). In-depth interviews on objective and subjective issues that permeate the respondents' perception of happiness was also conducted. The multiple-choice questions were constructed from a Likert scale. To analyze the answers to the open questions, the word cloud generation strategy was adopted using the R wordcloud in the R software. Content analysis was adopted to consider the in-depth interviews. The general average of the GNH calculated for Ilé Àse Ojú Oòrún was 3.06, which allows us to conclude that the members of this community consider themselves “happy”. The lowest index in the composition of the GNH was registered for the governance dimension, indicating that the researched community is “not very happy” with the performance of the government, in the three spheres of power, with public investments and with political participation in the municipality. At the other extreme, the highest average was presented by the GNH psychological well-being, showing a “happy” community with their prayers and meditations, with a feeling of joy, peace, satisfaction and optimism. Family, mainly, and religion were pillars for the feeling of happiness. A second group of words identified as happiness drivers include love, friends and work. Then, at a third more frequent level, words such as community, health, education, culture, peace, dance, nature, among others, were mentioned, in addition to money. There was a predominance of non-material factors as happiness inducers, pointing to an association between happiness and social and family relationships. An important conception for the analysis and understanding of the estimate of the GNH presented in this dissertation consists of territorialized happiness in mystical spaces. Happiness is territorialized when it links individuals and groups to a material principle of appropriation. However, it is also necessary to think of happiness beyond the material appropriation of space, because although territories are not experienced only from the perspective of affection, the fact is that affections also produce territories. In summary, the results and analysis of the GNH in the Ilé Àse Ojú Oòrún community corroborate the idea that the calculation of the GNH has become an important research instrument as a contribution to the promotion of public and private, individual and community initiatives that are capable of to contribute to increasing levels of happiness, especially community happiness. It was found that the pursuit of subjective happiness is a goal desired by all, but achieving it is not only a matter of a subjective nature, as it also depends on the cooperation and favoring of elements of an objective nature, such as education, health, work and security.