The act of questioning what makes us happy, and why, is an exercise as old as time—or at least as old as the human species; it seems every civilization, and probably every person, has grappled with it.

Becky Hsu, an instructor in the Georgetown sociology department, is herself trying to answer this question in her research. With a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Hsu has assembled a team of sociologists to discover what happiness means to different people who live in different cultures.

For the past two years, Hsu has been laying the groundwork for her second book—The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness: Anxieties, Hopes, and Moral Tensions in Everyday Life—which will analyze the ancient Chinese concept of fu.

Precursor to xingfu, the modern Chinese adjective for “happy,” fu has a variety of connected meanings that can change as society in China changes.

“Fu can be translated as ‘happiness,’ but it’s a lot deeper and more multifaceted than a nice feeling,” Hsu said. “A lot of times, people have equated fu with the Greek eudaemonia, which is something that Aristotle talked about: the notion of what makes something ‘the good life.’

“Traditionally, fu is very family-centered. There’s a saying that goes, ‘Happiness is four generations under one roof,’ from the great-grandparent to the great-grandchild,” she continued. “But Chinese society has undergone so much change. There was the socialist era with the Communist Party; then there was the government trying to regulate the family; and now, there’s globalization. What does fu mean in China after all of that?”

Hsu, whose research focuses on religion, transnational sociology, and institutions, was inspired two years ago to delve into the notion of happiness in Chinese culture. A fan of the seminal work Habits of the Heart—which examined the relationship between religion and morality in 1980s American society—Hsu wanted to examine China, a country often viewed as America’s religious opposite, in the same way.

In addition, Hsu was intrigued by the recent trend in international politics for countries to rank and compare how happy their citizens are—despite the fact these measurements, she said, are scientifically suspect.

“When you see these studies, answers are based on data from one question asked to people all over the world: ‘How happy are you on a scale of one to 10?’” Hsu said. “Obviously, there are problems with that. What does ‘happiness’ mean? What is the difference between a six and a seven? I want to make these surveys better.”

For her Templeton-funded project, Hsu has built a dream team of collaborators, including Deborah Davis and Anna Sun from Yale University and Kenyon College, respectively, and Georgetown’s José Casanova, professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

Casanova, who had already presented research on cultural notions of happiness, introduced Hsu to Richard Madsen, “the premier scholar on China and religion,” said Hsu—and an original co-author of Habits of the Heart.

“After I put the team together in fall 2011, my first year at Georgetown, I was able to get funding from the Office of International Initiatives in the provost’s office,” Hsu said. She then wrote a proposal that was approved by the John Templeton Foundation, which awarded her $850,000 to continue the research.

“It’s a three-year timeline. It starts now. The first year we’re going to do some trial field work in Hong Kong—this summer—where we’ll meet with religious leaders and talk about what kinds of moral ideas we might look for when we do interviews with normal people,” Hsu said.

“We’ll be talking to people in the north, middle, and south of China, and only in urban areas, since you can argue that whatever people are doing in the urban areas will spread out and become the standard.”

Hsu hopes that her upcoming book can inspire “empathy” and emotional understanding between Chinese and American cultures, which have sometimes seemed at odds. She plans to publish the results in both English and Chinese, partially to ensure Chinese readers can gain insight into how Americans view Chinese society.

“Happiness is a topic everyone can relate to, and yet there are still going to be differences,” Hsu said. “I think those differences can help everybody understand what motivates people to do what they do and say what they say.”