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This article outlines a number of steps toward a more sensitive and affirmative conception of childhood and hope ("childhood-hope"). Throughout the article, the author explores how our understandings of hope might be extended via an examination of childhood-hope. First, it considers childhood as a universalizing, affective condition, which can be characterized by very simplistic, and problematic, notions of hope, logic, and futurity. The author connects this line of thought explicitly with what the author identifies as impulses of hopefulness and of "doing good" for children, exemplified by a selection of "high-profile" quotations about children. Second, the author extends the discussion to explore everyday articulations of hope by young people involved in a project concerning their interpretations and experiences of self-esteem. The author concludes by outlining how universal representations of childhood-hope may be extended and critiqued though young people's own articulations of hope, and draw attention to some of the positive political interventions that young people's modest forms of hoping might have.

With its ascendancy in American political discourse during the past few years, hope has become a watchword of politics, yet the rhetoric has failed to inquire into the actual function of hope in political life. This essay examines elpis, the Greek word for "hope," in Thucydides' History and offers a theoretical account of this concept and its connection to successful political action. I suggest that a complex understanding of hope structures Thucydides' narrative: Hope counts as among the most dangerous political delusions, yet it also offers the only possible response to despair. Thucydides' text educates the judgment of his readers, chastening hope while showing its importance despite its flaws. The History thus offers an alternative for considering the politics of hope, one that challenges hope's ardent proponents today. Adapted from the source document.

Humanist sociology shares space with positivity fields such as peace and conflict studies, positive psychology, and the wellness arms of health, science, and education to contribute to the "plus" side of knowledge and be part of the "solution" to problems and discord in human living systems. Hope is an often misinterpreted merit. It helps one imagine something different, yes, but it is also deeply connected to a sense that something can be different; something you wish will happen and a notion that change is actually (however unlikely) possible. A critical middle step between identifying spaces in need of transformation and working for change is the capacity to move from the perceived to the possible— the ability to imagine other that than what is. In this article, hope is examined conceptually, including an overview of recent literature on hope, the outcomes of hope, and what the alternatives to hope are. After identifying the importance of hope, hope's role in the social study of peace and nonviolence will be examined looking at peace education and the potential of a "curriculum for hope." Finally, this article offers a "how" of hope by presenting hope pedagogy for all to be utilized at the individual level.

AbstractThe experiment in China that produced the world's first babies with "edited" DNA comes out of an international research program aimed at producing an HIV cure. An atmosphere of secrecy surrounded this experiment at the edge of the law. Volunteers who signed up for the experiment were HIV-positive tonzghi—gay and bisexual "comrades" already living with closely guarded secrets and conflicted desires. Impure hopes—a mix of heterosexual dreams about reproductive futurity and biotech speculation about an HIV cure—drove the research forward. Volunteers were caught between dreamworlds, harboring hopes that were not entirely their own. The story of these patients is tangled up with CRISPR, a fast and cheap tool for manipulating DNA that contains tantalizing promises of medical breakthroughs for innovators and investors. Speculation in the innovation economy produced an earlier gene-editing experiment in the United States that brought HIV-positive veterans of ACT UP together with biotechnology entrepreneurs. After achieving promising results, a fickle market pushed gene-editing enterprises away from HIV cure research. Building on earlier work about impure science, this article makes an argument against purity to consider the contours of hope in ethically compromised times. Hope demands ongoing articulation work. As powerful political and economic forces threaten to steal queer hopes or simply capitalize on them, it is important to make our own ethical, political, and discursive cuts—to selectively renew some articulations while breaking other connections.

It has been heartbreaking to watch the Afghan elections unfold. So much courage, so much hope, so much blood and treasure expended, and for what? A master class by Hamid Karzai's team in how incumbents win elections in poor-conflict-ridden countries. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract
This article explores the theory and practice of critique in the works of the Lebanese Communist intellectual Husayn Muruwwa (1910–1987) and his grandson Rabih Mroué (b. 1967). Husayn Muruwwa, one of the most important Arab intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century, reinvented literary criticism and cultural critique in the 1950s and '60s. His grandson, one of the most prominent Arab visual artists, has been redefining the critical approach to visual representation since the Lebanese civil war. The article pits Husayn Muruwwa's critique based on collective hope and emancipation against his grandson's vision of an individualistic critique based on desire. It considers the critical and political writings of Husayn Muruwwa and Rabih Mroué's performances, video lectures, and interviews to explore specifically how they represent hope in relation to critique, and it ultimately suggests a participatory aesthetics that is common to both and that transcends their autobiographical statements and establishes resonances between their thought. Their approaches to critique, the article illustrates, play out as revised inheritances of both the Arab renaissance (nahda) and the national liberation movements in the 1970s. These revisions create a continuity that is critical to understanding the relationship between critique and hope in the Arab intellectual tradition.

AbstractThrough the lens of Burundians who have been displaced by the recent crisis in Burundi and their anticipations of possible futures for themselves and their country, expressed in the emotions of hope, anxiety, and despair, this article explores the shift from a situation characterized by upheaval towards the crystallization of authoritarian rule in Burundi. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst Burundian refugees in Rwanda, I examine how these individuals negotiate such uncertain and unpredictable circumstances as well as how emotions of hope, anxiety, and despair change accordingly. I argue that the political closure in Burundi has produced a gradual shift from productive anxiety in the Kierkegaardian sense towards despair and a feeling of existential closure. In such situations, when uncertainty gives way to a certainty that there are no futures, the present becomes detached from the flow of time and decisions become impossible to make. The Burundians in Rwanda can only live for the moment and hope against hope, often evoking a distinction between their hopelessness as human beings and the hope that they are compelled to have as Christians.