Navigating Hope: Cultivating Inclusive Optimism in a Complex World

In a world grappling with despair and aspiration, Navigating Hope: Cultivating Inclusive Optimism in a Complex World challenges simplistic views of optimism. This groundbreaking book argues for an 'inclusive optimism' - a dynamic, negotiated hope acknowledging human incompleteness and fostering relationality to mitigate the negative consequences of unequal encounters. Drawing on diverse voices and lived experiences from Africa and beyond, the authors explore how optimism is deeply interwoven with social realities, from everyday resilience to profound theoretical underpinnings. The book confronts the 'coloniality of optimism', revealing how historical power imbalances have weaponised hope, leading to 'Afropessimism' for some and 'cruel optimism' for others. Through compelling narratives of migrant struggles, traditional practices, and community resilience, Navigating Hope invites readers to see optimism not as delusion, but as a vital force for social change. It calls for genuine collective hope where no one's flourishing comes at another's expense.

"This groundbreaking and intellectually stimulating book offers inclusive optimism as a framework for understanding the nuances, complexities and dilemmas related to the lived experiences and structural conditions of realising hopes and aspirations. This entails epistemological inclusivity and relationality and human incompleteness as concepts to move beyond simplistic and cruel forms of optimism." Karen Lauterbach, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark