Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
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
£39.00
About the editors
Francis B. Nyamnjoh joined the University of Cape Town in August 2009 as Professor of Social Anthropology from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Dakar, Senegal, where he served as Head of Publications from July 2003 to July 2009. He has taught sociology, anthropology and communication studies at universities in Cameroon and Botswana, and has researched and written extensively on Cameroon and Botswana. In October 2012 he received a University of Cape Town Excellence Award for “Exceptional Contribution as a Professor in the Faculty of Humanities”. He is recipient of the “ASU African Hero 2013” annual award by the African Students Union, Ohio University, USA. He is: a B1 rated Professor and Researcher by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF); a Fellow of the Cameroon Academy of Science since August 2011; a fellow of the African Academy of Science since December 2014; a fellow of the Academy of Science of South Africa since 2016; and Chair of the Editorial Board of the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Press since January 2011. His scholarly books include: Africa’s Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging (2005); Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa (2006); “C’est l’homme qui fait l’homme”: Cul-de-Sac Ubuntu-ism in Côte d’Ivoire (2015); and #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa (2016).