The Economy of Hope / / ed. by Hirokazu Miyazaki, Richard Swedberg.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Pennsylvania Press Complete eBook-Package 2016
• MitwirkendeR: Genda, Yuji,; Guyer, Jane I.,; Miyazaki, Hirokazu,; Riles, Annelise,; Swedberg, Richard,; Verdery, Katherine,
• HerausgeberIn: Miyazaki, Hirokazu,; Swedberg, Richard,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2017]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.) :; 5 illus.

Hope is an integral part of social life. Yet, hope has not been studied systematically in the social sciences. Editors Hirokazu Miyazaki and Richard Swedberg have collected essays that investigate hope in a broad range of socioeconomic situations and phenomena across time and space and from a variety of disciplinary vantage points. Contributors survey the resilience of hope, and the methodological implications of studying hope, in such experiences as farm collectivization in mid-twentieth-century communist Romania, changing employment relations under Japan's neoliberal reform during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the dynamics of innovation and replication in a West African niche economy, and Barack Obama's 2008 political campaign of hope in the midst of the unfolding global financial crisis.The Economy of Hope shifts the analytic of anthropological and sociological investigations from knowledge to hope, presents case studies on the loss of collective hope, and concludes by offering techniques for replicating hope. In the hands of Miyazaki and Swedberg and their distinguished contributors, hope becomes not only a method of knowledge but also an essential framework for the sociocultural analysis of economic phenomena.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- The Economy of Hope: An Introduction -- Chapter 1. A Sociological Approach to Hope in the Economy -- Chapter 2. Mercantilist-Utopian Projects in Eighteenth- Century Sweden -- Chapter 3. Hope Turned Upside Down: How the Prospects for a Communist Utopia Were Dashed in 1950s Romania -- Chapter 4. Hope and Society in Japan -- Chapter 5. Is the Law Hopeful? -- Chapter 6. When and How Does Hope Spring Eternal in Personal and Popular Economics? Thoughts from West Africa to America -- Chapter 7. Obama’s Hope: An Economy of Belief and Substance -- List of Contributors -- Index