Young People, Hope, and Childhood-Hope

Abstract

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.