Hope emerges in the space between our most significant desires and the vicissitudes that define the human condition. The challenges of a recent pandemic and renewal of ancient hostilities around the globe add to a growing list of concerns about the sustainability of life on this planet. The need for hope has never been more palpable. The Oxford Compendium of Hope is the most comprehensive collection of research and scholarship on this topic, with contributions from over 70 scholars across fourteen disciplines. The latest theoretical and empirical research in the humanities, social sciences, and medicine are included along with chapters on race, gender, and the LGBTQ+ experience, as well as migration and human rights. Additional sections address hope in economics, organizational leadership, ecology, technology, and the arts. Extracts from seminal contributions include the philosophical and theological insights of Bloch, Lynch, Marcel, and Moltmann; Cowan on the Australian dreamtime; Menninger and Hinds from psychiatry and nursing; Capps on the development of hope; and Sikkink on human rights.
The fifty-six chapters are divided into twelve sections. To encourage greater interdisciplinary collaboration, the placement of adjacent chapters and sections presume fewer degrees of "epistemological distance" (i.e., common concerns and similar methodologies). The concluding chapter deals with key conceptual issues that confront serious students of hope as well as potential blind spots. Forewords for this compendium were provided by Jan Peter Balkenende, former prime minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Anthony Scioli is Professor of Psychology at Keene State College and a member of the Graduate Faculty at the University of Rhode Island. He is a clinical psychologist, a former Associate Editor for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and a Consulting Editor for The Journal of Positive Psychology. He is the originator of the "critical MASS" approach to hope and founded The Hope Institute, dedicated to advancing hope research, assessment, and interventions. He is co-author of two previous books on hope, including Hope in the Age of Anxiety.
Steven C. van den Heuvel is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit (ETF) in Leuven (Belgium), as well as Director of the Institute of Leadership and Social Ethics, a research institute of the ETF; he also teaches at the Theological University Utrecht (the Netherlands). His research interests are,
inter alia, continental theology, environmental ethics, and the theology and ethics of hope. He co-edited the volume
Driven by Hope: Economics and Theology in Dialogue; he also edited the volume
Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope.
