Recensione al Volume "Hope" di Tia De Nora

“This book is for anyone who has ever hoped, who is hoping, who will hope. That probably includes anyone. (…) Global issues – climate crisis, violence, hostility, pandemics, homelessness, displacement, racism and racial hostility, economic hardship, modern slavery, loneliness, anxiety, mental illness – all of these have intensified. This intensity underlines a global need for hope and a corresponding need to confront hope - what hope is and what can, and cannot, be achieved by hoping. This confrontation includes distinguishing hope from wishful thinking and simple optimism. For me, a sociologist with an interest in how things take shape in action, that project also includes understanding hope as a complex form of situated practice. “ (p. 4). With these words the sociologist Tia DeNora introduces her new book, which is very interesting and challenging. Her book was completed in November 2020 during the pandemic and in a period of fear, despair, death, and economic crisis all over the world. The author offers to the reader the refined elegance and interpretative efficacy of her sociological gaze. Suddenly through the sociological glasses provided by reading these pages, the reader can observe the attitude of hoping in a new way: as a complex form of situated practice, a basket of many small and invisible decisions that the social actor makes in everyday life. However, all these micro-decisions, all these micro-actions, instead of having micro-consequences, will literally make a difference and change both the present and the future.