“The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is an act of hope.” —Octavia Butler

Futurists and authors of speculative fiction, like Octavia Butler, challenge us to imagine not only what is, but what might be. For the social scientist, the practitioner, and the policy leader, this requires a temporal imagination—a capacity to look beyond the immediate present and envision futures that are not yet realized. Yet, sociologically speaking, hope is never a neutral emotion. It is a situated practice, deeply embedded in historical, cultural, and political structures. It is shaped by the intersections of race, class, and gender, and it is frequently forged in the crucible of its shadow: despair.

2027 Call for Papers

For 2027, the Ethnography Forum invites scholars to join us in exploring how hope is lived, contested, and cultivated. We invite proposals that relate to ethnography and build on the theme of hope. We are particularly interested in work that explores:

• Youth and the politics of aspiration: How do educational inequalities produce "foreclosed futures" or, conversely, sites of radical resistance?
• Institutional and structural hope: How do institutions manage (or stifle) the hopes of those they serve?
• Digital and global temporalities: How do digital spaces create new architectures for collective hope?
• The affective labor of the field: How do ethnographers navigate the emotional toll of witnessing both despair and hope?

We will be accepting papers from April 15 to June 15, 2026, for the conference held at the University of Pennsylvania in February 2027.