Towards a Sociology of Hope

Guido Gili is Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Molise, Italy. He currently teaches Sociology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Communication Theory at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome. His research focuses on issues of credibility and trust, manipulation, post-truth, transformations of the public sphere, theories of mass society and media ecology. His most recent publications include La credibilità politica (2022), with M. Panarari, Comunicare: persone, relazioni, media (2022) with G. Boccia Artieri and F. Colombo, and The History and Theory of Post-Truth Communication (2020) with G. Maddalena. Emiliana Mangone is Full Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the Department of Political and Communication Sciences, University of Salerno (Italy). Her main research interests are in the field of cultural and institutional systems, with particular attention to the social representations, relational processes, knowledge and narrative as key elements to the human act, in migration studies, and as well as the study of the thought of Pitirim A. Sorokin. She recently published Pitirim A. Sorokin: Rediscovering a Master of Sociology (2023) and Narratives and Social Change. Social Reality in Contemporary Society (2022).

1. What Hope Is and How to Define It

2. The Relational Universe of Hope

3. Shapes and Dimensions of Hope

4. Who? To Whom? In What Context?

5. Hope as praxis: Overcoming Crises

6. Conclusion: Understanding Our Own and Others’ Hopes