ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that the kind of social hope that a humanistic sociology should aim towards must likewise be drawn from, and rooted in, empirical observation of the social environments to which it intends to speak. It also makes the distinctly pragmatic argument that whether or not sociology tends to reveal images of the relative recalcitrance and insurmountability of socially generated suffering what Bourdieu. This chapter likewise suggests that even though the content of social hope is subject to all manner of heteronomous influences, hope itself is ultimately a product of human creation. It is therefore in strong agreement with actor-network theorists' arguments concerning the performativity of the social sciences and the agency of theory. With the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of that decade, history itself appeared to have demonstrated the self-evident nature of the argument, free-market capitalism was the only game in town, and it was here to stay, indefinitely.
