Hope Amidst Conflict Philosophical and Psychological Explorations

How does hope for peace form and proliferate in the seemingly hopeless reality of conflict, and why do despair and fear often prevail? How do political elites utilize hope and skepticism to manipulate their public during conflict? And how does hope manifest itself at the societal level?

Hope Amidst Conflict takes on the bold challenge of answering these questions by merging insights from philosophy and social psychology and investigating hope for peace in an intense political context--the intractable, violent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Hope for peace has gathered scholarly attention in the last decade. However, the work has been focusing on the mechanisms of hope while failing to ask the bigger questions about hope's role in the politics of conflict. Moreover, existing research presents a confusing account of what hope "is" and how it can be measured. This confusion yielded mixed results regarding the levels and consequences of hope during conflict.

Combining the wisdom of more than a hundred years of scholarship on hope with insights from original data collected in conflict zones, Hope Amidst Conflict offers a novel conceptualization of hope and a standardized way to measure hope in a wide array of contexts. Using these new approaches, the book embarks on a journey to identify the determinants and consequences of hope amidst conflict.

Oded Adomi Leshem is a Senior Research Associate at the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab and The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for The Advancement of Peace, both housed in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Located at the nexus of political psychology and conflict resolution, his research explores how the beliefs about the future shape the political attitudes and behaviors of people mired in conflict. His work has been published in journals such as PNAS, Political Behavior, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.