“If Today's Problems Are So Urgent, Why Are We So Stuck?”

PechaKucha Presentation Abstract We are surrounded by messages urging us to see the suffering, injustice, and corruption of both the natural and built world. But today, people seem to be gripped by passive despair. Why is that? Perhaps we are weighted by a loss of optimism. This presentation questions if optimism is misunderstood and if, as ethnographers, we are getting in our own way and underestimating it as a powerful tool of social transformation. Optimism requires us to examine our own emotional intelligence, capacity for change, and belief in our own human potential.