“Hope is a Discipline”: Practicing Moral Imagination in Transformative Justice

Abstract

Rather than “embracing hopelessness,” many marginalized communities understand their practices of political resistance as exercises in hope. One space of contemporary activism where this is evident is in transformative justice movements. Utilizing the idea of moral imagination as articulated in peacebuilding and conflict transformation literature, and the idea of hope as a social practice as articulated by Keri Day, I argue that a close examination of transformative justice organizing reveals hope as a social practice of embodied moral imagination practiced by communities on the margins.