Abstract
AbstractThe focus on human intention and action in anthropological studies of hope has made it difficult to attend to the aspects of a hopeful life that lie outside a hoping person's purpose and control. This article brings the concepts of porous and dividual personhood into conversation with the fast‐growing literature on hope to explore how spiritual forces shape the hoping person and the practices of hope for a good life in North China's Xia County. The lived experience of my Chinese interlocutors calls attention to the fact that hoping persons are often entangled in extended relationships with spiritual forces as well as other humans. An extended relational framework allows us to attend more carefully to the contingency and complexity of hope, and brings a more nuanced lens to personhood, one that rejects the Enlightenment idea that persons are autonomous, bounded agents, fully in charge of their own worlds.
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