Abstract:

This paper on hope is based on an autoethnographic/grounded theory study conducted over a period of 30 years. As a method, autoethnography combines characteristics of autobiography and ethnography. When writing an autobiography, an author retroactively and selectively writes about past experiences and these experiences are assembled using hindsight. In this paper, I argue that grounded theory and autoethnography are highly compatible, as autoethnographic studies can provide the thick description that is very useful data for grounded theory analysis. Part of this compatibility derives from the similarities in the characteristics between the two methods. As a naturalistic form of inquiry, both autoethnography and grounded theory entails observing and analysing behaviour in naturally occurring conditions. Both have been derived from the symbolic interactionist perspective, and both often rely on participant observations. Sample selection is emergent in both autoethnography and grounded theory, and both attempt to obtain emic descriptions of behaviour. Over the past 30 years, I have been involved in numerous research projects in rural communities in South and Southern Africa. In this paper I will use autoethnography combined with grounded theory to present a number of vignettes based on my research done over many years to interrogate the possibility of using ‘pedagogy of hope’ as a possible element in the bricolage of building and rebuilding sustainable rural communities. In this process I will analyse the ideas of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Marcel, Carabajo and other educationalists in search of a possible understanding of hope that could guide and direct educators working in disadvantage, impoverished and resourceless communities in building and rebuilding the education of their communities. Creating an understanding of hope in a despondent environment must be seen against the ideas of Levinas about useless suffering and Marcel’s ideas of despair, only then can we create authentic hope. Suffering provides us with an opening to what Levinas calls the interpersonal and Marcel the inter-subjective, i.e. the ethical demand of the other or interdependency of humans. From this perspective hope is communal and resonates with the ideals of Ubuntu. The theoretical analysis is pitted against an own autoethnographic analysis to formulate grounded theory based principles that provides a way of seeing hope as an element in the bricolage of building sustainable rural communities. It is postulated that hope is pedagogical only when it has been born and has grown in the fertile ground of this inter-human and interpersonal relationship. In conclusion, I postulate five fundamental criteria for pedagogical hope:

a) Pedagogical hope is realistic
b) Pedagogical hope aspires to the pedagogical good
c) Pedagogical hope is anticipation of the future
d) Pedagogical hope is rooted in a vision
e) Pedagogical hope acknowledges incompleteness of the human condition and the viator condition of every individual

Keywords:

Social justice, hope as ontological need, pedagogy of hope, Paulo Freire, relationships, rural communities, autoethnographic, grounded theory.