Oliver Bennett has published a new book - Cultures of Optimism: The Institutional Promotion of Hope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

In this sequel to his book on Cultural Pessimism, Oliver Bennett explores how individuals and societies sustain hope. The book focuses on the institutional propagation of optimism in diverse domains: democratic politics; work; the family; religion; and psychotherapy. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including social and evolutionary psychology, intellectual history and organisational behaviour, Bennett addresses a number of questions: what are the functions of optimism in modern societies? How and why do institutions promote it? What values and attitudes are involved? The institutional actions explored, conceptualised as cultural policy in its broadest sense, point to the promotion of hope and optimism as a near-universal cultural imperative.

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