Breaking the Wall: Emotions and Projective Agency Under Extreme Poverty
通过一位贫民窟成功企业家的案例，研究情绪如何影响弱势群体的能动性及其参与社会创新以挑战压迫性制度约束的过程，发现情绪和“熟悉的陌生人”网络对打破贫困与绝望循环的关键作用。
In this inductive, exploratory study, we explore how emotions affect the agency of vulnerable persons and their engagement in social innovation to challenge oppressive institutional constraints. By presenting the in-depth case of a successful entrepreneur from a shantytown, we show how emotions affect the construction of a self that contributes to the reproduction of social order rather than change, and how effective interventions can break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness that is dominant among excluded people. We find that this process is fragile and contingent on the presence of known strangers—that is, a web of actors that contributes not only resources but also emotional engagement that helps the emergence and development of low-power actors’ projectivity. We identify mechanisms for and provide a model of the development and emergence of the projective self that is necessary to engage in future-oriented agency.