Creating and sustaining a culture of hope: Feng Shui discourses and practices in Hong Kong

This ethnographic study of Feng Shui discourses and practices in Hong Kong examines consumer hope embedded within a specific sociocultural context, supplanting the current understanding of hope as purely an individual psychic phenomenon. The study investigates hope as a collective emotion, informed by key Chinese cultural resources drawn from Taoist and Confucian principles in both its pursuit and desired outcomes. As consumers incorporate hope within their lives and aspirational selves, they act within culturally prescribed pathways of prevailing social and moral rules. The research demonstrates the importance of culturally pervasive discourses in developing an overall sense of hope, one created, interpreted, and sustained within social networks. In the process, we also pay attention to the idea that in hope something still has to happen or become.