Cultivating hope: caring for a precarious emotion in the Ultima Generazione movement

In this article I explore how the Ultima Generazione (UG) movement in Italy cultivates different forms of hope in times of climate crisis and ecological breakdown. Based on ethnographic research, I argue that hope is not a stable emotion or a fixed starting point, but a fragile, shifting process requiring ongoing care. I identify two key practices: building a supportive, nonviolent grassroots community, and performing high-risk civil disobedience, such as road blockades or ‘coloring’ monuments and artworks. These practices generate multiple, sometimes conflicting hopes – some rooted in immediate communal survival, others directed toward long-term climate transformation. Rather than a unified feeling or motivational force, hope emerges as an uncertain sensibility shaped by collective action. ‘Cultivating hope’ thus entails a repertoire of practices that nurture, shape, and enact the ways in which hope is felt and sustained.