The myth of agency and the misattribution of blame in collective imaginaries of the future

For a ‘sociology as a team sport’

“…Another commentator, Margaret Frye () broadens the agenda even further. Building on her remarkable work on imagined futures among young women (Frye , ), she proposes that we focus on how ‘cultural narratives of future success circulate in other international contexts’ – in places like Uganda where unrealistic hopes are even more rampant than in the contemporary United States.…”

“…Another commentator, Margaret Frye () broadens the agenda even further. Building on her remarkable work on imagined futures among young women (Frye , ), she proposes that we focus on how ‘cultural narratives of future success circulate in other international contexts’ – in places like Uganda where unrealistic hopes are even more rampant than in the contemporary United States. Being pessimistic about the possible resonance of new narratives of hope in the context of an all‐encompassing American materialism, she also offers that instead of developing new narratives of hope, we need to reconfigure how people think about the means for reaching the American dream ().…”

“…Building on her remarkable work on imagined futures among young women (Frye , ), she proposes that we focus on how ‘cultural narratives of future success circulate in other international contexts’ – in places like Uganda where unrealistic hopes are even more rampant than in the contemporary United States. Being pessimistic about the possible resonance of new narratives of hope in the context of an all‐encompassing American materialism, she also offers that instead of developing new narratives of hope, we need to reconfigure how people think about the means for reaching the American dream (). While decrying that most Americans have a ‘false sense of self‐propulsion’, she urges sociologists to document ‘institutional weaknesses, social discrimination and the reproduction of inequality’ as barriers to mobility that are not sufficiently recognized, with an eye for a ‘more realistic understanding’ of how divergent trajectories happen, or how extra‐individual constraints operate.…”

“…While decrying that most Americans have a ‘false sense of self‐propulsion’, she urges sociologists to document ‘institutional weaknesses, social discrimination and the reproduction of inequality’ as barriers to mobility that are not sufficiently recognized, with an eye for a ‘more realistic understanding’ of how divergent trajectories happen, or how extra‐individual constraints operate. For Frye, American sociologists should generate variations in means to realize upward trajectory (), that is, help Americans come to terms with their limited agency as they embrace the American dream. Thus she proposes both a broadening of my agenda (with a focus on the global) as well as its narrowing (with a concern for means rather than ends).…”

Introduction: Development, Young People, and the Social Production of Aspirations

“…Our critique of development interventions that revolve around the idea of ‘raising aspirations’ is based on the premise that such interventions effectively promote ‘individual investment in institutional pathways for self-improvement while protecting these same institutions from blame when these pathways do not lead to the imagined outcomes’ (Frye 2019 , p. 724). 3 Several of the contributing articles discuss these and other problems associated with aspiration research and aspiration based development policies.…”