Affording Hope: Agency, Scientific Knowledge & Lived Experience • Alexandra Paxton • ICPA 2026

Alexandra Paxton presents a collaborative ecological account of hope developed with Stephanie Petrusz and Theo Rhodes. The talk asks how people can perceive and sustain possibilities for meaningful action when desired outcomes, such as responding to climate change, are distant and uncertain. Hope is considered in relation to particular goals, actors and available paths of action. The discussion draws on ecological ideas about affordances and the nesting of activities across timescales. A small immediate action can matter through its relation to a larger collective undertaking. The presentation resists a simple separation between individual responsibility and collective change. Opportunities are shaped by what people can do together and by the social organization that supports participation. An ecological approach therefore examines the conditions under which hopeful activity becomes possible. Nonlinearity matters because the effects of action need not scale predictably with immediate effort. At the same time, uncertainty does not guarantee that change will occur. The discussion includes care, exhaustion and the limits of expecting individuals to sustain collective work through self-sacrifice. The contribution is a conceptual invitation to connect ecological research with practical questions about the future. Audience discussion explores the relationship among science, lived experience and political commitments. The related reading provides background on values and action; it is not a publication of this specific collaborative talk. Presenter: Alexandra Paxton Programme credit: Alexandra Paxton (with Stephanie Petrusz & Theo Rhodes) ICPA 2026, Omaha, Nebraska, June 24–26, 2026. CHAPTERS 00:00 A shared ecological and dynamical starting point 04:49 Why hope matters for climate action 07:12 Connecting hope with ecological psychology 08:54 Everyday hope and ecological hope 12:23 Individual choices and collective action 14:10 Nonlinear change and uncertainty 15:54 Care, burnout and sustained participation 20:49 Community, possibility and limits 23:32 Questions and discussion KEY TERMS Affordance: A possibility for action relative to an actor's capabilities and circumstances. In this account, hope concerns situated possibilities rather than unrestricted optimism. Nested affordances: Relations among action possibilities at different scales, where one activity can support a more encompassing undertaking. The link between scales must be made concrete. Collective agency: The organization of action made possible through participation with others. It need not reduce to either an isolated individual's effort or a group treated as a single person. Nonlinearity: A relation in which effects are not simply proportional to inputs. It permits disproportionate change but does not imply that any small action will have a large beneficial effect. Values as constraints: The organization of action by concerns extending beyond a single endpoint, including care for participants and the sustainability of a shared practice. RELATED PAPERS Related values framework: Hodges & Baron (1992). Values as constraints on affordances: Perceiving and acting properly. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1...