Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through the sport, they reflect critically on the role their hopes of ‘making it big’ play in perpetuating industry inequalities, recognizing what I call the ideological function of hope. Despite this, they remain committed to hopes of dramatic success. Their simultaneous optimism and cynicism complicates contemporary accounts of hope as a strategy of resilience in contexts of profound uncertainty. Building on ethnographic research with Accra boxers, I theorize hoping as a paradoxical experience of critique and optimism in equal measure, to account for the contradictory ways people act when orienting themselves towards better futures.

中文翻译：

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只有一个梅威瑟：充满希望的人对希望的批判

职业拳击为有抱负的阿克拉运动员带来了巨大的财富和全球流动性的希望，这种希望得到了加纳人特别适合拳击减员的理解的支持。然而，当拳击手活跃于全球行业时，他们会遇到将他们定位为廉价、从属的劳动力的权力关系，并阻碍他们获得冠军的希望。当拳击手通过这项运动建立生活时，他们批判性地反思他们“做大”的希望在使行业不平等永久化方面所扮演的角色，并认识到我所说的希望的意识形态功能。尽管如此，他们仍然致力于取得巨大成功的希望。他们同时乐观和愤世嫉俗，使当代对希望的描述变得复杂，因为希望是在深刻的不确定性背景下的弹性策略。以阿克拉拳击手的民族志研究为基础，