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"This collection explores the productive potential of uncertainty for people living in Africa as well as for scholars of Africa. The relevance of the focus on uncertainty in Africa is not only that contemporary life is objectively risky and unpredictable(since it is so everywhere and in every period), but that uncertainty has become a dominant trope in the subjective experience of life in contemporary African societies. The contributors investigate how uncertainty animates people's ways of knowing and being across the continent. An introduction and eight ethnographic studies examine uncertainty as a social resource that can be used to negotiate insecurity, conduct and create relationships, and act as a source for imagining the future. These in-depth accounts demonstrate that uncertainty does not exist as an autonomous, external condition. Rather, uncertainty is entwined with social relations and shapes people's relationship between the present and the future. By foregrounding uncertainty, this volume advances our understandings of the contingency of practice, both socially and temporally"--
List of contents
1. Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa: An Introduction; Elizabeth Cooper and David Pratten PART I: SOCIAL CONTINGENCIES: BETWEEN SUSPICION AND THE SUBJUNCTIVE 2. Contingency: Interpersonal and Historical Dependencies in HIV Care; Susan Reynolds Whyte and Godfrey Etyang Siu 3. Charity and Chance: The Manufacture of Uncertainty and Mistrust Through Child Sponsorship in Kenya; Elizabeth Cooper 4. The Quest for Trust in the Face of Uncertainty. Managing Pregnancy Outcomes in Zanzibar; Nadine Beckmann 5. Food Security, Conjugal Conflict, and Uncertainty in 'Bangladesh', Mombasa, Kenya; Adam Gilbertson PART II: FUTURE VISIONS 6. Social Invisibility and Political Opacity. On Perceptiveness and Apprehension in Bissau; Henrik Vigh 7. Rhythms of Uncertainty and the Pleasures of Anticipation; Julie Soleil Archambault 8. Embracing Uncertainty. Young People on the Move in Addis Ababa's Inner City; Marco Di Nunzio 9. 'We Wait for Miracles.' Ideas of Hope and Future Among Clandestine Burundian Refugees in Nairobi; Simon Turner
About the author
Julie Soleil Archambaultl, Oxford University, UK Nadine Beckmann, University of Roehampton, UK Elizabeth Cooper, Simon Fraser University, Canada Godfrey Etyang Siu, Makerere University, Uganda Adam Gilbertson, Oxford University, UK Marco Di Nunzio, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium David Pratten, Oxford University, UK Susan Reynolds Whyte, Copenhagen University, Denmark Simon Turner, Aalborg University, Denmark Henrik Vigh, Copenhagen University, Denmark ?
Report
"The book Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa edited by Cooper and Pratten focuses specifically on one phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in development studies: uncertainty. ... the book presents detailed ethnographies of people's experiences of coping with uncertainty in their everyday life. ... the book is relevant for readers involved in development practice and development studies, as well as for practitioners and academics concerned with change processes more generally." (Aleid Groenewoudt, Progress in Development Studies, Vol. 18 (4), 2018)
