Modes of Uncertainty

Anthropological Cases

Limor Samimian-Darash, Paul Rabinow, Limor Samimian-Darash, Paul Rabinow

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780226257105, 9780226257075
• eBook ISBN: 9780226257242
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Modes of Uncertainty offers groundbreaking ways of thinking about danger, risk, and uncertainty from an analytical and anthropological perspective. Our world, the contributors show, is increasingly populated by forms, practices, and events whose uncertainty cannot be reduced to risk—and thus it is vital to distinguish between the two. Drawing the lines between them, they argue that the study of uncertainty should not focus solely on the appearance of new risks and dangers—which no doubt abound—but also on how uncertainty itself should be defined, and what the implications might be for policy and government.
             
Organizing contributions from various anthropological subfields—including economics, business, security, humanitarianism, health, and environment—Limor Samimian-Darash and Paul Rabinow offer new tools with which to consider uncertainty, its management, and the differing modes of subjectivity appropriate to it. Taking up policies and experiences as objects of research and analysis, the essays here seek a rigorous inquiry into a sound conceptualization of uncertainty in order to better confront contemporary problems. Ultimately, they open the way for a participatory anthropology that asks crucial questions about our contemporary state. 

Index

Agaibi, Christine, 106, 107

Agamben, Giorgio, 90, 214n4

Agger, Inger, 115, 121

agnotology, 89, 214n5

Akgun, Ali, 30, 36, 209n1

All-in Expected Value (AIEV) calculator, 57–58, 211n11

Amoore, Louise, 72, 182, 183, 187, 213n12

anticipatory technology, 16, 70, 74–75, 84, 87, 182, 213n12

anti-viral drugs, 5–6

Appadurai, Arjun, 47, 63, 65, 211n13, 211n14

Aquinas, Thomas, 132, 135

Aradau, Claudia, 89, 183, 213n9

Arnoldi, Jakob, 47, 55, 64

attribution scenarios, 6, 140–141

avian influenza: birdwatchers’ and, 167, 178; engineered H5N1 strain, 124–125, 129, 141; H5N1 paper publication, 137–138; security versus science debate, 133–135

Bahl, Justin, 175, 176

baksbat (in Cambodia), 110–111, 119

Barrett, Rhodes, 29, 30, 35, 37, 41, 45

Beck, Ulrich, 2, 4, 103, 127, 187, 202

Bennett, Gaymon, 8, 123, 130, 136, 137, 140, 142, 143

Bentham, Jeremy, 20–22, 26, 210n4

Bernstein, Peter L., 13, 14, 26

Beveridge, William, 23, 24

Biderman, Albert, 97–98, 216n15

bioinformatics: excess information strategy, 175–176; global nature of, 173, 176–177; goal of, 173–175; mutations and, 175; processing of uncertainty, 173–174, 176, 177; time of disease emergence and, 175; wetlab and drylab work, 171–173

biosecurity: avian influenza and, 124–125; dual use research of concern, 129, 130, 139–140, 218n2; ethics and, 140, 143; Fink Report, 139; Fouchier’s research, 123–129; H5N1 paper publication, 129, 137–139, 141; history of malice and, 136–137, 140, 142; indeterminacy in, 142–143; Kawaoka’s research, 129, 134, 135, 137, 138; management of uncertainty in, 142; Nature, 129, 135, 172; preparedness and, 143...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction by Limor Samimian-Darash and Paul Rabinow
• Economics and Entrepreneurialism
• Security and Humanitarianism
• Environment and Health
• Afterword by Paul Rabinow and Limor Samimian-Darash
• Notes
• References
• List of Contributors
• Index