Preface: Cultivating uncertainty

Berthomé, François; Bonhomme, Julien; Delaplace, Grégory

doi:10.14318/hau2.2.008

Cited by 31 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Other studies, including in Haiti, have found similar reports that only a diviner can confirm supernatural causation for misfortune (Beattie 1964;Brodwin 1996). Anthropologists have argued that uncertainty can be socially productive (see Berthomé, Bonhomme, and Delaplace 2012). Indeed, the intentional promotion of uncertainty and suppression of truth have been documented in other settings as strategies to avoid destructive behavior by the bereaved (Brison 1995).…”

Section: (Un)certaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sent Spirits, Meaning‐Making, and Agency in Haiti

Kaiser

Fils-Aimé²

2019

Ethos

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In Haiti, a “sent spirit” is an experience of misfortune, such as an illness or accident, which is interpreted as intentionally sent by someone supernaturally. Sent spirits are fundamentally social narratives, reflecting links among social inequality, structural violence, and solidarity. This article focuses on the ethnographic stories of two women who experienced the death of a daughter, with one attributing the death to her own inability to care for her daughter, and the other to a sent spirit. A key question is whether these different explanations of misfortune create different possibilities for recourse to action. I explore how, in the context of gangan makout (“shaman with a sack,” free Vodou services), a sent‐spirit attribution created a means of enacting agency following misfortune. However, as contemporary Vodou institutions have shifted to a gangan ason (“shaman with a rattle/bell,” fee‐for‐service) model, sent‐spirit attributions no longer constitute a feasible avenue for enacting agency. Instead, they leave individuals facing new manifestations of structural violence in the form of marketization of rituals for healing and justice that have become out of reach for the poor. However, sent‐spirit narratives continue to perform the work of culture by displacing blame from suffering individuals. [Vodou, agency, structural violence, supernatural, Haiti]

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Section: (Un)certaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sent Spirits, Meaning‐Making, and Agency in Haiti

Kaiser

Fils-Aimé²

2019

Ethos

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“…Pupavac (2008) similarly argues that traumatic representations of refugees emphasises their passiveness and portrays them as a subject of care and compassion rather than as a holder of rights and freedoms. Yet uncertainty can also be productive, as it allows people to negotiate their position and establish new relationships (Berthomé, Bonhomme, & Delaplace, 2012;Cooper & Pratten, 2015;Turner, 2012). When conflict becomes embedded in people's daily lives, when conflict becomes chronic, people are forced to make lives in the fragmented and instable realities they live in rather than to wait for normalisation and reconfiguration (Brun, 2015).…”

Section: Assumption 2: Uncertainty As Negative and Constrainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty in situations of forced displacement:Acritical interpretative synthesis of refugee literature

Schiltz

Vindevogel

Derluyn

et al. 2018

Population Space and Place

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References to uncertainty are omnipresent in literature on forced displacement. This article presents a critical interpretative synthesis of literature about uncertainty in refugee situations and explores common assumptions that underlie the narrative of uncertainty. The analysis of the literature shows that uncertainty appears to be inherent to refugee situations. Also, uncertainty is mainly seen as a constraining and abnormal experience. We critically question these assumptions and try to illustrate how they tend to obscure both the processes that render refugee situations uncertain and the varied ways in which uncertainty can be understood and is made sense of by refugees themselves. Finally, we suggest potential areas and directions for future research on uncertainty in refugee situations.

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“…I came to see the conference as a site used to “convert uncertainty into risk,” thus providing the PTA with an “opportunity to collaborate, experiment, and aspire in the public domain” (Appadurai 2013, 129). Moreover, the conference was an occasion demonstrating “the generative potential of uncertainty” (Berthomé, Bonhomme, and Delaplace 2012, 132) that is inherent to social relations and, in this case, politico‐epistemic relations. At the same time, the conference was an event showcasing how uncertainty was not only produced but also confined through specific objectives and narratives of the future.…”

Section: Making Friendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Directing the Future of Gene Therapy in Cyprus: Breakthroughs, Subjunctivities, and the Pragmatics of Narrative

Kyriakides

2018

Cult. Anthropol.

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Gene therapy is a technology that involves the introduction of therapeutic genes into humans for the replacement of mutations causing disorders. This article stems from research conducted with a thalassemia patients’ association in Cyprus and explores how political and epistemic uncertainty surrounding the promise of breakthrough in gene therapy is harnessed to particular objectives and narratives for the future. Anthropologists who survey the future largely address the manner in which people orient themselves in conditions of uncertainty through concepts of hope, waiting, patience, and endurance. Less attention has been paid to how people construct and deploy narratives and images of the future in a way that can bridge present immediacy and abstract futurity—a process I call directing the future. The concept I use to elucidate the connections between breakthrough and narrative is that of subjunctivity. In juxtaposing different positionalities that thalassemia patients in Cyprus adopt with regard to the promise of gene therapy, I show that subjunctivity is not only the ability to be receptive to transformation and the possibility of a world otherwise. The intersubjective and political processes out of which subjunctivity and narrative emerge are also the processes by which an otherwise undefined future becomes ordered, and certain images of the future attain more gravity and reality than others.

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Preface: Cultivating uncertainty

Cited by 31 publications

References 7 publications

Sent Spirits, Meaning‐Making, and Agency in Haiti

Sent Spirits, Meaning‐Making, and Agency in Haiti

Uncertainty in situations of forced displacement:Acritical interpretative synthesis of refugee literature

Directing the Future of Gene Therapy in Cyprus: Breakthroughs, Subjunctivities, and the Pragmatics of Narrative

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