Introduction - Uncertainty and survivance: what remains after the crisis?

Journal article

Life is not constant, and there are moments of crisis and change when a person's sense of self can be shaken, their moral judgment clouded, and their emotions thrown into disarray. Whether it is the passing of a cherished individual, the loss of physical capabilities, a crisis of faith or financial setback, displacement from one's home or homeland, these losses often lead to a similar process of disorientation and shock (Jackson 2021). We often confront uncertainty in life events and make choices that prey on our emotions and affect our decision making processes. Uncertainty reminds us, time and again, of the pervasive interconnectedness of life events, ecologies, and cosmologies of knowledge and action. However, is uncertainty a solid consistent concept, one that is defined, felt, and acted upon in the same manner everywhere? Anthropologist Lisa Stevenson says the kinds of uncertainty that we examine in social research makes a difference (2014: 175). For example, Stevenson classified the uncertainty of her research participants from the Inuit community in Canada into epistemological and ontological types. Uncertainty at the epistemological level, Stevenson writes, is related to ‘how and whether we can know things about the future' (2014: 175). On the ontological level, it is ‘having to do with the inherent undecidability about what the world is or will be' (Stevenson 2014: 175).

Authors: Hassan, W

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 4-14
• Publication date: 2023-12-19
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-4j1egmyj9
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO