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- Convenor:
-
Timothy Heffernan
(University of New South Wales)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Mahnaz Alimardanian
(PiiR Consulting/La Trobe University)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- Hancock Library, room 2.27
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 4 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
Uncertainty underscores daily life for many communities we work with today. In this panel, we invite papers that offer insights into the ways uncertainty not only affects once stable systems of moral, aesthetic & economic value but also lead to shifts in the ways anthropologists produce ethnography
Long Abstract:
Uncertainty has become a prevailing condition that underscores daily life for many of the communities anthropologists work with today. Indeed, financial instability, porous borders, geo-political tensions, health emergencies and environmental degradation have come to strongly characterise everyday life for communities around the world in the first two decades of the new millennium (Calhoun and Derluguian 2011). In this context, feelings of prolonged or impending crisis brought about by periods of uncertainty bear strongly upon our collaborators' reckoning of the past and present and, increasingly, the future.
In this panel, we invite papers focusing on the ways that uncertainty leads to shifts in once stable systems of moral, aesthetic and economic value (Graeber 2001). Whether resulting from the Brexit 'leave' vote and the election of Donald Trump or economic austerity measures, aging populations, deindustrialisation, ecological decline, conflict, (bio)security and disease - periods defined by uncertainty require us to pay close attention to the ways anthropologists do, write and theorise about ethnography. We therefore invite papers that consider the shifting values of participants in contexts marked by uncertainty, as well as the types of methods and methodologies that increase in value as anthropologists conduct research in such settings.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 3 December, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Through kidney failure, Yolŋu embody uncertain social geographies. Uncertainties about patients' trajectories are governed through discourses of medical risk and responsibility. Discourses shaping the distribution of dialysis services over space project moral value onto people, practices and places.
Paper long abstract:
Yolŋu embody uncertain social geographies through end stage kidney disease. Most Indigenous Australians with end stage kidney disease undertake life-sustaining dialysis treatment. In the Northern Territory, 80% of all people requiring dialysis become displaced from remote communities, relocating to urban centres to access treatment, the vast majority of whom are Indigenous.
In limited dialysis services in remote communities, patients receive highly technical treatment, hundreds of kilometres away from hospitals. Access to scarce services in remote communities amongst rapidly expanding numbers of patients and contention over the expansion of remote services have been mediated by contests over the risks and responsibilities of dialysis. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with Yolŋu renal patients, health professionals and policymakers, I consider how uncertainties about the trajectories of patients' bodies and lives are governed through discourses of medical risk and responsibility; and how counter-discourses articulated by Yolŋu register the existential threats that urban dialysis and displacement present. I describe how multiple discourses seeking to shape the distribution of dialysis services over space project the moral value of a good life and a good death onto people, practices and places.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the tensions of navigating the uncertainty of decolonization and its subsequent demands on Saharawi citizen-refugees and the future Saharawi state.
Paper long abstract:
From refugee camps in Algeria, Saharawis who have been displaced from Western Sahara since 1976 have continuously fought for the decolonization of the non-self-governing territory. This battle was first fought in the form of a war against Morocco. In 1991, the UN brokered a ceasefire promised to bring an end to the conflict through a referendum on self-determination. However, Saharawis still remained confined to the refugee camps in Algeria and the promise of the referendum continues to grow uncertain. Saharawi political leadership and youth activists have tried a range of tactics to demonstrate their readiness for sovereignty. Bound up within these protests are critiques of the Moroccan state that are juxtaposed with the promise of a "good" and democratic Saharawi state. In the wake of the uncertainty of the referendum the pressure has continued to mount as Saharawis seek to maintain the image of an ideal state in exile. This paper explores the tensions of navigating the uncertainty of decolonization and its subsequent demands on Saharawi citizen-refugees and the future Saharawi state. How does this uncertainty produce particular forms of silence in ethnographic work and how might anthropologists navigate those silences?
Paper short abstract:
My aim in this paper is to illustrate char (uncertain river island) dwellers' disaster vulnerability and everyday agency they practise for reducing socioeconomic vulnerabilities such as displacement and precarious livelihoods.
Paper long abstract:
My aim in this paper is to illustrate char (uncertain river island) dwellers' disaster vulnerability and everyday agency they practise for reducing socioeconomic vulnerabilities such as displacement and precarious livelihoods. Keeping in mind that the physical agents—the river and floods—weaken char dwellers' agency, this study has begun by examining the structures that have been historically responsible for creating the conditions under which people, specifically poor and landless peasants, live in temporary island villages. This study considers why the inhabitants of Onishchit Char continue to live in this hazardous place while knowing that their homestead and livelihoods are recurrently exposed to disasters. Their answers vary according to their socio-economic positions, of course, but also according to their accumulated previous experiences. Disasters produce both "uncertainty" and "hope" in their lives. Hazards in such areas are likely to lead to more adversities and disasters, which can be called certain uncertainty. At the same time, even the disasters can deposit fertile sediment for growing crops, and sometimes return previously lost lands. All of this can be called uncertain certainty—the hope that they might be able to grow crops, raise cattle and settle there again.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the practices of orientation and articulation are used by a bureaucracy to address extreme uncertainty, both from the external context and internal structure. Questions how we are to understand bureaucracy in places where the bureaucracy is uncertain about itself.
Paper long abstract:
In 2017, with high staff turnover, Ecuador's National Institute of the Popular Solidarity Economy (IEPS) was highly unstable. It was constructed around an ambiguous concept and was thus rife with uncertainty. The Popular Solidarity Economy is supposed to be an alternative approach to economics—thatof 21st Century Socialism in Latin America. However, with a myriad of terms used interchangeably, few can agree on what exactly it is. Thus, I examine the strategies and practices of a bureaucracy built on an unstable concept during a time of great uncertainty. How does the bureaucratic machine function while its parts are constantly being replaced?
In response, I examine the practices of orientation and articulation. The former is an attempt to align the perspectives of participants so they act in a coherent fashion. This, in theory, builds to what was described as 'articulation'—a way of working together, each on their individual task, but with the parts interacting smoothly, so as to create a seamless whole. This forces us to take seriously the worldview of particular functionaries and pay attention to their understanding of both their role in the government, and the role of their particular institution in the country. It is not that the bureaucratic machine does not shape the perceptions of those that make it up, but that in contexts of great uncertainty, this must be an explicit effort, albeit enacted through less direct means. I therefore ask what we can understand about bureaucracy in contexts where bureaucracy is uncertain about itself.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on my doctoral research, this paper explores how new infrastructure and infrastructural uncertainty correspond to the social and embodied experiences and the emergent values of everyday life in contemporary Nepal.
Paper long abstract:
Focusing on emergent sanitation and transportation infrastructure in contemporary Nepal, this paper explores what it means to build the toilet and have a motor road to the different actors, including the Nepali state, NGOs and rural people. The paper explores why and how people come to value or devalue certain ways of being in the context of the advent of new infrastructure and its uncertainty. It deals with the intersection between materiality and sociality mediated by infrastructure and explores uncertainties of infrastructure and social life as moments of temporality. I contextualize my research in post-earthquake Nepal and ask what happens when new infrastructure is built, existing infrastructure is damaged, or the ongoing building of an infrastructure project is suspended not just for days and weeks, but for many months. Further, I explore how material and infrastructural uncertainty corresponds to the social and embodied experiences of everyday life. In this paper, I demonstrate how attention to infrastructure and its temporality helps ethnographer understand the different layers of everyday life, including its contingency, vulnerability, precarity and uncertainty. As such, I ask the following questions: Why is focusing on infrastructure "valuable" for anthropologist? What are the different ways in which uncertainty—both infrastructural and social—becomes both a part of and disrupts the rhythm of everyday life? And, what is it like for an anthropologist to create an ethnographic value within the context of uncertainty, instability and precarity?