Paper short abstract:

Inspired by Levinas’s idea of 'the irreducibility of the Other,' the paper proposes a methodological attitude that acknowledges the limitations of any anthropological investigation to know and the responsibility of the ethnographer to carefully attend the call of an interlocutor’s presence.

Paper long abstract:

In a world in which contingency and indeterminacy are perceived as a prevailing condition of existence, what are the stakes of considering uncertainty an integral part of the anthropological concern? How does uncertainty call for a reconfiguration of the ethnographic endeavour? International migrants in the city of São Paulo and actors involved in the implementation of a cultural heritage policy in Brazil consider instability to be part and parcel of their trade and daily struggles.

In acknowledging uncertainty as a pervading state that requests ethnographic attention beyond notions of regularity and generalisation, the paper finds in the debate of a cosmopolitan anthropology an opportunity to show how considering what is singular and unique can be a valid approach in this regard. Inspired by Levinas’s idea of 'the irreducibility of the Other,' it proposes a methodological attitude that acknowledges the limitations of any anthropological investigation to know and the responsibility of the ethnographer to attend to an interlocutor’s presence by understanding the ethnographic encounter through ethics. In this, the paper considers such encounter rather a form of attendance to the presence of others in the world than a form of knowledge, discussing the importance of modesty as an ethnographic attitude.