Abstract
The book Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa is part of a book series titled Anthropology, Change and Development, which highlights the value of ethnographic research for development studies. The book series criticizes development studies and interventions for overlooking critical elements of everyday life and how they mediate development processes. Core elements of everyday experiences are still not spoken about within development, but play a crucial role in development processes and outcomes. This argument does not exist in isolation; it resides within a wider debate on the lack of thoroughly understanding people’s situations and experiences in development and change processes. The overarching argument of the book series is that ethnographies can shed light on phenomena that have been overlooked. Anthropology should be engaged in development to understand important aspects of experiences in developing countries that fall outside the conventional preserve of development intervention. Furthermore, fostering the engagement between anthropology and development will also enrich social science thinking about change and development.
The book Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa edited by Cooper and Pratten focuses specifically on one phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in development studies: uncertainty. The book includes eight ethnographies by different authors that examine people’s everyday experiences around the positive and productive potential of uncertainty in six African countries (Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia and Mozambique). Ethnographic studies typically draw on narratives and individual biographies. This methodology results in very detailed accounts of everyday life, experiences and productivity of living, in the context of contemporary developing societies. As such, this methodology offers in depth insights in aspects of life claimed to be neglected in development studies.
In the book, uncertainty is examined as a structural feeling. That is, people’s experiences of a pervasive sense of vulnerability, anxiety, hope and possibility. Cooper and Pratten argue that examining the perception of uncertainty in Africa is particularly relevant because it has become a dominant trope; an ‘inevitable force’ (p. 1) in the subjective experience of life. By focusing on uncertainty, Cooper and Pratten suggest that one may better account for the ways in which people weave their lives. It helps to see how uncertainty critically shapes ways of knowing and being in contemporary African societies. Ethnographic accounts of radical, routinized uncertainty can shed light on Africa’s complexity and people’s relentless determination to negotiate conditions of turbulence to introduce order and predictability into their lives. The book shows how patterns of interrelatedness and prospects of the future are shaped by uncertain material and temporal contexts. The ethnographical cases in the book highlight how uncertainty produces new social landscapes and social horizons. The eight contributions in the book are grouped along two axes: the relational and the temporal. Accordingly, the book consists of two corresponding parts: (1) Social Contingencies and (2) Future Visions.
The relational aspects discuss the appreciation of the way in which uncertainty is fundamentally a product of social contingencies. Uncertainty is entwined with social relations; in some situations, social relations create uncertainty, while at other times social relations alleviate uncertainty. The stakes are high for people trying to maintain this equilibrium. This is exemplified by the gripping story about pregnancy and childbirth in Zanzibar by Nadine Beckmann (Chapter 3). With a maternal mortality rate at 377 per 100.000 births (UNICEF, 1998) pregnancy and childbirth is a dangerous endeavour. At the same time, successful reproduction is closely connected to reaching full social status. Beckmann’s ethnographies illustrate how women respond to birth-related crises. Strategies to control the risks include an active quest for care that can be trusted. For example, when Nassra, a pregnant lady, was diagnosed with cystitis and was prescribed antibiotics, she did not simply take them. Instead, she went to a private pharmacy, where she was told that the antibiotics were not safe during pregnancy. She then visited another doctor and pretended to buy the same antibiotics ‘for a friend’. The doctor prescribed her another type of antibiotics and was reassured this was one safe for pregnant women. These three visits were only the first of many more visits to different health-care providers. Stories of women like Nassra show some of the complexities when dealing with uncertainty in contemporary Africa societies. The state and the market—socially distant forces—are often perceived by women as unreliable, especially because professional health-care has been subject to recent privatization and new business and political interests. Women manoeuver these changes in different ways to establish trust.
Chapters 1, 2 and 4 present three more cases illustrating how uncertainty shapes everyday life. Whyte and Siu learn from Ugandans’ personal histories about living with the uncertainties of HIV and treatments (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 presents a study in a village in Western Kenya, where Cooper finds that trust and mistrust are also central in the workings of child sponsorship charities in Kenya. Adam Gilbertson’s study (Chapter 4) shows how uncertainty and tension underpin the everyday relations of husbands and wives seeking food security in Mombasa, Kenya.
The second part of the book focuses on uncertainty in relation to the past and future. It shows how uncertainty interrelates with orientations towards time and an unfolding future prospect. The book presents rich ethnographies of young people’s temporal experiences of material uncertainties in Mozambique (Chapter 6), of second-generation migrants in Addis Ababa (Chapter 7), and of Burundian refugees in Nairobi (Chapter 8). One particularly detailed account of apprehending uncertainty of the future is found in Chapter 5. Here, Henrik Vigh describes how people attempt to apprehend the opacity and unpredictability of the political environment in Guinea-Bissau. Politics is currently described as enigmatic and mysterious. Vigh’s informants in Bissau indicate that no one knows what will happen. But people try to sense when things start ‘smelling rotten’: they search for insights into how the political world unfolds. Vigh’s analysis links this to rumours and hints about the tenacity of politicians’ careers on the streets. Foresight, apprehension, or ‘having eyes’, is seen by informants as a key attribute, essential in tacking uncertainty.
In conclusion, the book presents detailed ethnographies of people’s experiences of coping with uncertainty in their everyday life. Each chapter provides novel, detailed and in-depth insights about everyday life across Africa. As such, the book is relevant for readers involved in development practice and development studies, as well as for practitioners and academics concerned with change processes more generally. However, the main argument of the book would have been stronger if a critical reflection had been included. What are the implications of the eight cases in the book for development processes? Several individual chapters make relevant observations (see, for example, in Beckmann’s contribution in Chapter 3), but the book misses an explicit link back to the key aim of the book.