Although uncertainty is intertwined with all human activity, plans, and aspirations, it is experienced differently: at times it is obsessed over and at times it is ignored. This ethnography shows how Rashaida in north-eastern Sudan deal with unknowns from day-to-day unpredictability to life-threatening dangers. It argues that the amplification of uncertainty in some cases and its extenuation in others can be better understood by focusing on forms that can either hold the world together or invite doubt. Uncertainty, then, need not be seen solely as a debilitating problem, but also as an opportunity to create other futures.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on Transliteration
List of Abbreviations and Glossary
Map
Introduction: Taming Unknowns in Sudan
Chapter 1. Towards an Anthropology of Uncertainty
Chapter 2. Contesting Forms: Translating Poverty and Uncertainty
Chapter 3. Insisting on Forms: Bracketing Uncertainties in Gold Mining
Chapter 4. Standardizing Forms: Uncertain Food Supplies
Chapter 5. Establishing Urgent Forms: Uncertainties of Ill Health
Conclusion: Uncertainty and Forms: Asking New Questions
References
Index
About the author
Sandra Calkins is assistant professor for anthropology at the Free University of Berlin and a member of the Law, Organization, Science, and Technology group at the University of Halle. She has conducted research in Sudan and Uganda and published on questions of existential uncertainty, reflexivity, health and nutrition. In 2016, she won the young scholar award of the African Studies Association in Germany (VAD) African Studies Association in Germany (VAD).
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