The Anthropology of Ambiguity

Ambiguity has been engaged historically by disciplines concerned with knowledge and its production. From the classical fields of mathematics, philosophy and logic to the natural, behavioural and social sciences, each approached it as something to be controlled, resolved or utilised. If anthropology's goal is to study what it means to be human, a focus on ambiguity holds tremendous promise for continuing to expand upon this mission. Positioning ambiguity as part and parcel of the experience and expression of life, this book is an exploration of sitting and being with ambiguity in all its forms and modes of expression. It provides an atlas of ambiguity across 13 ethnographic contexts to consider what is in stock for ordinary citizens as they navigate life and draw individual and collective meaning. Through examinations of human crisis, natural hazard, political and economic tension, public health, policymaking, activism and of personhood, ambiguity is explored as a source of productive tension. The volume demonstrates ambiguity's power as a constituent force of openness, timelessness and plasticity. Theoretically, the volume's chapters are influenced by, and yet extend upon, existentialism and humanism within sociocultural anthropology, especially the work of The Manchester School, and the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir. In turn, ambiguity is held to be a source of dynamism across the usual divides of knowledge and experience, certainty and uncertainty, and ontology and non-ontology, with the noise of ambiguity 'feedback'valuable for social analysis and for doing and writing anthropology.