I recently discussed my book, Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World, now a year old, with the New Books Network podcast. The host was Morteza Hajizadeh who asked a set of great questions over an extended discussion.
We discussed many of the chapters, including the how bankers can learn from livestock traders in Africa; how lessons from local responses to the COVID-19 pandemic can inform us about preparing for disasters; how risk models can potentially undermine how we respond to uncertain conditions; how technology regulation needs to take into account how people understand innovations; how reliability professionals and their networks are important in responding to crises and disasters; and how to connect lived experiences of living with uncertainty with climate policies.
It’s always interesting having a discussion on the book with someone from a completely different field. Morteza is interested in critical theory and cultural studies having completed his PhD in English Literature, working on environmental history and British gothic novels. He usefully identified some of the key big themes that cut across the book. As well as the specific themes, we therefore also dwelt on the wider challenges of rethinking ideas of modernity and progress and particularly the importance of moving from a risk to an uncertainty paradigm, and so from a focus on control to one of care.
We concluded with a discussion on ways of rethinking public policy. Morteza asked, how can embracing uncertainty become a source of creativity and transformation in public policy? To paraphrase my response, I argued that:
By avoiding the political, institutional, professional drives to close down to risk, spaces can be opened up where uncertainties can be addressed. Uncertainty requires creative real-time responses, as we have seen with high reliability professionals. Uncertainties require deliberation and debate amongst diverse knowledges in order to address unknown futures. Uncertainties can open spaces for a more democratic, inclusive approach that rather than offering a top-down technocratic solutions offers the opportunity for more transformation change…. There are dangers of course. Uncertainties can incapacitate, create anxiety and demotivate. Those who are powerful – along with the populist campaigns of misinformation – can capture such spaces where uncertainties are being deliberated upon. But open debate, wide involvement and a commitment to democratic knowledge building can resist such tendencies, with uncertainty being a liberatory force. This is what I mean by a politics of uncertainty, centred on care, not control.
Do listen to the podcast and buy or download the book (it’s open access), and please let me know what you think!
Book: Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World
This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland