As the Navigating Uncertainty book shows, the politics of risk are centred on calculative, technocratic control, where we assume we can predict, model and manage. A politics of uncertainty by contrast is all about socially embedded, networked learning, flexibility, adaptation, innovation; often centred on a politics of care and conviviality.
A shift from a risk to an uncertainty paradigm, one that requires moving from a focus on control to one of care has many implications for policy and practice. The following table offers a summary, drawn from across the chapters of the book.
All this of course has similarities to earlier arguments – for example from Ulrich Beck, Niklas Luhman and others who in the 1980s argued for a new politics in the face of systemic risks arising from industrial societies – although termed risk, they were in our terms in fact talking of uncertainties and ignorance.
Since then, a deeper understanding of what an uncertainty paradigm entails has emerged – from a range of disciplines and across different experiences, as I lay out in the book.
In contrast to the sometimes glib use of terms like ‘polycrisis’ – a discourse that has become popular but quickly appropriated – this wider body of work focuses more centrally on the politics of knowledge emerging from intersecting uncertainties. Following the American pragmatist philosophers such as Richard Rorty or Thomas Quine, this has fostered a reimagining of the narrow vision of modernity based on fixity, stability, optimality and control.
Why is it necessary now to argue for this shift? Today, we are trapped in the risk paradigm, with the dominant, narrow vision of modernity constructed through paradigm of control. And it doesn’t work. The challenge is to break free, to decolonise and rethink and reimagine. The good news is that there are lots of contemporary experiences to draw from – as discussed across the book.
And we can seek out inspiration from other periods and other cultures too. By ‘letting go of the bannister’ in Hannah Arendt’s terms, we can release ourselves from the confines of current thinking and practice and embrace other ways of being and thinking that can help us out of the disciplining constraints of the modernist trap of the dominant risk paradigm.
Where can we seek inspiration?
First, we must learn from, listen to and engage with those who live with uncertainty. Yes pastoralists (and delta dwellers, fishers, swidden cultivators and so on), but also front-line health workers, control room engineers, disaster relief agency personnel and many, many more, whose voices appear across the chapters of the book.
Second, even within our own disciplines – whether in physical and natural science, economics and statistics and across the social sciences and humanities – and of course sociology – much thinking of course already goes beyond a narrow Newtonian, Cartesian view. Even economics, which is so influential in framing policy. The neoclassical view, where blackboard proofs and what Friedman called a positive economics, is challenged by other strands and older ideas. The ideas of Frank Knight, Friedrich von Hayek, John Maynard Keyes, Alfred Shackle and of course Albert Hirschman (coming from very different standpoints of course) make the case for taking uncertain knowledge seriously.
Third, how we understand change is influenced philosophically by how we understand complex systems. The linear, stagiest, evolutionary view that dominates (think Walt Rostow and linear development) has not always been so. Nineteenth century thinking from the likes of Auguste Comte highlights, cyclicity, regeneration and divergent paths. This is of course reflected in the literature of the 18th and 19th century where risk and uncertainty are central, with novels – such as from Mary Shelley, Henry James, James Conrad and Gustave Flaubert – all exploring the themes of hazard, fortune, speculation and risk through a relational exploration an uncertain, crisis-ridden world.
And fourth, beyond the Western intellectual/philosophical canon, we see how diverse religious and cultural views emphasise impermanence, renewal and plurality; all encompassing uncertainty. Whether Buddhism, strands of Hinduism, some Christian teachings and diverse African religions, all reflect on uncertainties and ways to navigate them.
A hopeful vision
So, the book argues, it’s possible to release ourselves from strictures of narrow vision. As the world grapples with unprecedented turbulence and diverse uncertainties, it’s important to seek out alternative inspirations and actively resurface and reclaim these ideas. As Rebecca Solnit argues in a recent New Statesman essay, rather than following the ‘cheerleaders of despair’, a more hopeful vision can be offered:
“What motivates us to act is a sense of possibility within uncertainty – that the outcome is not yet fully determined and our actions may matter in shaping it. …. If we can recognise that we don’t know what will happen, that the future does not yet exist but is being made in the present, then we can be moved to participate in making that future….”
This is the radical rethinking that’s required to navigate uncertainty, and what I make the case for in the book.
This series of blogs gives a taste of the different chapters, but you will have to read the book to get the full picture, as well as all the case study details, the references and footnotes! You can buy the book (or download it for free) through this link: Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World (politybooks.com).If you missed the recent launches, you can listen to the recording from the IDS event here: Navigating uncertainty: Radical rethinking for a turbulent World – Institute of Development Studies (ids.ac.uk)).
