Anthropology of Ambiguity
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anthropology
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existential
humanistic
liminality
lived experience
non-ontology
not-knowing
Simone de Beauvoir
temporality
uncertainty
Product details
- ISBN 9781526195777
- Weight: 376g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This volume puts ambiguity and its generative power at the centre of analytical attention. Rather than being cast negatively as a source of confusion, bewilderment or as a dangerous portent, ambiguity is held as the source of the dynamic between knowledge and experience and of certainty amid uncertainty. It positions human life between the realms of mystery and mastery where ambiguity is understood as the experience and expression of life and part of navigating the human condition. In turn, the tension between the tradition in anthropology of examining cultural certitudes through ethnographic description and efforts to challenge dominant expressions of incertitude are explored. Each chapter presents ethnographic accounts of how people engage individually and collectively with the self, the other, human-made institutions and the more-than-human to navigate ambiguity in a world affected by viral contagion, climate change, economic instability, labour precarity and (geo)political tension.
Mahnaz Alimardanian is Research Fellow at The Mabo Centre, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne, and the founder and lead researcher at PiiR Consulting
Timothy Heffernan is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
