Ethnography in Uncertain Times

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ethnographic fieldwork in contexts of war and massive political change has revealed the ways violence produces acute feelings of uncertainty in the lives of our interlocutors. Other research has interrogated modes of techno-scientific expertise deployed to manage uncertain futures. This article, by contrast, argues that violence itself may serve as a technique of uncertainty management, as states, citizens, and spouses alike enact ‘mano dura’ or iron fist crackdowns on disruptive and disobedient bodies – and aspirations. Approaching violence as a technique of uncertainty management reveals the broader political-economic and (geo)political dimensions of interpersonal violence, with implications for analysing violent efforts to enforce social and political order on multiple scales. Further, it illuminates the centrality of intimacy to forms of violence that are seemingly divorced from the ‘intimate’ realm. By attending to a broader conceptualization of ‘mano dura’ as a technique of uncertainty management, this article links ethnographic fieldwork on violence to the methodological, ethical, and epistemological issues raised by ethnographic fieldwork amid violence. Across these intertwined stories, of fieldwork, politics, and the personal, I examine efforts to violently manage uncertain futures with the closed fist that promises – even if it cannot deliver – a defined future, relieved of disorder.