Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the future will hold. Uncertainties are everywhere. But how can we navigate them successfully?
As Helga Nowotny described in her book, such “uncertainties are written into the script of life.” Bruno Latour argued that “The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms”. But what if the world is dominated by uncertainty and complexity, not risk and stability. What if the modernist systems – of formalised planning, risk management, control systems and so on – just don’t work?
In my new book – Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World – recently published by Polity Books I argue that this is the case. But I also argue that not all is lost; that there are some people who have long grappled with uncertainty, and we should all learn from them.
This article is from Zimbabweland, a blog written by IDS Research Fellow Ian Scoones. Zimbabweland focuses on issues related to rural livelihoods and land reform in Zimbabwe.