Anthropology of stochastic phenomenon and uncertainty: Description of a world resistant to the “risk society”

Keywords

stochastic phenomenon,uncertainty,“risk society”

Objectives

How people face an uncertain future is an important area of interest in anthropology, which deals with various practices in everyday life in traditional society that cannot be explained by modern or scientific knowledge. Discussion about the “risk society,” which has become increasingly important in sociology, is also having a major effect on anthropology, going beyond the borders of the discipline. Risk is difficult to calculate, but anthropology has recently differentiated “risk” as the process of quantitatively grasping and managing stochastic phenomenon from “uncertainty.” Also, anthropology is newly covering the movement in which various social, economic and political systems are trying to control the realm of “uncertainty.”
　
However, the above-mentioned dichotomic understanding cannot grasp the two-sidedness of stochastic phenomenon. Stochastic phenomenon can be calculated and controlled if collected or analyzed statistically, but they cannot be fundamentally controlled if they occur only once. This research pays attention to both these sides in order to study the significant difference between the design of various systems dependent on the technology of risk management and how such design treats people as well as the difference between individuals’ recognition and practice. Our goal is to describe aspects of “risk society” not addressed by conventional theories by broadening our viewpoints on the anthropological study of “uncertainty.”

Research Results

Through research project members’ reports of cases around the world, we demonstrated empirically and persuasively that different people have different ways of confronting uncertainty, which cannot always be fully grasped by a uniform diagnosis of the times that says society has become a “risk society.” The most important outcome of the project was the accumulation of ethnographic portrayals of uncertainty and risk based on new frameworks outside the conventional problem-solution framework.
Today there is a vast amount of research and debate on uncertainty (and risk as a type of uncertainty) in many fields of research, but there is confusion about what “uncertainty” is in the first place, with definitions and classifications differing by field (and even between people in the same field). Considering this, we reexamined the concept of uncertainty from an anthropological research approach of depicting what uncertainty is to different people on a micro-level. This led us to propose an original definition—the theoretical results of the project. (However, this definition is but one suggestion, and more than a brand new definition, it is a reconfirmation of what has been neglected to be defined in conventional research as it has been viewed as self-evident.)
The diagnosis of the times presented by “risk society” theory, which has drawn considerable attention since around 1990, is a valid diagnosis of macro-level trends, but when looking at everyday practices of people around the world, it cannot be said that every part of the world has uniformly turned into a “risk society.” Therefore, examining in detail the reality of how people resist the trend toward becoming a “risk society” on a micro-level will expand our understanding of “risk society” and provide a more accurate understanding that is based on the diverse reality. For example, medical anthropology has presented an image of medical treatment which differs from that of biomedicine by looking at patients’ experiences with illness. Another example is economic anthropology. This field has shown a method of understanding economic behavior that differs from conventional economics, in which it grasps the economic practices of people that cannot be explained from the premise of the “rational homo economicus” model by looking at economic phenomena from a micro and holistic perspective. In the same way, after three years of discussion at the National Museum of Ethnology, we propose to the academic world of cultural anthropology an “anthropology of uncertainty,” that will show a new expression of how humans relate to uncertainty from a unique angle in order to critically reexamine current “risk society” theory.