Open AccessOn the Side of Predictable
Author(s) -
Maja Petrović-Šteger,
Jessica R Greenberg,
Sanja Potkonjak,
Tea Škokić,
Ivan Rajković,
Felix Ringel
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
etnološka tribina
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.175
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 1848-9540
pISSN - 0351-1944
DOI - 10.15378/1848-9540.2020.43.01
Subject(s) - vision , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , epistemology , sociology , value (mathematics) , predictability , field (mathematics) , order (exchange) , ethnography , citizen journalism , computer science , anthropology , philosophy , physics , mathematics , finance , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , machine learning , world wide web , pure mathematics , economics
In order to be able to contextualize and understand social worlds, anthropologists pay close attention. We observe how individuals and communities relate to each other and to their ideas. We study the intimate and subjective, as well as the large-scale cosmologies by which people make themselves and the world. Our participatory methods and reflective analysis document the complex, intricate, patterned, and also random aspects of people’s reasoning and actions. These activities, on anthropology’s part, supposedly offer not only critical descriptions of the present (on its historical trajectories), but possible intimations of a society’s future. Anthropological analysis, in other words, not only describes but also anticipates. This position paper focuses on the notions of anticipation, predictability, and possibility in anthropology. It asks what methodological and theoretical assumptions are built into our ways of making predictions about our field sites. It invites the reader to consider the effects certain anticipatory practices have for the people and phenomena we study as well as for the discipline. Centrally, the paper proposes different ways of attending to visions that anticipate the future. By reflecting on my ethnographic and analytical journeys in Serbia, I attempt to explain why I currently make so much of questions of predictability and possibility in both the field and the discipline. My desire is to open up a discussion on the value of cultivating attention to what seems to emerge on the side of predictable.