Navigating Uncertainty:
Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World
by Ian Scoones
available to order as a hardback/paperback/ebook
Published Open Access in August 2024
by Polity Books
Launch events
The author of Navigating Uncertainty, Ian Scoones, will give a series of talks in late 2024 to launch the book. This list will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
3 October at 16:00-18:00
Institute of Development Studies
Library Road, Brighton, UK
For more information visit the IDS website
▶ Watch the video recording of this event
7 October at 11:30-12:30
SENSE Research School in collaboration with Amsterdam Sustainability Institute
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Part of the SENSE Symposium
Contact caterina.marinetti@vu.nl
Registration for the symposium (free of charge) is required
8 October at 18:15-19:45
Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung
Plenarsaal, Methoden 1, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Contact aneubert@uni-bielefeld.de
9 October at 15:00-16:30
Kassel Institute for Sustainability
Mosenthalstraße 8, 34117 Kassel, Germany
Contact Maximilian.Freundl@uni-kassel.de
10 October at 17:45-19:15
Room 2.51, Global South Studies Center
University of Cologne, Germany
Contact noah.kahindi@uni-koeln.de
11 October at 12:30-14:00
German Institute of Development and Sustainability
Tulpenfeld 6, 53113, Bonn, Germany
Contact Daniele.Malerba@idos-research.de
14 October at 15:00-16:00
Department of Geography, University of Zürich (room H-79)
Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland
Contact asebe.debelo@geo.uzh.ch
More details: UZH website
15 October at 16:15-17:45
Institut für Sozialanthropologie, University of Bern
Seminarraum S221, Lerchenweg 36, Bern, Switzerland
Contact kiri.santer@unibe.ch
16 October at 18:00-19:30
Centre for International Environmental Studies
2, Chemin Eugène-Rigot, CP 76, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland
Event details & registration
Contact nina.kiderlin@graduateinstitute.ch
18 October at 14.00
Sorbonne University
12 Pl. du Panthéon, 75005 Paris, France
Contact jacobo.grajales@univ-paris1.fr
(registration is required in advance)
22 October at 18.00
Kairos, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London
Registration required (paid event)
Video
Watch the talk and Q&A from the book launch at the Institute of Development Studies on 3 October 2024.
More about the book
Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the future will hold. For many contemporary challenges, navigating uncertainty – where we cannot predict what may happen – is essential and, as the book explores, this is much more than just managing risk. But how is this done, and what can we learn from different contexts about responding to and living with uncertainty? Indeed, what might it mean to live from uncertainty?
Drawing on experiences from across the world, the chapters in this book explore finance and banking, technology regulation, critical infrastructures, pandemics, natural disasters and climate change. Each chapter contrasts an approach centred on risk and control, where we assume we know about and can manage the future, with one that is more flexible, responding to uncertainty.
The book argues that we need to adjust our modernist, controlling view and to develop new approaches, including some reclaimed and adapted from previous times or different cultures. This requires a radical rethinking of policies, institutions and practices for successfully navigating uncertainties in an increasingly turbulent world.
Navigating Uncertainty is available to order from Polity Books as a hardback, paperback or ebook, and will be published Open Access in August 2024.
Reviews
“Navigating uncertainty is indeed much more than just managing risk. This book lays out a compelling argument on how institutions can transform uncertainty from a threat into new opportunities.”
Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme
“Drawing on 40 years of experience with failures of prediction, Scoones delivers a powerful critique of modernity’s obsession with quantification and control. Uncertainty is inevitable, he argues, but robust social networks can help guard us against risks that we could not have foretold.”
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University
Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience - PASTRES 