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Indeterminacy

Indeterminacy

Catherine Alexander | Andrew Sanchez

(2018)

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Abstract

What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though they were valueless waste. This volume uses the concept of indeterminacy to explore how conditions of exclusion and abandonment may give rise to new values, as well as to states of despair and alienation. Drawing upon ethnographic research about a wide variety of contexts, the chapters here explore how indeterminacy is created and experienced in relationship to projects of classification and progress.


Catherine Alexander is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University. Before her current appointment, she worked at Goldsmiths for ten years. She has published widely on wastes and recycling – including Economies of Recycling, co-edited with Joshua Reno (Zed Books, 2012) – as well as economic and urban anthropology.


“An excellent topic. What I liked in particular was the sense of cohesion… The authors have addressed situations that speak to each other.” • Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University


Andrew Sanchez is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on economy and labor, and is the author of Criminal Capital: Violence, Corruption and Class in Industrial India (Routledge, 2015).

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Indeterminacy iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
List of Figures vi
Introduction. The Values of Indeterminacy 1
Chapter 1. Kept in Suspense 31
Chapter 2. Experiments in Living 50
Chapter 3. The Production of Indeterminacy 68
Chapter 4. Human Waste in the Land of Abundance 89
Chapter 5. Waste People/Value Producers 112
Chapter 6. Indeterminate Classifications 134
Chapter 7. The Politics of Indeterminacy 161
Epilogue. Indeterminancy 181
Index 195