“Uncertainty can be scary, but can it also be a source of hope or opportunity?” The pastoralists of the world may have much to teach us
From Uncertain Worlds
A fascinating exercise in resilience thinking meeting comics books… The website Pastres - Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience is trying to draw lessons from rural pastoral communities, for a modern world moving into radically uncertain times.
They’ve brought out a book of seven cartoon-strip stories, titled Uncertain Worlds, two of which we reproduce below. The first profiling the pastoralists directly, the second dwelling on what they could bring to the financial crisis of 2007. Both, delightfully, have full academic papers attached.
Here’s the book blurb:
If you can’t control or predict the future, how can you prepare for it? Uncertainty can be scary, but can it also be a source of hope or opportunity?
Our series of seven illustrated stories draw on lessons from pastoralists – experts at living with uncertainty and making the most of it. Their ways of life can also help us think about how to live in an uncertain world.
Click here for PDF version, or click on image to expand
Lessons from pastoralists: from control to care
In the first comic of the series, we explore contrasting responses to uncertainty based on control or care through the lived experiences of pastoralists from around the world.
Dominant approaches in the policy world are often about exerting control by plans, regulations and the ordering of the world through development interventions, imposed through the power of the state, science, political and business elites and development agencies.
An alternative is to take a more open, caring approach, navigating through and productively making use of variability and volatility. Pastoralists do this in a number of ways: they include mobility, the ways they herd, breed and train animals, using land strategically, and working within networks and moral economies.
Scoones, I. (2023) Confronting Uncertainties in Pastoral Areas: Transforming Development from Control to Care, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 1-19, doi:10.3167/saas.2023.04132303 [PDF download]
Click here for PDF version or click on image to expand
Economics, banking and finance
The second comic in our ‘Uncertain Worlds’ series explores the lessons from the financial crash of 2007-8.
In the run-up to the crash, the financial sector had become too reliant on complex algorithms and models. Some economic models had assumed such a crisis was impossible. Trades were being made in nanoseconds, and volatility spread very fast. Although the bankers thought they understood risks, it was clear that they had not been prepared for uncertainty and ‘unknown unknowns’.
Reflecting on these events, and on the practices of those who confront uncertainty every day – including pastoralists – can point to important lessons for the financial sector. They suggest the need to treat opaque and complex risk-based models and algorithms with caution, and acknowledge the possibility of surprise, allowing space for deliberation and better communication.
DeMartino, G., Grabel, I. and Scoones I. (forthcoming, under review) Economics for an uncertain world (pre-print version, August 2023) [Download PDF]