Uncertainty

The world is uncertain. We don’t know what the future will hold. Climate change, financial volatility, political turmoil all impinge on agrarian settings, often in combination. Yet the implications of uncertain knowledges are frequently ignored. Methods for political economy analysis must always take account of the contingent, unpredictable, conjunctural dynamics that generate uncertain knowledge within fast-changing capitalist systems. Uncertainties are felt differently by different people resulting in a contested knowledge politics, as illustrated in the pastoral areas of northern Kenya and in tobacco contract farming in Zimbabwe. Embracing uncertainty and rejecting deterministic explanations will therefore enrich critical agrarian studies.