Navigating Uncertainty
Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World
1st Edition
Published on 9. August 2024
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-5095-6007-3 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"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
"Scoones [...] offers a fresh perspective on the subject, providing real-life examples of how different cultures navigate uncertainty."
Samuele Lo Piano, Minerva
"This important book [...] explains key lessons learned, especially with respect to policy and decision-making processes, as well as political and economic contexts. [...] This is a key briefing, especially for policy makers."
Paradigm Explorer, Magazine of the Scientific & Medical Network
"Scoones [...] offers a fresh perspective on the subject, providing real-life examples of how different cultures navigate uncertainty." Samuele Lo Piano, Minerva"Scoones [...] offers a fresh perspective on the subject, providing real-life examples of how different cultures navigate uncertainty." Samuele Lo Piano, Minerva
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 206 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
408 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5095-6007-3 (9781509560073)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2024
1st Edition
Polity Press
€22.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
07/2024
1st Edition
Wiley
€16.99
Available for download
E-Book
07/2024
1st Edition
Wiley
€16.99
Available for download
Person
Ian Scoones is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
Content
Chapter 1. Navigating Uncertainty
Chapter 2. Finance: Real Markets as Complex Systems
Chapter 3. Technology: What is Safe for Whom?
Chapter 4. Critical Infrastructures: How to Keep the Lights On and the Animals Alive
Chapter 5. Pandemics: Building Responses from Below
Chapter 6. Disasters: Why Prediction and Planning are Not Enough
Chapter 7. Climate Change: Multiple Knowledges, Diverse Actions
Chapter 8. Looking Forward: From Fear to Hope, from Control to Care
Chapter 2. Finance: Real Markets as Complex Systems
Chapter 3. Technology: What is Safe for Whom?
Chapter 4. Critical Infrastructures: How to Keep the Lights On and the Animals Alive
Chapter 5. Pandemics: Building Responses from Below
Chapter 6. Disasters: Why Prediction and Planning are Not Enough
Chapter 7. Climate Change: Multiple Knowledges, Diverse Actions
Chapter 8. Looking Forward: From Fear to Hope, from Control to Care