Towards an Anthropology of Doubt

April 4, 2013

April 4, 2013

Dr. Mathis Pelkmans, London School of Economics, UK

Religious and secular convictions have powerful effects, but their foundations are often surprisingly fragile. New converts often come across as stringent believers precisely because they need to dispel their own lingering doubts, while revolutionary movements survive only through the denial of ambiguity. In this talk, which draws on the recent publication of Mathis Pelkmans Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies, he argued that a focus on uncertainty and doubt is indispensable for grasping the role of ideas in social action. By studying everyday doubt, he aimed to unravel the mechanisms by which convictions gain and lose their force, and to analyse the dynamics that propel loosely held ideas into committed action. Drawing on a range of cases from Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and the UK, he analyses the ways in which doubt is overcome and, conversely, how belief systems collapse. In doing so, he intends to provide insight into the cycles of faith, hope, conviction and disillusion that are intrinsic to the human condition.

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