Uncertainty & Luck

In this week’s episode, host Jennifer Cearns is joined by  Professor David Zeitlyn (University of Oxford), Dr William Matthews (London School of Economics), Wesam Hassan (University of Oxford) and Dr Anthony Pickles (University of East Anglia) to discuss their research looking at the strategies people employ to deal with and understand uncertainty and luck in various contexts around the world. What does it mean to 'be lucky', and what can we do to influence the luck (or misfortune) of those around us? Is uncertainty actually a good, or even a productive thing?

• David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. He has been conducting ethnographic research on divination (and other topics) with Mambila people in Cameroon for the past 35 years and has no plans to stop. His new book - Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers - was published in 2020 by Routledge, and his online teaching materials on divination can be viewed at http://era.anthropology.ac.uk/Divination.
• William Matthews is Fellow in the Anthropology of China at the LSE. He has conducted ethnographic research on divination in contemporary China, and is interested in how people’s understanding of the cosmos relates to reasoning and the politics of knowledge. 
• Wesam Hassan is a physician who turned to the study of anthropology. She is currently pursuing her DPhil research degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her research is focused on games of chance in Istanbul. Previously, she has researched online gambling in London.
• Anthony Pickles is Lecturer in Social Anthropology and International Development at the University of East Anglia. Anthony has studied gambling in parts of Papua New Guinea which adopted the practice as recently as the 1960s. His 2019 book - Money Games: Gambling in a Papua New Guinea Town - is available from Berghahn Books, and he wrote the entry on 'Gambling' in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Anthropology. 

To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed . This podcast is produced by Dr Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Dr Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.