Cultivating Uncertainty

International audienceIntroduction to the themed section of HAU. Journal of Ethnographic Theory on "Cultivating Uncertainty: Ethnographies of opaque sociality" (vol.2, n°2). This themed section explores situations of interactional uncertainty, namely contexts in which the grounds of an interaction cannot be taken for granted. How to be sure, for instance, that a barbed comment is only intended to tease and is not really meant to be offensive? In the same vein, how are we to deal with "white lies" and other strategic dissimulations in flirtatious relationships? And how can we ever be sure that a benign handshake does not in fact hide malevolent intentions? These are some of the issues the contributors address in this volume