The 2016 Antipode RGS-IBG Lecture

Provisioning the Provisional: Ensemble Work in Yangon

AbdouMaliq Simone

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Göttingen, Germany

How do lives reach each other, what do they want or need from all the different instantiations of living? How much do particular enactments of living really need to engage all those others taking place in the larger surrounds; how much do they simply need to know that specific ways of doing things are there, somewhere, without necessarily needing to interact with them? When interaction is necessary, how much has to be conceded and recalibrated? In cities where thousands upon thousands of things are going on simultaneously at any given time, how do particular lives know what it is exactly that is relevant to them, that poses serious implications for who they think they are or what they want to be? How far…