When the future decides - Uncertainty and intentional action in contemporary Cameroon
When the future decides - Uncertainty and intentional action in contemporary Cameroon
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DOI：
10.1086/428799
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发表时间：
2005-06-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Johnson-Hanks, J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Johnson-Hanks, J
喀麦隆的年轻贝蒂女性经常声称，因为她们不确定未来会发生什么，所以无法制定任何计划。但他们确实有计划、有策略，而且行动确实相当有效。本文的目的是解释他们是如何做到这一点的，特别是在婚姻和生育方面，从而有助于对意向性、不确定性和社会行为的一般理解。行动通常被理论化为先前意图的实现。但不确定性，无论是事件的概率不确定性还是主体对不确定性的体验，都有可能消除意图与其实现之间的联系。本文认为，至少在当代非洲存在不确定性的情况下，有效的社会行动不是基于实现先前意图，而是基于明智的机会主义：行动者抓住有希望的机会。换句话说，女性对韦伯式理性行动的否定并不缺乏；通过从事异类活动而没有明确的轨迹，他们能够度过难关。本文基于喀麦隆的民族志和人口数据以及对塞尔、舒茨和休谟著作的理论分析，提出了这一论点。
Young Beti women in Cameroon regularly assert that because they are uncertain about what the future will bring, they cannot make any plans. But they do plan, strategize, and indeed act quite effectively. The purpose of this paper is to explain how they do so, specifically in reference to marriage and reproduction, and thereby to contribute to a general understanding of intentionality, uncertainty, and social action. Action has been commonly theorized as the fulfillment of a prior intention. But uncertainties, both the probabilistic uncertainty of events and the subject's experience of uncertainty, threaten to dissolve the link between intention and its fulfillment. This paper argues that, at least under the conditions of uncertainty applicable in contemporary Africa, effective social action is based not on the fulfillment of prior intentions but on a judicious opportunism: the actor seizes promising chances. In other words, women's negation of Weberian rational action is not a lack; by engaging in heterogeneous activities without a clear trajectory in mind, they are able to get by. The paper makes this argument on the basis of ethnographic and demographic data from Cameroon and theoretical analyses of the work of Searle, Schutz, and Hume.