Epilogue

Abstract

Devoted to demonstrating that support encounters emerge in less than straightforward ways, Markus Schlecker and Friederike Fleischer’s volume provides much needed insight gleaned from careful analysis of nine ethnographic case studies—China, Korea, India, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, and Vietnam. As a whole, the ethnographic case studies presented in the volume all share an element of the unexpected associated with what S. F. Moore has called “social indeterminacy” (1978: 49; Malaby 2003: 20; Eisenberg 1992).¹ Employing a sociological approach to what he deems as the “principle of indeterminacy,” Eisenberg has argued that rationality cannot take itself into account any more than one’s eye can see itself seeing. Similarly, Eisenberg claims that purposive action driven by reason cannot determine how institutional structures shape social behaviors, or how legal language or local models of ethics determine social reality. By locating an intrinsic indeterminacy in society, Eisenberg’s perspective precludes total or even substantial understanding and control of our destinies (1992). The historically proscribed, yet socially indeterminate, nature of support encounters gives way to a polyphony of perspectives, which as some celebrated magical realists, like the Colombian novelist Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, as well as contributors to this collection, see as viable entry points for the establishment of a radically transformative politics of mutuality and ethically inspired social support (Sangari 2002: xix).