How many worlds are there?
Paul Nadasdy
Abstract
ABSTRACT Questions about the nature of reality have lately become something of a preoccupation in anthropology. One prominent approach to such questions holds that different peoples inhabit distinct and incommensurable realities, or worlds. Although proponents of the “multiple‐worlds thesis” claim to be decolonizing social theory, their approach is beset by significant political and theoretical problems. I illustrate these problems by referring to my own ethnographic research in Canada's southwest Yukon. I then suggest an alternative approach: shifting the focus from multiplicity to indeterminacy. The indeterminacy framework can help us avoid the pitfalls of the multiple‐worlds thesis while leaving open the possibility that radically different understandings of the world might reveal something important about the nature of reality. Indeterminacy thus supports a more robust anti‐colonial politics than does the multiple‐worlds thesis. [ ontology , indeterminacy , practice , indigeneity , Yukon ]