Vital conjunctures

A concept coined by anthropologist Jennifer Johnson-Hanks to provide an alternative framework for understanding the life course, moving away from the rigid and deterministic notion of life stages.

Building on work in practice theory, life course research, and the anthropology of the future.

A vital conjuncture is a “socially structured zone of possibility that emerges around specific periods of potential transformation in a life or career.” (Johnson-Hanks 2002)

A temporary configuration of uncertainty, aspiration, and potential change; an experiential knot where different futures and identities are at stake.

These are the moments when seemingly established futures are called into question and when actors are called on to manage durations of radical uncertainty. Conjunctures are navigated in reference to their horizons — the imaginable futures that are hoped for or feared. — Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, “On the Limits of Life Stages in Ethnography” (2002)

The cases I have considered tend to be both individual — in the sense that they happen to one or a small number of people — and temporary, in the sense that these durations in which multiple futures are in play are relatively short: they have discernible ends, and then “normal life” resumes. But of course conjunctures can dilate over both these dimensions. They can scale up, so that the household or neighborhood or community or country is in a conjuncture; and they can extend in time, so that the suspension of the readily imagined future becomes not a state of exception, but the normal background against which fleeting sensations of certainty may be measured. — Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, “Vital conjunctures revisited” (2015)

Horizons of possibility? Landmarks and reference points?

Times of vulnerability, that may require narrative aircover.

• [?] How do different life domains cohere, and when do they diverge or contradict each other?
• [?] How do social institutions and power structures shape the horizons of possibility during vital conjunctures?
• [?] How do we account for the intersections of multiple vital conjunctures occurring simultaneously or in quick succession?
• [&] See also: kairos?

Backlinks

: Conjunctural analysis : Queer time