Uncertainty, By Annemarie Samuels

In the article "Narratives of Uncertainty: The Affective Force of Child-Trafficking Rumors in Postdisaster Aceh, Indonesia", Annemarie Samuels, discusses the rumors that have emerged in Aceh, Indonesia after the terrible Indian Ocean tsunami. Such rumors include those of child-trafficking as well as claims people have made of witnessing "trucks full of children driving to the North Sumatran city of Medan" (Samuels 2015:230). She starts off the article by introducing the different points and arguments she wants to touch on, these include points such as how the rumors affected the parents by leaving them with a great deal of uncertainty pertaining to their missing children, how it was that the rumors gained such a power that it allowed them to

She goes on to give numerous examples that supported this enrichment, and then she builds on them by applying them to the rumors she heard about child-trafficking. Her next subheading is Disappearances, here she articulates how she learned about why people who were lost in the tsunami are referred to as lost instead of dead. She includes a few stories she heard that revolved around missing children and how people suspected they had been taken from Aceh, taken to orphanages, or adopted under the impression that they no longer had living parents. She also emphasizes how she heard stories about children being found in various locations, which only supported the rumors in a

In the last subheading before the conclusion, Affects and Effects of Rumors, narratives in this subheading demonstrate how the rumors affected the parents, they "resulted in haunting possibilities that became part of everyday life in ambiguous ways" (Samuel 2015:236). Parents were never able to be at peace because the rumors were never able to stop being rumors, there was no proof that allowed the parents to bring “their stories to conclusion” (Samuel 2015:236). In the conclusion, Samuel ends off with discussing the affective power that rumors can have in individuals lives, why these rumors gain such a power and how exactly they affect people (Samuel 2015:238). She again connects this with the child-trafficking rumors by concluding that these rumors became so effective, “not only because the trafficked child is a powerful metaphor for current anxieties but also because of the different possible futures they inserted into parents’ narratives of loss”, she also concludes that they gained their power because of the disaster that influenced loss and uncertainty (Samuel