TY - JOUR TI - Indeterminate waiting: social experiences, politics, and visualizations DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-3291-de84 PY - 2018 AB - It has been acknowledged that waiting is extremely challenging to study due to its common presence in our daily lives, seeming passivity, and tendency to escape our awareness. In addition, the huge diversity of waiting obscures the indeterminate waiting, which I define as the anticipation that a salient and desirable event will happen in an indeterminate period of time. When imposed, this type of waiting has been recognized as fostering relations of social power and having detrimental consequences for those who wait. In this Dissertation, I aim at bringing more sociological and social visibility to indeterminate waiting. The Dissertation is comprised of two studies, the first one addressing defining social elements of indeterminate waiting experiences. In the second study, I examine the political aspects of indeterminate waiting from the perspective of those who wait. I also explore the potential of maps to bring more visibility to this social phenomenon. In the first study, I have applied in-depth content analysis to four memoirs from various social contexts: political solitary confinement, war, emigration, and organ transplants. In the second study, I use a more interdisciplinary approach, bringing in concepts from critical cartography and political sciences. I have applied the study to the context of Romanian citizenship reacquisition by Moldovans and the migration associated with it. I also have applied mapping exercises intertwined with interviews, meant to reveal experiences of waiting and migration in the same context. My findings reveal that indeterminate waiting, especially when it extends over prolonged periods of time, is experienced in a complex dynamic, alternating acute and receding awareness of the wait. Indeterminate waiting creates a socio-temporal disruption in the lives of those who wait, changing the perceptions of time and social reality. Those who wait perceive the time with an acute awareness and may even have a distanced perception of the society. In the same time, those who wait develop coping mechanisms, such as: having a meaningful occupation, being focused on present, looking for temporal points of reference, etc. In the study of the Romanian citizenship reacquisition process by Moldovans, I have found a strong relationship between the indeterminate periods and stages of the process and acute experiences of indeterminate waiting. Salience of reacquiring the Romanian citizenship, which is socially produced, plays a crucial role in how waiting has been experienced. The maps sketched on by the participants use a variety of marks and images to portray waiting, creating valuable insights for the conventional mapping of migration. KW - Sociology KW - Waiting (Philosophy) LA - eng ER -