On fuzziness

Abstract

This article is a consideration of the conceptual power of Verdery’s concept of “fuzzy property.” “Fuzzy property” has helped me understand the phenomenon of lupiaje in Guanajuato, Mexico—where men enter silver-gold mines at night to extract ore—by following Verdery’s advice to “inquire … into, rather than assum[e], the nature of property conceptions.” Fuzziness has a new life in Juno Parreñas’s 2023 article “Ethnography after anthropology: Become moles, not mining corporations,” in which she extols “the synesthesia of fuzziness.” While this isn’t quite what Verdery had in mind, it does help us think about one of her greatest works, the astounding My life as a spy.