Price notes that consequences do not have to occur for ambient uncertainty to exist as long as the risk of consequences happening is always there. 

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Some participants noted that there was a sense of risk or vulnerability around disability that came from a sense of general opinion of people within the institution coming from features of the space around them, rather than any single instance of something being said or done to them.

Ambient Uncertainty

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Price talks to Irene, an assistant professor, who noted that in a college-sponsored survey more than half of professors at the college she taught at noted they thought that it was an unfair advantage for students to receive accommodations. This lead Irene to decide she was not going to talk about or disclose her own disability to her colleagues. Similar uncertainty lead to other faculty who did disclose their disability to either not disclose via email so that there wouldn't be a paper trail or live in fear that their disability disclosure could impact their ability to get tenure.

Example of Ambient Uncertainty (Irene)

For faculty and graduate students who are immigrants, there is not just anxiety about how disability disclosure would impact their job but, also whether it could impact their ability to get a visa, or even get accommodations and disability services back in their home country, depending on whether they are diagnosed. Additionally, ambient uncertainty is compounded for scholars who are Black, Indigenous, or otherwise a person of colour, and scholars of marginalized genders as ambient uncertainty compounds with other microaggressions and previous harms of the academic system. 

Ambient Uncertainty within Intersecting Systems of Oppression

Ambient Uncertainty and Consequences

Ambient uncertainty can also occur across time; for instance, previous marginalizing experiences can lead to the perception of a consistent risk of that marginalization occuring again. Alternatively, previous marginalization (for instance, not being accommodated at work) can lead to more marginalization (for instance, experiencing poverty).

Ambient Uncertainty and Time

Price contends that based on the discussion of harm, and the need to explicitly include harm in our discussions of space that we must also include harm in our discussions of ambient uncertainty, because sigificant harm can occur through ambient uncertainty.

Ambient Uncertainty and Harm

Price notes ambient uncertainty can also come from the precarity of the possibility of current supports (like accommodations or disability related health benefits) suddenly disappearing because of either bureaucratic redetermination of if someone is eligible or caps on the among of a resource an individual is allowed to use.

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