Making uncertainty habitable: Ritual and professional formation in anatomical dissection

Medical education has long been described as a “training for uncertainty,” yet how uncertainty is practically organised in professional formation remains underexplored. Drawing on a sociocultural approach to risk and on anthropological theories of ritual, this article conceptualises anatomical dissection as a ritualised infrastructure through which uncertainty is collectively managed. Based on seven months of participant observation and 32 interviews at the University of Bologna, we identify three interconnected ritual dimensions – technical, ethical and socio-emotional – that coordinate scientific knowledge, professional norms and embodied dispositions during the status passage into the medical profession. Ritualised practices stabilise action under conditions of epistemic incompleteness and moral exposure, rendering uncertainty inhabitable rather than eliminable. At the same time, their stabilising function is ambivalent: when detached from reflexive articulation, rituals may reinforce hierarchy, normalise exclusion or suppress critical reflection. The analysis positions ritual as a central yet contested mechanism in the production of professional authority.