Download or read book An Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance written by Linsey McGoey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance is typically thought of as the absence or opposite of knowledge. In global societies that equate knowledge with power, ignorance is seen as a liability that can and should be overcome through increased education and access to information. In recent years, scholars from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities have challenged this assumption, and have explored the ways in which ignorance can serve as a vital resource – perhaps the most vital resource – in social and political life. In this seminal volume, leading theorists of ignorance from anthropology, sociology and legal studies explore the productive role of ignorance in maintaining and destabilizing political regimes, entrenching corporate power, and shaping policy developments in climate science, global health, and global economic governance. From debates over death tolls during the war in Iraq, to the root causes of the global financial crisis, to poverty reduction strategies at the World Bank, contributors shed light on the unexpected ways that ignorance is actively harnessed by both the powerful and the marginalized in order to achieve different objectives. This eye-opening volume suggests that to understand power today, we must enrich our understanding of ignorance. This book was originally published as a special issue of Economy and Society.

Download or read book An Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance written by Linsey McGoey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance is typically thought of as the absence or opposite of knowledge. In global societies that equate knowledge with power, ignorance is seen as a liability that can and should be overcome through increased education and access to information. In recent years, scholars from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities have challenged this assumption, and have explored the ways in which ignorance can serve as a vital resource – perhaps the most vital resource – in social and political life. In this seminal volume, leading theorists of ignorance from anthropology, sociology and legal studies explore the productive role of ignorance in maintaining and destabilizing political regimes, entrenching corporate power, and shaping policy developments in climate science, global health, and global economic governance. From debates over death tolls during the war in Iraq, to the root causes of the global financial crisis, to poverty reduction strategies at the World Bank, contributors shed light on the unexpected ways that ignorance is actively harnessed by both the powerful and the marginalized in order to achieve different objectives. This eye-opening volume suggests that to understand power today, we must enrich our understanding of ignorance. This book was originally published as a special issue of Economy and Society.

Download or read book The Unknowers written by Linsey McGoey and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deliberate ignorance has been known as the ‘Ostrich Instruction’ in law courts since the 1860s. It illustrates a recurring pattern in history in which figureheads for major companies, political leaders and industry bigwigs plead ignorance to avoid culpability. So why do so many figures at the top still get away with it when disasters on their watch damage so many people’s lives? Does the idea that knowledge is power still apply in today’s post-truth world? A bold, wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between ignorance and power in the modern age, from debates over colonial power and economic rent-seeking in the 18th and 19th centuries to the legal defences of today, The Unknowers shows that strategic ignorance has not only long been an inherent part of modern power and big business, but also that true power lies in the ability to convince others of where the boundary between ignorance and knowledge lies.

Download or read book Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies written by Matthias Gross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once treated as the absence of knowledge, ignorance today has become a highly influential topic in its own right, commanding growing attention across the natural and social sciences where a wide range of scholars have begun to explore the social life and political issues involved in the distribution and strategic use of not knowing. The field is growing fast and this handbook reflects this interdisciplinary field of study by drawing contributions from economics, sociology, history, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, and related fields in order to serve as a seminal guide to the political, legal and social uses of ignorance in social and political life. Chapter 33 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available here: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780415718967_oachapter33.pdf

Download or read book On the Heels of Ignorance written by Owen Whooley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invoking the latest medical science in doing so. But, as Owen Whooley’s sweeping new book tells us, the history of American psychiatry is really a record of ignorance. On the Heels of Ignorance begins with psychiatry’s formal inception in the 1840s and moves through two centuries of constant struggle simply to define and redefine mental illness, to say nothing of the best way to treat it. Whooley’s book is no antipsychiatric screed, however; instead, he reveals a field that has muddled through periodic reinventions and conflicting agendas of curiosity, compassion, and professional striving. On the Heels of Ignorance draws from intellectual history and the sociology of professions to portray an ongoing human effort to make sense of complex mental phenomena using an imperfect set of tools, with sometimes tragic results.

Download or read book Regimes of Ignorance written by Roy Dilley and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Non-knowledge should not be simply regarded as the opposite of knowledge, but as complementary to it: each derives its character and meaning from the other and from their interaction. Knowledge does not colonize the space of ignorance in the progressive march of science; rather, knowledge and ignorance are mutually shaped in social and political domains of partial, shifting, and temporal relationships. This volume’s ethnographic analyses provide a theoretical frame through which to consider the production and reproduction of ignorance, non-knowledge, and secrecy, as well as the wider implications these ideas have for anthropology and related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Download or read book Introduction to the Science of Sociology written by Robert Ezra Park and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 1534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Introduction to the Science of Sociology" by Robert Ezra Park, E. W. Burgess. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Download or read book Ignorance and Uncertainty written by Olivier Compte and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born of a belief that economic insights should not require much mathematical sophistication, this book proposes novel and parsimonious methods to incorporate ignorance and uncertainty into economic modeling, without complex mathematics. Economics has made great strides over the past several decades in modeling agents' decisions when they are incompletely informed, but many economists believe that there are aspects of these models that are less than satisfactory. Among the concerns are that ignorance is not captured well in most models, that agents' presumed cognitive ability is implausible, and that derived optimal behavior is sometimes driven by the fine details of the model rather than the underlying economics. Compte and Postlewaite lay out a tractable way to address these concerns, and to incorporate plausible limitations on agents' sophistication. A central aspect of the proposed methodology is to restrict the strategies assumed available to agents.

Download or read book Ignorance and Change written by Adriana Mica and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance and Change analyses the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 from the perspective of ignorance studies showing how the media, decision-makers and academics engaged in the projection and reification of the future in relation to the crisis, the asylum system, and the solutions that were proposed. Why do recent crises fail to bring meaningful change? Why do we often see replication of the regimes of ignorance, inefficient knowledge and expertise practices? This book answers these questions by shifting the focus from the issue of change to our projections and expectations of what change will look like. Building on three comprehensive case studies, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, it demonstrates how ignorance and projectivity were essential for new Member States not only for managing the crisis but also for reaching a higher level of autonomy in relation to the EU. Employing an innovative interactional approach to ignorance, it bridges ignorance studies with sociology of future and migration research. Challenging the dominant interest in defining ignorance, it moves the focus from what ignorance is to what ignorance does. It incorporates the concept of future into ignorance studies and develops notions such as “projective agency,” “reification of the future,” “projection by proxy,” and “projectors of EU asylum policies.” The book provides an erudite background, comprehensive empirical research, and original tools of analysis for graduate students, researchers, and policy makers interested in crisis studies, public policy, ignorance studies, social theory, migration studies, and sociology of the future.

Download or read book On the Politics of Ignorance in Nursing and Health Care written by Amelie Perron and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-14 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance is mostly framed as a void, a gap to be filled with appropriate knowledge. In nursing and health care, concerns about ignorance fuel searches for knowledge expected to bring certainty to care provision, preventing risk, accidents, or mistakes. This unique volume turns the focus on ignorance as something productive in itself and works to understand how ignorance and its operations shape what we do and do not know. Focusing explicitly on nursing practice and its organization within contemporary health settings, Perron and Rudge draw on contemporary interdisciplinary debates to discuss social processes informed by ignorance, ignorance’s temporal and spatial boundaries, and how ignorance defines what can be known by specific groups with differential access to power and social status. Using feminist, postcolonial and historical analyses, this book challenges dominant conceptualizations and discusses a range of "nonknowledges" in nursing and health work, including uncertainty, abjection, denial, deceit and taboo. It also explores the way dominant research and managerial practices perpetuate ignorance in healthcare organisations. In health contexts, productive forms of ignorance can help to future-proof understandings about the management of healthy/sick bodies and those caring for them. Linking these considerations to nurses’ approaches to challenges in practice, this book helps to unpack the power situated in the use of ignorance and pays special attention to what is safe or unsafe to know, from both individual and organisational perspectives. On the Politics of Ignorance in Nursing and Health Care is an innovative read for all students and researchers in nursing and the health sciences interested in understanding more about transactions between epistemologies, knowledge building practices and research in the health domain. It will also be of interest to scholars involved in the interdisciplinary study of ignorance.

Download or read book Ignorance and Surprise written by Matthias Gross and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-05-07 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between ignorance and surprise and a conceptual framework for dealing with the unexpected, as seen in ecological design projects. Ignorance and surprise belong together: surprises can make people aware of their own ignorance. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, a surprising event in scientific research—one that defies prediction or risk assessment—is often a window to new and unexpected knowledge. In this book, Matthias Gross examines the relationship between ignorance and surprise, proposing a conceptual framework for handling the unexpected and offering case studies of ecological design that demonstrate the advantages of allowing for surprises and including ignorance in the design and negotiation processes. Gross draws on classical and contemporary sociological accounts of ignorance and surprise in science and ecology and integrates these with the idea of experiment in society. He develops a notion of how unexpected occurrences can be incorporated into a model of scientific and technological development that includes the experimental handling of surprises. Gross discusses different projects in ecological design, including Chicago's restoration of the shoreline of Lake Michigan and Germany's revitalization of brownfields near Leipzig. These cases show how ignorance and surprise can successfully play out in ecological design projects, and how the acknowledgment of the unknown can become a part of decision making. The appropriation of surprises can lead to robust design strategies. Ecological design, Gross argues, is neither a linear process of master planning nor a process of trial and error but a carefully coordinated process of dealing with unexpected turns by means of experimental practice.

Download or read book The Anthropology of Ignorance written by C. High and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of ignorance occupies a central place in anthropological theory and practice. This volume argues that the concept of ignorance has largely been pursued as the opposite of knowledge or even its obverse. Though they cover wide empirical ground - from clients of a fertility treatment center in New York to families grappling with suicide in Greenland - contributors share a commitment to understanding the concept as a productive, social practice. Ultimately, The Anthropology of Ignorance asks whether an academic commitment to knowledge can be squared with lived significance of ignorance and how taking it seriously might alter anthropological research practices.

Download or read book Ignorance written by Peter Burke and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich, wide-ranging history of ignorance in all its forms, from antiquity to the present day A Seminary Coop Notable Book of 2023 "Ignorance: A Global History explores the myriad ways in which 'not-knowing' affects our lives, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill."--Michael Dirda, Washington Post Throughout history, every age has thought of itself as more knowledgeable than the last. Renaissance humanists viewed the Middle Ages as an era of darkness, Enlightenment thinkers tried to sweep superstition away with reason, the modern welfare state sought to slay the "giant" of ignorance, and in today's hyperconnected world seemingly limitless information is available on demand. But what about the knowledge lost over the centuries? Are we really any less ignorant than our ancestors? In this highly original account, Peter Burke examines the long history of humanity's ignorance across religion and science, war and politics, business and catastrophes. Burke reveals remarkable stories of the many forms of ignorance--genuine or feigned, conscious and unconscious--from the willful politicians who redrew Europe's borders in 1919 to the politics of whistleblowing and climate change denial. The result is a lively exploration of human knowledge across the ages, and the importance of recognizing its limits.

Download or read book The Study of Sociology written by Herbert Spencer and published by London, D. Appleton. This book was released on 1874 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book On Sociology Second Edition Volume Two written by John H. Goldthorpe and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: see copy for volume one.

Download or read book Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended written by Adriana Mica and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociology of unintended consequences is commonly depicted as a framework for understanding the outcomes that run counter to the initial intentions of social actors because of factors such as ignorance, error and complexity. This conventional approach, however, is now undergoing change under the influence of more encompassing shifts in framing in social sciences. Indeed, in the last few years, the study of the unintended has evidently moved from the question "What are the sources of the unintended?" to the inquiry "What is it that makes the unintended possible?" or "What risks, but also opportunities, do the unintended entail?" Explaining this puzzle in relation to the internal dynamics of sociology of unintended consequences, Adriana Mica makes an erudite journey in relation to its three main analytical frameworks, their semantic shifts, setbacks and theoretical revivals. Certainly, through the examination of the use of protective headgear in boxing, this volume renders explicitly the possibilistic turn not only in the specific research of the unintended, but in sociology more generally. Presenting the contributions of leading sociology theorists in a new light, Sociology as Analysis of the Unintended will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in fields such as theoretical sociology, sociology of substantive issues and sociology of sport.

Download or read book Managing the Unknown written by Frank Uekötter and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.