Knowledge Power And Ignorance
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Knowledge, Power and Ignorance
What is knowledge, and ignorance? How is it decided? Do power and power relations influence this process? Does the spread of knowledge lead to more ignorance? Is ignorance socially produced? Is knowledge always socially contextualized? This book deals with these important questions on the interplay of knowledge, ignorance and power located in varied contexts in India. As systematic knowledge grows, so does the possibility of ignorance. Ignorance is a state which people attribute to others and is loaded with moral judgment. Thus, being underdeveloped often ‘implies a kind of stupidity or failure’. This volume seeks to be premised in a framework where ignorance is understood as being a socially produced and maintained phenomenon, where the ways of knowing and not knowing are interdependent. It is a novel attempt for an academic re-orientation of the Knowledge–Ignorance paradigm through a process of re-interpretation of the bounded purview attached with the existing epistemological understandings. It focuses on concrete case studies, often with an ethnographic stint. The volume critically looks at various aspects: Epistemological Issues; Understanding Community Perspectives and the State; Natural Resources, Power and Ignorance; Media and Production of Non-Knowledge; and other emerging areas. Each essay bears a striking similarity – that of understanding the complex processes and dynamics of the production of ignorance in a field of commonly held beliefs of 'knowledge' - be it scientific, societal, religious, magical or political - through the overarching realm of power. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to a cross-section of academics and students of sociology, social anthropology, political science, human geography, history, public policy and development studies.
The Unknowers
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.
Regimes of Ignorance
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.