This essay explores the management and creation of ignorance via an exploration of the landscape of eastern Germany, which has seen profound social, political, and technological changes over the past several decades. Like in many places around the world decision makers in eastern Germany are seeking to reach a future state where seemingly conflicting outcomes related to the economy and the environment are simultaneously realized. The management of ignorance is an important but often overlooked consideration in decision making that the concept of "post-normal science" places into our focus of attention.
Between ‘Greatness’ and ‘Ignorance’
The Transition to Nuclear Power in Turkey
Sezin Topçu
environmental risk regulatory bodies. It therefore inhabits its own island of serenity, a place where hierarchical, technocratic and even authoritarian power is exercised. Finally, serene nuclearism has its own domain of knowledge (and ignorance), which
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 6–28
Wolfgang Krohn
This article presents a long-term study of German waste management policies and technologies as they developed during the second half of the twentieth century. The postwar "waste avalanche" called for quick and crude political decisions. Unexpected environmental side effects prompted new governance and leads through six different stages of policies based on scientific models and advanced technologies—all of them controversial. The case exemplifies a typical condition of a knowledge society. Politics demands a reliable knowledge base for rational decision making. Science, however, supplies open-ended research and increases uncertainties. Turning the dilemma into an operational perspective, I suggest speaking of processes of real-world experimentation with waste. The transformation of waste from something to be ignored and disregarded into an epistemic object of concern is bound to experimenting with existing and newly designed waste sites as well as with socio-technical management systems. The study focuses on the development in Germany. Its general features, however, are characteristic for comparable industrial societies.
The Choice of Ignorance
The Debate on Ethnic and Racial Statistics in France
Patrick Simon
For more than a century, statistics describing immigration and assimilation in France have been based on citizenship and place of birth. The recent concern for racial discrimination has given rise to a heated controversy over whether to introduce so-called "ethnic categories" into official statistics. In this article, I make an assessment of the kind of statistics that are available today and the rationale behind their design. I then discuss the main arguments put forward in the controversy and argue that antidiscrimination policies have created a new need for statistics that outweigh the arguments against the use of "ethnic statistics." In fact, beyond the technical dimension of this controversy lies a more general political debate about the multicultural dimensions of French society.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 7–31
Embodied Knowledge and Disembodied Ignorance
A Reflection on the 'Ways of Knowing' Conference
Stacy Hope
Stirred by the University of St Andrews’s 25th Anniversary Conference—celebrating twentyfive years of the anthropology department—entitled ‘Ways of Knowing’, my objective is to reflect on some of the works presented as they pertain to my own interests in shamanry and Amerindian perspectivism. As a master’s student, it was imperative to attend this conference, since it served as a forum in which to discuss the foundations on which (I think) anthropology is based: knowledge and what the individual accepts or rejects as being knowledge.
Introduction
Knowledge, Ignorance, and Pilgrimage
Evgenia Mesaritou, Simon Coleman, and John Eade
on. In this special issue we extend the scope of debate still further by looking at processes of production of knowledge and ignorance that unfold within as well as beyond pilgrimage sites. Such an examination illustrates the labor, politics, and
“Welcome to Divinity College”
Subjectification in Pilgrimage to the Iran-Iraq War Battlefields in Contemporary Iran
Mahshid Zandi
). This article focuses on two issues: firstly, the nature of knowledge and ignorance—what counts as “knowledge” in these visits to the battlefields—and secondly, the assumed subjectivity of visitors. To explore what counts as “knowledge” in RN visits to
On Knowing Faith
Theology, Everyday Religion, and Anthropological Theory
Joel Robbins
Knowledge and Ignorance,” is one that is very close to the heart of Roy Rappaport's work. After all, the foundation of his magisterial theory of the role of ritual in the development of humanity is our species’ radical inability, once language allowed
The Vanishing Power Plant
Infrastructure and Ignorance in Peri-urban Ulaanbaatar
Morten Axel Pedersen
the future. Indeed, I shall suggest, ignorance itself may be conceived of as an infrastructure in its own right in peri-urban Ulaanbaatar, in the sense that it constitutes a ‘ground’ from which certainty as well as uncertainty come into being, along
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 79–95
Sine Dolore
Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War
Daniel Derrin
relevant to Shakespeare’s laughter at war. Another fundamentally important consideration is the centrality of laughable ‘ignorance’. Maggi understands laughable ‘turpitude’ and ‘deformity’ – Latin terms derived from Cicero’s glosses on Aristotle’s comments
