An Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance

by Linsey McGoey (editor)

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 .

Genres: Sociology

142 pages, Hardcover

First published July 22, 2014

About the author

Linsey McGoey (b. 1978) is a Canadian sociologist and academic based in England. She is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. She is known for having written about philanthropy in her book No Such Thing as a Free Gift and co-editing the Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies with Matthias Gross. Her next book, The Unknowers: How Elite Ignorance Rules the World, was published in 2019.

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically, an extremely brief set of small essays on Ignorance.

The main point is that there are the uneducated ignorant
and the far more ignored 'educated' idiots who actually have way more far-reaching decisions which are poorly thought out and implemented.

Your friend from school ranting about how "Bitcoin is God, and how you don't know crap about Economics, and that Zero Hedge guy is a fucking GENIUS" to you from a payphone between hooker appointments....

is totally different, from say, the Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek loving Money and Financial Weekly talk show, where the host who's the little brother of the guy running your State or Province, ranting about Bitcoin and the politicians and real estate inbetween his 'Snake Oil' guests this hour, and having a total crackpot agenda.

We're talking about the Ignorant who pick their nose and read Zero Hedge eating cockroach dim sum in their underpants choosing their stocks

and then the OTHER Ignorant ones, who are with business degrees and stock market accreditations, who buy and recommend stuff just as nuts and freaky as 'your worst friend in school, who stalks you from the payphone'.

.......
.......

Heck, I remember watching Seattle news all the time and there was this old man who ranted like a total headcase and looked like Rod Steiger from Mars Attacks.

And it was the infamous 60s Jimmy Olson cub reporter of LURID Crime of the 1960s Newspapers, Lou Guzzo.

Louis R Guzzo (January 11, 1919-June 29, 2013) was a journalist, author, and television commentator in Seattle, Washington.

He was an art and theater critic for 20 years at the Seattle Times, then served as the managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where his investigative team wrote stories that led to the indictments of more than fifty government officials.

Guzzo was an ally of Washington state governor Dixy Lee Ray. He worked with her at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, co-authored books with her, and helped in her successful bid for governor in 1976.

Lou would attack those 'darn kids' for their rock music and punk music, and there were amazing lawsuits and slanders, where the punks wished him dead, and Lou would get even crazier, and it was a media circus of lunacy. Instead of Lou living in fear from Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky for being a crimebuster, he pretty much did his own version of the Sex Pistols Satanic Panic meets Hot Rods to Hell.

Basically Lou would rant on the news every week like some weird version of Fulton Sheen meets Joe Pine meets Morton Downey Junior meets Glenn Beck meets Newt Gingrich.

And chain holding gangs of hot rod kids were terrorising the local Shake and Burger stand.

But his biggest claim to fame was a crusade that DDT was the savior of the planet, and millions of people in the Third World are dying because SAFE PESTICIDES are being BANNED for their questionably shaky science on being HARMFUL!! And that we just need every mega pesticide and nuclear power plant in the world for our Apple Pie and Cadillacs for Christmas because he's on the side of Science, as well as the Pope.

Basically whatever toxic stuff that's in the water in Ballard Washington, Lou Guzzo and Bill Nye definately drank it, and went all 'strange on it'

We're the ignorant ones, because THEY are correct.

.....

I will be nice to Lou on one matter, he was a total nutcase, and amusing like someone's Crazy Uncle you were FORCED to dine with every weekend.

He basically drank a mixture of Tang, DDT and Kool-Ade along with his morning Cafe Italiano, but he hated the Mafia, and though a bit of a freak and crank of the borderlands, you got to admire that side of him

Romulus and Remus: A Modern Parable (2007)
by Lou Guzzo

Top Secret Tips Unveiled Within!

Lou Guzzo, the author, was born and grew up in the section called Little Italy in a large Midwestern town. It was in his early years in the Italian community that he learned about the severe criminal nature of the Mafia.

Although the Mafiosi represented a very small percentage of the community, they wielded great control over the political and economic well-being of 98 percent of the Italian-Americans. His parents and their friends despised members of the Mafia, but they had to remain silent or risk death.

As a result, Guzzo grew up with a hatred of the mob and vowed he would fight crime and, especially, Mafia criminals. He did so later in life as a newspaper editor, who mounted investigations of Mafia and other criminals and won many awards for his work and the work of his staff.

Romulus and Remus is a direct reflection of his life. It is primarily a work of fiction, but it embraces many real-life characters drawn from Guzzo's career as a newspaper investigator. =

His comment on the book:

"It's time writers quit glamorizing the evil Mafia and portray the other side - the honest police and detectives and media probers, as well as the great majority of decent, honest Italian-Americans."

.......

Aside from being a prophet of Crime and the Mafia, and a shill for DDT, and the Nuclear Power Lobby, and commentator on the Seattle CBS local news just before Cronkite and Dan Rather, with the thundering speaking skills that made him a parody of the Sam the Patrotic Eagle Muppet character.

yes, what else did he do?

SCIENCE FICTION, before he died.....

So good, it's on the website HORSE'S ASS.

Has to be SEEN to be BELIEVED

.........

The Amazing World of Tomorrow: Is It Really Science-Fiction?

The Amazing World of Tomorrow – Chapter 1 What Wonders Lie Ahead?
by Carl Ballard — Tuesday, 5/10/11, 7:35 am

I think we can all agree with the maxim, always, always, start with a worn out cliche.

But I don’t need to tell that to one of the most respected newspaper editors in Seattle history (true fact, kids, you can look it up). Well done Guzzo:

"Colonel George Quixby tapped the buzzer at his desk, and in seconds the door to his office opened to let in his secretary, Jean Marshall. She was a sight for sore eyes — or for any eyes, for that matter, and the colonel smiled, as he always did when she entered. They had been a working team for more years than he could count, and he hoped it would go on for ever — as well it might thanks to the latest experiments at the U.S. Science and Space Center he commanded."

Sight for sore eyes, I’m glad they’ll still use that phrase in the future.

More important, can Quixby not count very high?

My cousin’s kid impressed us all at a Mother’s Day get together with his ability to count to 100, and he’s 4. The next paragraph says they’re 50 and 74, almost 75. So Quixby can’t count half as high as a 2011 4 year old.

Also, we’re a paragraph in and I’m pretty sure Quixby is Dixy, you know, in the future and a man. The only question now: is Guzzo Jean Marshall?

OK, another question: how up its own ass can the first page get?

"The advances in human living they’d seen in the previous century and the early 2200s might have read like a science-fiction novel to their American neighbors a century or two earlier."

You’re writing it, dummy.

Anyway then someone from Illinois calls to complain about the fact that the Space and Science Center has the same initials as the Nazi SS. Ignoring the center part, I suppose.

He threatens to blow the center up (even though it’s in New Mexico) but don’t worry, they soon find out it wasn’t that the person doesn’t like Nazis, it’s that the Space and Science Center made his wife younger, and she left him.

Telephones still exist in 2220, and they can be traced by some random secretary, so that’s awesome.

Then Quixby reminisces about the fact that people can live longer and reads that they might be able to live forever.

Quixby and Marshall talk about how good it will be to live forever.

Jet packs were invented in 2185 because they had just invented hydrogen fuel, so no cars. But don’t worry, the trucking industry still survives, for now:

"The colonel paused a moment to draw a deep breath, then continued. “Only the large cargo-carrying vehicles — for example trucks, cargo planes, and cargo ships — survived and, in fact, did very well with the roads and highways all to themselves. Maybe we’ll soon find a way to make them obsolete if our experiments here at the Science Center materialize. Downstairs in the lab our people report their longtime research will soon bear fruit. They are sure they can transmit any solid object molecule by molecule from one site to another — even across oceans. What was once pure science-fiction is now reality."

First off, original ideas for science fiction: Jet packs and transporters.

Second, if you’re thinking maybe I took the part where Quixby is most condescending to his secretary, let me assure you that I skipped the part where he calls her (and remember she’s 50) a “good girl.”

So, no, explaining that cargo ships carry cargo isn’t as bad as it gets.

Third, do planes and ships use roads in the future?

Fourth, the most exciting thing that happens in the whole chapter is someone calls in from another state and then someone in that other state talks to him.

Then Quixby takes a nap. End of chapter 1.

.......

The Amazing World of Tomorrow – Chapter 2 “I Can Fly!”
by Carl Ballard — Friday, 5/13/11, 6:46 am

Quick summary of our last chapter:

a. It’s 2220, and people you don’t care about exist.
b. Space and Science Center.
c. Nap time.

In chapter 2 Quixby dreams of the time he helped invent a jet pack.

Or I’m kind of confused if it’s a jet pack or not.

Something about wings and birds and play dough, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

We start with Boeing recruiting him out of college, but please note, don’t try to make too much sense out of this:

"It was inevitable that the first invitation to employment in its laboratories should be Boeing, the world’s largest and most advanced aircraft producer. Boeing executives already knew about his prowess as a fighter pilot in the Air Force three years before entering M.I.T. They had followed his career and knew that as soon as he graduated, he should be welcomed to the aircraft maker’s domain."

So he’s a fighter pilot. And he’s in the military 3 years. My guess is there was a war, that won’t get mentioned again. I mean Quixby made colonial in those 3 years (I assume). While I’m no expert that seems like a very quick rise unless a lot of people above him died (like the boy generals in the Civil War).

And he’s a good enough pilot that Boeing wants him for his solo human flight designing skills?

"It was left to Quixby to solve the last remaining problem in the design of the revolutionary flying device. The fuel problem had already been solved by Boeing engineers. After years of experimentation, they came up with a combination of hydrogen and three other chemicals that would power the small but sturdy and dependable booster attached to the flying uniform. One more serious hurdle remained: How to sustain flight for hundreds of miles and rise to ordinary flight levels."

H + Some Chemical + Some Other Chemical + Yet Another Chemical → fuel, or something.

I feel perhaps there is too much science in this fiction, but I’ll attempt to go on:

Boeing engineers had solved every problem with personal flight except the bit about people flying significant distances.

So they had someone with no engineering experience outside of a classroom but who did help us beat the Krouts in WWIX (maybe?) lend a hand.

He solved this problem the way everyone solves problems: birdwatching.

"It was Quixby and his own research that solved the problem. After diligent studies of the total wing structure of eagles, he determined that, among other things, the project needed a new type of material to simulate the muscle structure of the eagle. It had to be material that was simultaneously strong as steel and supple as play dough."

I don’t care that the in the 21st century we call the product Play-Doh.

Maybe it’s called something more boring in the future.

Anyway, Quixby’s contribution to the project is having someone else invent a magical substance and another somebody test it out.

Anyway, flying is a great success and Boeing patents it.

But Quixby in one sentence convinces them to share their patents with anyone else who wants it.

I understand that there’s precedent with friction matches.

But I’d be more interested in how corporations decide that profit shouldn’t matter than I am with eagles and magical chemicals.

Then Quixby and the Washington Congressional delegation flies from Seattle to DC.

"The televised coverage of the seven fliers as they approached the airport in the capital and went in for a smooth landing created a sensation in the United States and in every country in the world. This was no longer the stuff of which science-fiction was made! This was the real thing!"

Holy shit, we get it. Science fiction. Is this going to be every chapter?

"As soon as the news spread over what had happened, people were calling the Boeing company to ask how much the personal-flight machines cost and how soon they could place an order. Nothing like it had ever been experienced in American or world history. Immediately, political leaders in virtually all the capitals of the world were asking their governments why they hadn’t developed such an extraordinary vehicle."

I like how it’s virtually every capital. In Guzzo’s mind there’s some country, I’m guessing Prussia, that isn’t interested in this but everyone else wants in.

And is every other country communist, because otherwise the governments might not be the ones tasked with inventing these things.

Then Guzzo talks about what this did to the economy in pretty much the same manner that he explained it in chapter 1.

So we’re out of ideas.

Then Jean Marshall wakes Quixby up and tells him to call “General Bennett at the Science Center.”

They work for the Space and Science Center, so I feel like Marshall has been through these conversations a lot with a senile George Quixby:


Jean Marshall: General Bennett on the phone.
George Quixby: Who?

Marshall: Our Boss. The commanding general of the Space and Science Center.
Quixby: Right, I work there. Who is this Bennett fellow?

Marshall: He hired you away from Boeing like 30 years ago or whatever.
Quixby: Hey! I used to work for Boeing. Is that where this Bennett person is from?

Marshall: No, please answer the phone. It’s General Bennett of the Science Center.
Quixby: I knew that!

I know I made a lot of assumptions based on what amounts to just shitty writing.

But I’m committed for 14 chapters and I think speculating wildly will help speed this thing along.

Anyway, end of chapter 2.

........

The Amazing World of Tomorrow Chapter 3: Order is Restored

Oh look, I’m still doing this nonsense.

Bad, old science fiction is the best. There was a time when I went to used bookstores frequently, and would always look for science fiction anthologies from like the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s.

The thing about them is that they tell you more about the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s than they do about whatever future the author invented.

Women were secretaries, aliens were savages, etc.

........

Verdict: If there were still enough members left of Tom Brokaw’s Bet Generation Ever, the book might have a chance — but I doubt it.

But how the heck do you get the dirty photos of incriminating evidence to blackmail your way to get 5 minutes of airtime every afternoon at CBS.

Only Uncle Lou, Meyer Lansky, Sam Giancana, James Jesus Angleton, J. Edgar Hoover, The Seattle Times and the Shadow knows.

........

Yves Laberge
The Electronic Green Journal

$160
131 pages

This short book includes six articles related to the social study of ignorance and its consequences. In other words, how do individuals and decision-makers act and react in unsure or unpredictable situations, and how does this unawareness guide their perceptions and decisions?

Keeping these goals in mind, these authors in sociology of ignorance deploy a variety of topics that are of interest in Social Epistemology and especially Environmental Studies, e.g. risk, expertise, governance and policies.

For many environmentalists and for policymakers in environmentally-related problems, this notion of ignorance is proven to be a frequent guide in acting (and in non-acting) with regards to environmental issues.

Even more than ignorance and Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk, the notion of uncertainty is also used by scholars to describe the future (page 87).

All contributors in this book insist on the idea that ignorance should not be seen as just the opposite of 'knowing' because 'not knowing' can be infinite and in unpredictable directions.

Furthermore, there are more 'unknown things' than 'familiar notions' and certainties, and 'not knowing' can be a guide for many people who doubt; this can explain (in part) the 'various forms of standardization and rationalization' studied by so many social scientists in bureaucracies (Jacqueline Best - page 87).

Environmental issues are discussed and conceptualized, for example in Steve Rayner’s chapter about 'Uncomfortable Knowledge' which in one specific case describes Sustainable Development as a 'Constructive Ambiguity'.
(Steve Rayner - page 112)

As such, what policies are put in place in the case of unpleasant decisions that have to be taken?

Another concept related to ignorance, “denial” can help scholars in their understanding of decision-makers who are reluctant to change or to adopt reforms:

“In a more sociological sense, denial does not refer to the cognitive or affective state of individuals, but to the refusal or inability of organizations at any level to acknowledge information, even when external bodies or even individuals within seek actively to bring it to the collective attention”.
(Steve Rayner - page 114)

This position, aptly explained in clear and broad terms by Rayner, could be applied to many environmental problems like climate change and global warming, as many persons in positions of power (the so-called 'skeptical' observers) publically deny such problems.

Neither a handbook nor a comprehensive survey of this elusive question, Introduction to the Sociology of Ignorance edited by Linsey McGoey will serve as a partial but nonetheless interesting overview of Ignorance Studies and more generally in the fields of Social Epistemology and Social Theory.

All chapters are rigorous and well documented.

Yves Laberge, Ph.D.