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房间里的大象：生活中的沉默和否认
关于集体沉默的第一本完整研究著作。
本书从英语谚语“房间里的大象”入手，从社会学角度剖析人们私密生活和公共生活中，对于某些显而易见的事实，集体保持沉默的社会现象，作者将之称为合谋性沉默。作者阐述了合谋性沉默的成因、组成形式、参与者的动机和表现，以及这种沉默对人们社会生活 的影响，并探讨了打破沉默的可能和方式。
本书从英语谚语“房间里的大象”入手，从社会学角度剖析人们私密生活和公共生活中，对于某些显而易见的事实，集体保持沉默的社会现象，作者将之称为合谋性沉默。作者阐述了合谋性沉默的成因、组成形式、参与者的动机和表现，以及这种沉默对人们社会生活 的影响，并探讨了打破沉默的可能和方式。
196 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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July 31, 2009
I agree with other reviewers that possibly the biggest caveat to give about this book is that only 87 pages of the total 162 are the actual text, the other 75 pages are endnotes, a bibliography, and the index. So the almost $15 price tag may seem steep. However, I'm not sure why some reviewers (here and at other places) are making that big of a deal out of this. I mean, we frequently come across edited works where we say of just one essay in the book, "So and so's essay alone was worth the price of the book." Indeed, the majority of these lauded essays are less than 87 pages! So, if you're really into the psychology and sociology (and even the epistemology) of denial, perhaps the content will be worth the price of the book. In fact, isn't that what we really want in a good book? Good content? Surely people wouldn't rave over a book that was 1,000 pages long of meaningless fluff. So I think some make too much of this fact. Still, it's only fair to point out that you're getting less than 100 pages of content with this book. But, it's also fair to point out that good content is necessarily qualitative and not quantitative.
Besides this minor agreement, I have more substantive disagreements with some of the reviews (here and elsewhere) I've read. It is simply false that Zerubavel (Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University) just uses illustrations from literature and movies to make his points. He appeals just as much, or more, illustrations from history, every day social interactions (in the family, workplace, and marketplace), and a wide range of other substantive contexts. The reasons he uses such wide-ranging illustrations is "in order to emphasize the distinctly generic properties of conspiracies of silence" (14). Furthermore, others complained that Zerubavel was to abstract in his illustrations, that he was too general. But this is an odd criticism considering Zerubavel discusses it on pages 14-16. Zerubavel claims to be writing on a topic which he claims has been ignored, especially in his field. The sociology of noticing has received a lot of attention, but not the sociology of ignoring. Thus Zerubavel claims that in order start analyzing universal social processes the sociologist must justify his claim to generality by testing his thesis in diverse contexts, connecting facts previously treated as unrelated, thus identifying common patterns in diverse, both geographically and temporally, culturally specific events (cf. 14-15). It is a wonder, therefore, why people would bring this aspect of Zerubavel's book up as a criticism, especially without interacting with his stated justification of the matter! The final critique of the book that I take issue with is that some people think they can trap Zerubavel in some kind of self-referential incoherency. They ask how he can write a book on the sociology of silence about and ignoring of proverbial elephants in the room since to do so he has to speak about it and not ignore it. This is such a petty criticism that it hardly deserves comment. First, to have any hope of indexing self-referential incoherency to Zerubavel, this topic would have to be an elephant in the room! Second, even if this book's subject is an elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, Zerubavel claims that we need to break the silence and talk about the elephants, no matter how hard or socially unacceptable this may be at the time. Sometimes you just have to wonder what if people are reading the things they are critiquing.
In this book Zerubavel discusses the phenomena of the private act of noticing that is so often in tension with the public act of acknowledging. Like in the original story of the king with no clothes, everyone privately noticed that the king had no clothes yet no one wanted to publicly acknowledge this for various reasons. This story highlights for Zerubavel the social phenomena he calls the conspiracy of silence. This happens when a group of people tacitly agree to outwardly ignore something of which they are inwardly aware. To better understand this phenomena Zerubavel looks at denial, extending this beyond the usual psychological conceptions and into the sociology of denial. From here Zerubavel looks at many familiar stories---both factual and fiction---and brings out how the sociology of denial, silence, and avoidance of the proverbial elephant in the room functions in a community of "conspirators". These "conspiracies" do not revolve around largely unnoticeable matters simply overlooked, but "highly conspicuous matters we deliberately try to avoid"; hence, the elephant metaphor. Thus, avoidance of elephants in the room, if anyone fails to notice it, "can only be the result of deliberate avoidance, since otherwise it would be quite impossible not to notice it. Indeed, to ignore an elephant [in the room:] is to ignore the obvious." So, all persons in the room with the elephant would be internally aware of the elephant, yet they wouldn't publicly acknowledge it. This public avoidance of the obvious needs the help of the others for it to work. So dissenters are subject to mistreatment if they bring it to attentions, and the more powerful will always try to control what can be talked about, even seen or heard. The more people involved in ignoring the obvious, the easier it is to ignore it. But eventually, and paradoxically (according to Zerubavel), the growing tension and stress of silence about the obvious makes it harder to continue to ignore the elephant.
All these interesting facets of the sociology of denying the obvious are looked into in more detail throughout the book. Zerubavel points out how common ignoring obvious things actually are, and it ranges from the mundane (the piece of food on someone's teeth that a group all notices but says nothing about) to the humanly important (how the Nazi's acted with regard to concentration camps, how those living near the camps acted, and how the Jews acted for the years to follow; or, how families act when one member has sexually abused another). It happens among laymen as well as (and especially, Zerubavel tells us) in the academy, even among many scientists (his own science included). He lays out the general rules for public denial and shows how such "conspiracies" operate among the masses.
This book would be of obvious interest to the sociologist. But it will also be helpful for the philosopher studying the philosophy or epistemology of self-deception (as it offers a lot of data from which to include in analysis). However, I want to recommend this book to two other types: the religious philosopher and the pastor. For the first, the book is relevant to the topic of the natural knowledge of God and the various ways this "knowledge" has been viewed. Regardless of how you conceive of this knowledge, it seems clear that the Bible at least claims that God's existence is so obvious that people do not have an excuse for denying that God exists (whether all, or most, or only some people know God, and how this 'knowledge' and its content is to be conceived, is an issue I'm leaving aside). Thus God's existence may be like an elephant in the room. And many of the reasons Zerubavel gives for why a society would ignore an elephant seem apropos to why people would ignore the biblical God if he existed.
Secondly, for the pastor. Some sociological explanations for sin and ignoring and/or avoiding it among the members of your congregation (or among Christians as conceived more broadly than your local congregation, i.e., the church militant) are brought out in this book (of course, not explicitly, I doubt Zerubavel is a Christian, he says in passing that the Jesus of Christianity was a later invention so as to illustrate one of his points, I, obviously, thought this illustration was wide of the mark, but I digress). So this book may prove helpful for the pastor as he seeks to diagnose hidden or ignored sin amongst his congregation. To take it further, to see how the city of man is engaged in a conspiracy of silence not only over God's existence, but over their sin, which their conscious (Zerubavel's internal point) testifies against them, but which they publicly don't acknowledge (his public point) in the various ways denial or ignoring can happen.
Lastly, what was also interesting to apply theological perspectives to is over how Zerubavel says that conspiracies of silence must be broken. He says that it involves, obviously, acknowledging the elephant in the room, and this acknowledgement must take place in public. What was once silence needs to be thrust into the public eye. When reading Zerubavel's thoughts on how conspiracies of silence are broken, and why they should be, I couldn't help but think about Jesus' words that at the judgment all of men's sins would be made public, and, needless to say, God's existence will be made painfully obvious while denying it impossible. Atheists will be conspicuous by their absence.
Besides this minor agreement, I have more substantive disagreements with some of the reviews (here and elsewhere) I've read. It is simply false that Zerubavel (Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University) just uses illustrations from literature and movies to make his points. He appeals just as much, or more, illustrations from history, every day social interactions (in the family, workplace, and marketplace), and a wide range of other substantive contexts. The reasons he uses such wide-ranging illustrations is "in order to emphasize the distinctly generic properties of conspiracies of silence" (14). Furthermore, others complained that Zerubavel was to abstract in his illustrations, that he was too general. But this is an odd criticism considering Zerubavel discusses it on pages 14-16. Zerubavel claims to be writing on a topic which he claims has been ignored, especially in his field. The sociology of noticing has received a lot of attention, but not the sociology of ignoring. Thus Zerubavel claims that in order start analyzing universal social processes the sociologist must justify his claim to generality by testing his thesis in diverse contexts, connecting facts previously treated as unrelated, thus identifying common patterns in diverse, both geographically and temporally, culturally specific events (cf. 14-15). It is a wonder, therefore, why people would bring this aspect of Zerubavel's book up as a criticism, especially without interacting with his stated justification of the matter! The final critique of the book that I take issue with is that some people think they can trap Zerubavel in some kind of self-referential incoherency. They ask how he can write a book on the sociology of silence about and ignoring of proverbial elephants in the room since to do so he has to speak about it and not ignore it. This is such a petty criticism that it hardly deserves comment. First, to have any hope of indexing self-referential incoherency to Zerubavel, this topic would have to be an elephant in the room! Second, even if this book's subject is an elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, Zerubavel claims that we need to break the silence and talk about the elephants, no matter how hard or socially unacceptable this may be at the time. Sometimes you just have to wonder what if people are reading the things they are critiquing.
In this book Zerubavel discusses the phenomena of the private act of noticing that is so often in tension with the public act of acknowledging. Like in the original story of the king with no clothes, everyone privately noticed that the king had no clothes yet no one wanted to publicly acknowledge this for various reasons. This story highlights for Zerubavel the social phenomena he calls the conspiracy of silence. This happens when a group of people tacitly agree to outwardly ignore something of which they are inwardly aware. To better understand this phenomena Zerubavel looks at denial, extending this beyond the usual psychological conceptions and into the sociology of denial. From here Zerubavel looks at many familiar stories---both factual and fiction---and brings out how the sociology of denial, silence, and avoidance of the proverbial elephant in the room functions in a community of "conspirators". These "conspiracies" do not revolve around largely unnoticeable matters simply overlooked, but "highly conspicuous matters we deliberately try to avoid"; hence, the elephant metaphor. Thus, avoidance of elephants in the room, if anyone fails to notice it, "can only be the result of deliberate avoidance, since otherwise it would be quite impossible not to notice it. Indeed, to ignore an elephant [in the room:] is to ignore the obvious." So, all persons in the room with the elephant would be internally aware of the elephant, yet they wouldn't publicly acknowledge it. This public avoidance of the obvious needs the help of the others for it to work. So dissenters are subject to mistreatment if they bring it to attentions, and the more powerful will always try to control what can be talked about, even seen or heard. The more people involved in ignoring the obvious, the easier it is to ignore it. But eventually, and paradoxically (according to Zerubavel), the growing tension and stress of silence about the obvious makes it harder to continue to ignore the elephant.
All these interesting facets of the sociology of denying the obvious are looked into in more detail throughout the book. Zerubavel points out how common ignoring obvious things actually are, and it ranges from the mundane (the piece of food on someone's teeth that a group all notices but says nothing about) to the humanly important (how the Nazi's acted with regard to concentration camps, how those living near the camps acted, and how the Jews acted for the years to follow; or, how families act when one member has sexually abused another). It happens among laymen as well as (and especially, Zerubavel tells us) in the academy, even among many scientists (his own science included). He lays out the general rules for public denial and shows how such "conspiracies" operate among the masses.
This book would be of obvious interest to the sociologist. But it will also be helpful for the philosopher studying the philosophy or epistemology of self-deception (as it offers a lot of data from which to include in analysis). However, I want to recommend this book to two other types: the religious philosopher and the pastor. For the first, the book is relevant to the topic of the natural knowledge of God and the various ways this "knowledge" has been viewed. Regardless of how you conceive of this knowledge, it seems clear that the Bible at least claims that God's existence is so obvious that people do not have an excuse for denying that God exists (whether all, or most, or only some people know God, and how this 'knowledge' and its content is to be conceived, is an issue I'm leaving aside). Thus God's existence may be like an elephant in the room. And many of the reasons Zerubavel gives for why a society would ignore an elephant seem apropos to why people would ignore the biblical God if he existed.
Secondly, for the pastor. Some sociological explanations for sin and ignoring and/or avoiding it among the members of your congregation (or among Christians as conceived more broadly than your local congregation, i.e., the church militant) are brought out in this book (of course, not explicitly, I doubt Zerubavel is a Christian, he says in passing that the Jesus of Christianity was a later invention so as to illustrate one of his points, I, obviously, thought this illustration was wide of the mark, but I digress). So this book may prove helpful for the pastor as he seeks to diagnose hidden or ignored sin amongst his congregation. To take it further, to see how the city of man is engaged in a conspiracy of silence not only over God's existence, but over their sin, which their conscious (Zerubavel's internal point) testifies against them, but which they publicly don't acknowledge (his public point) in the various ways denial or ignoring can happen.
Lastly, what was also interesting to apply theological perspectives to is over how Zerubavel says that conspiracies of silence must be broken. He says that it involves, obviously, acknowledging the elephant in the room, and this acknowledgement must take place in public. What was once silence needs to be thrust into the public eye. When reading Zerubavel's thoughts on how conspiracies of silence are broken, and why they should be, I couldn't help but think about Jesus' words that at the judgment all of men's sins would be made public, and, needless to say, God's existence will be made painfully obvious while denying it impossible. Atheists will be conspicuous by their absence.
December 10, 2024
It abruptly ended when I thought I was still halfway through. This is a needed book, and although the writing and editing could have been much tighter (and an updated revision to include some post 2020 perspective would also be welcome), the book was useful and interesting and I got out of it what I needed.
November 4, 2019
Trickster-intellectualism that's sweet, subversive and easy to read. Recommended.
Really helpful for perspective on seeing in new ways into the Ashtanga Yoga community circa 2019. Our themes are ongoing silence about sexual abuse and grooming in an era that ended 10 years ago. We are also as a community attempting to perceive and heal legacies of emasculation and misogyny.
In a time when division is easy, this study of the unsaid brings to light the limited nature of each human's perspective. It doesn't give the reader easy tools or answers for understanding the totality of the unsaid. It poses more questions than answers. It sensitizes the reader to the confusing, elephantine quality of that which is made invisible and unsayable. This is inherently compassionate. Very helpful for navigating toxic environments such as Facebook.
Zerubavel has a beautiful mind. He is the hanged man of my Social Theorist Trading Card deck. He writes about the sociology of time, the sociology of the unsaid, and all manner of almost unconceptualizable social phenomena.
But this book is an easy read. He wrote it for everyone trying to get their heads around a culture of silence in any form. His examples are from the Clinton years, and are plentiful enough to take you back into the headspace of that time in a way that creates an illuminating contrast with the mindscramble of the post 2016 years in America.
If you love this book because of the style of sexily unexpected deep thinking and meta-perceiving Zerubavel makes progressively more normal and easy chapter by chapter, go back and read Erving Goffman as well as the Symbolic Interactionist school. This way of seeing the world - through the empty spaces in social logic, the performative contradictions, the construction of normalcy, and perhaps the "breaching experiments" that shore up the unspoken social order - is itself metanormal for a certain kind of social scientist.
Curious, uncomplicated, moral intelligence. Such is what is needed when there is an elephant in the room.
Two more recent concepts adjacent to this work. Zerubavel doesn't get into this but may as well have. I'm mentioning them here so I remember to weave them in later to my own work.
1. Preference Falsification. Timur Kuran's idea from the mid-90s. Written about by the brilliant Sarah Perry at Ribbonfarm. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/05/07... https://www.jstor.org/stable/2729412?...
2. Evaporative Cooling. Learned about this from Rin'dzin Pamo, a polymath who writes this gorgeous journal https://vajrayananow.com
Evaporative cooling as applied to social networks is described well here http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/?p=1207
And this is a great resource for the concept of evaporative cooling as applied to a culture such as Ashtanga Yoga. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9c...
Really helpful for perspective on seeing in new ways into the Ashtanga Yoga community circa 2019. Our themes are ongoing silence about sexual abuse and grooming in an era that ended 10 years ago. We are also as a community attempting to perceive and heal legacies of emasculation and misogyny.
In a time when division is easy, this study of the unsaid brings to light the limited nature of each human's perspective. It doesn't give the reader easy tools or answers for understanding the totality of the unsaid. It poses more questions than answers. It sensitizes the reader to the confusing, elephantine quality of that which is made invisible and unsayable. This is inherently compassionate. Very helpful for navigating toxic environments such as Facebook.
Zerubavel has a beautiful mind. He is the hanged man of my Social Theorist Trading Card deck. He writes about the sociology of time, the sociology of the unsaid, and all manner of almost unconceptualizable social phenomena.
But this book is an easy read. He wrote it for everyone trying to get their heads around a culture of silence in any form. His examples are from the Clinton years, and are plentiful enough to take you back into the headspace of that time in a way that creates an illuminating contrast with the mindscramble of the post 2016 years in America.
If you love this book because of the style of sexily unexpected deep thinking and meta-perceiving Zerubavel makes progressively more normal and easy chapter by chapter, go back and read Erving Goffman as well as the Symbolic Interactionist school. This way of seeing the world - through the empty spaces in social logic, the performative contradictions, the construction of normalcy, and perhaps the "breaching experiments" that shore up the unspoken social order - is itself metanormal for a certain kind of social scientist.
Curious, uncomplicated, moral intelligence. Such is what is needed when there is an elephant in the room.
Two more recent concepts adjacent to this work. Zerubavel doesn't get into this but may as well have. I'm mentioning them here so I remember to weave them in later to my own work.
1. Preference Falsification. Timur Kuran's idea from the mid-90s. Written about by the brilliant Sarah Perry at Ribbonfarm. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/05/07... https://www.jstor.org/stable/2729412?...
2. Evaporative Cooling. Learned about this from Rin'dzin Pamo, a polymath who writes this gorgeous journal https://vajrayananow.com
Evaporative cooling as applied to social networks is described well here http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/?p=1207
And this is a great resource for the concept of evaporative cooling as applied to a culture such as Ashtanga Yoga. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9c...
January 31, 2015
While this short work is compulsively readable, the lack of any deep analysis of any particular case studies as well as the lack of empirical data (as opposed to anecdotes on the topic) meant that the potentially rich and interesting subject matter of this book did not translate into a particularly exciting or enlightening read. I am sure there must be better explorations of these interesting and important themes, but this take on them is pretty shallow and superficial in its treatments of the issues at hand.
Read
April 28, 2023Some super powerful social commentary on the way we use silence to monopolize power (which is why I read it), but missing science, most examples are film/TV... I was hoping for a lot more insight.
December 17, 2022
The fable of the Emperor's New Clothes is a classic example of a conspiracy of silence, a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth. But the denial of social realities--whether incest, alcoholism, corruption, or even genocide-is no fairy tale. In The Elephant in the Room, Eviatar Zerubavel sheds new light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial-the keeping of "open secrets." The author shows that conspiracies of silence exist at every level of society, ranging from small groups to large corporations, from personal friendships to politics. Zerubavel shows how such conspiracies evolve, illuminating the social pressures that cause people to deny what is right before their eyes. We see how the others symbiotically complement each conspirator's denial, and we learn that silence is usually more intense when there are more people conspiring-and especially when there are significant power differences among them. He concludes by showing that the longer we ignore "elephants," the more significant they loom in our minds, as each avoidance triggers an even greater spiral of denial. Drawing on examples from newspapers and comedy shows to novels, children's stories, and films, the book travels back and forth across different social life levels, from everyday moments to large-scale historical events. At its core, The Elephant in the Room helps us understand why we ignore truths that are known to all of us.
February 5, 2022
It was an okay book, I gave it 4 stars cause it was like the only book in the genre, and the author clearly had to put a lot of effort into making it. As he says writing about silence and denial can be difficult.
It used the analogy of the emperor with no clothes a lot. They also said an interesting thing how the open secret actually gets more quiet the more people know about it and choose not to say anything, as there becomes a peer pressure to stay silent.
People don't want to talk about it as it makes them uncomfortable.
Additionally people don't want to talk about not talking about it.
It becomes a taboo to talk about it.
How the silence ends is if someone speaks about it and is not censored. The potential is always there that someone will speak out but it is easiest for people of low status, since low status people can be ignored and consequently are less likely to be censored.
Overall indeed a difficult topic, as the silence can indeed be deafening at times, and it helped me have a better appreciation of the topic and how uncomfortable people feel about voicing these matters. For me personally i do not feel the social pressures as acutely as some others so it is easier for me, but certainly reading this helped me have more compassion for those that are victim to the silencing pressures of denial of the elephant in the room.
It used the analogy of the emperor with no clothes a lot. They also said an interesting thing how the open secret actually gets more quiet the more people know about it and choose not to say anything, as there becomes a peer pressure to stay silent.
People don't want to talk about it as it makes them uncomfortable.
Additionally people don't want to talk about not talking about it.
It becomes a taboo to talk about it.
How the silence ends is if someone speaks about it and is not censored. The potential is always there that someone will speak out but it is easiest for people of low status, since low status people can be ignored and consequently are less likely to be censored.
Overall indeed a difficult topic, as the silence can indeed be deafening at times, and it helped me have a better appreciation of the topic and how uncomfortable people feel about voicing these matters. For me personally i do not feel the social pressures as acutely as some others so it is easier for me, but certainly reading this helped me have more compassion for those that are victim to the silencing pressures of denial of the elephant in the room.
March 23, 2022
Dr. Eviatar Zerubavel once again uses a light, straight-forward volume to organize concepts and open discussion on a subject that in hindsight is obvious and important but is often overlooked by sociologists. Silence for Dr. Zerubavel refers to the avoidance of discussion (or even passing mention) of specific subjects in family, work, friendship, or other social milieu. Silence has been studied in psychology but it also deserves attention in sociology. While not a definitive work, The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life summarizes the key issues surrounding the social role of silence and the social rules that enforce it. This book is good for the casual, non-academic reader, for students, and for people beginning the process of confronting "the elephant in the room."
June 25, 2018
I found this interesting, as a layperson whose function in many social situations often seems to be the person saying, "hey, cool elephant; where'd you get it?" with all of the attendant fallout.
Or, in many cases, non-fallout, because the wish not to acknowledge the elephant most certainly extends to comments about the elephant, so for example:
Me: Hey, cool elephant; where'd you get it?
Them: I've often wanted to visit India.
Me: That's neat, but isn't it hard to enjoy the new TV with the elephant in the way?
Them: My favourite show right now is Scandal. It has great reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Anyway. I enjoyed the book. My one caveat is the author's frankly bigoted commentary at some points. Examples:
Calling Jefferson's treatment of his slave Sally Hemings an "illicit relationship."
Stating that Bill Cosby was called out by the black community for his commentary on black youth for being too truthful, rather than for being a racist pack of lies.
Two examples of several, not all of which I can remember. Such bigotry makes this book itself part of ongoing conspiracies of silence on matters other than those he discusses, ironically, and I can't help but notice that other reviewers have failed to mention them. What is it called when book reviewers engage in a conspiracy of silence to let pass the conspiracy of silence perpetuated by the author of a book about conspiracies of silence?
Or, in many cases, non-fallout, because the wish not to acknowledge the elephant most certainly extends to comments about the elephant, so for example:
Me: Hey, cool elephant; where'd you get it?
Them: I've often wanted to visit India.
Me: That's neat, but isn't it hard to enjoy the new TV with the elephant in the way?
Them: My favourite show right now is Scandal. It has great reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Anyway. I enjoyed the book. My one caveat is the author's frankly bigoted commentary at some points. Examples:
Calling Jefferson's treatment of his slave Sally Hemings an "illicit relationship."
Stating that Bill Cosby was called out by the black community for his commentary on black youth for being too truthful, rather than for being a racist pack of lies.
Two examples of several, not all of which I can remember. Such bigotry makes this book itself part of ongoing conspiracies of silence on matters other than those he discusses, ironically, and I can't help but notice that other reviewers have failed to mention them. What is it called when book reviewers engage in a conspiracy of silence to let pass the conspiracy of silence perpetuated by the author of a book about conspiracies of silence?
July 26, 2021
Like all Zerubavel’s work: superlatively written and highly informative.
September 7, 2024
[4.5⭐️]
March 3, 2025
每天生活在視而不見當中，希望自己能更多指出大象
January 7, 2008
It's an interesting topic, certainly, but the book is crippled by its subject (how do you talk about not talking?), and the author seems aware of this -- it's less than a hundred pages. Most of the material is drawn from literary or dramatic sources rather than case studies -- The Kiss, The Emperor's New Clothes (which Zerubavel refers to constantly), Oedipus Rex -- and in fact, he never follows one example, merely referring to an incident and moving on. The pop culture references to Bills Cosby, Clinton, and Maher (there are others: The Daily Show, Downhill Racer, the 1968 Columbia riots, among many, but I couldn't resist that phrase) are useful ones, serving as points of familiarity in a discussion that frequently veers into the abstract. But I was left with a rather scattered feeling, as if the author wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say (his conclusion on page 89 is simplistic and could have been made without any of the preceeding discussion: "[C]onspiracies of silence prevent us from confronting, and consequently solving, our problems." In other news: water still wet.) and rather than narrowing his topic to something into which he could have delved, chose to pull in every reference under the sun and distract us with lots of shiny objects. The discussion of why these "conspiracies of silence" emerge is superficial, and while the idea of social politeness as a mild conspiracy of silence is an interesting one, it's not particularly new -- didn't Freud make the point? -- and could have been more integrated.
I'm also reminded of a part of Woodward & Bernstein's The Final Days, on Watergate -- the White House released heavily edited transcripts of the President's Oval Office tapes, and a congressional representative (don't recall his name; I don't have my copy on me) was quoted as saying that the transcripts, the revelations of the interior of the White House and President Nixon personally, were a "violation of the public's right not to know" -- that "that was the truly impeachable offense: letting everyone see." Zerubavel considers not at all the concept that these conspiracies of silence may be healthy, may be necessary; he doesn't question the modern belief that confession is always better.
Not impressed. This needed some genuinely scholarly treatment and far less rush.
I'm also reminded of a part of Woodward & Bernstein's The Final Days, on Watergate -- the White House released heavily edited transcripts of the President's Oval Office tapes, and a congressional representative (don't recall his name; I don't have my copy on me) was quoted as saying that the transcripts, the revelations of the interior of the White House and President Nixon personally, were a "violation of the public's right not to know" -- that "that was the truly impeachable offense: letting everyone see." Zerubavel considers not at all the concept that these conspiracies of silence may be healthy, may be necessary; he doesn't question the modern belief that confession is always better.
Not impressed. This needed some genuinely scholarly treatment and far less rush.
July 2, 2019
"此書章節架構緊密，內容環環相扣，旁徵博引需多文獻，也適時舉出童話故事與現實案例，讓初次接觸相關議題的我們讀起來相當易懂"
May 27, 2016
I was expecting more science about silence than this book delivers. The author mainly gives an overview of exactly what kinds of silence and denial he wants to examine, how the subject has been discussed in the arts and why it is important to break the silence (and here he makes the distinction between breaking the silence and being a whistle-blower clear) but he never gets into it with the tools of sociology. This slim volume should really be the first chapter of an exhaustive review of scientific studies, but it will have to serve as a call to researchers to begin studying so that we can get down to the nitty-gritty. I think I would have been happier with Stanley Cohen's States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering.
July 24, 2012
This Professor of Sociology has written a very interesting book about silence on important matters. This is my first contact with the field of social cognition and left me wanting to explore this area much more. It's relevance to so much of everyday life is considerable, and it generates many avenues of explanation. Although he only skirts around a few topics such as incest, homosexuality in priests, the holocaust, what the author is offering is a tool of thinking to use on the social world around us. It can offer insights into the topics that we are silent on, such as tax evasion, cocaine use in the finance industry, nuclear threat, adultery etc. There's more I could write on how it affects me personally, but I will be silent on that.
November 26, 2013
Collective denial is such a fascinating topic. The book is rather disappointing though. The content is shallow even for a popular read and many argument have been made without scientific support.
The author spent too much time on exemplifying sentences like "breaking the silence requires more than two people", as one of them has to be the ice-breaker and the other the one acknowledges the proverbial elephant. And this is an 80-page book, for crying out loud.
The author spent too much time on exemplifying sentences like "breaking the silence requires more than two people", as one of them has to be the ice-breaker and the other the one acknowledges the proverbial elephant. And this is an 80-page book, for crying out loud.
October 16, 2015
Had to read for school, it was interesting but I hated it as I obviously had to be tested on it. Truly the phenomenon of a Conspiracy of silence was interesting to think about. The fact that we unconsciously and mutually agree to avoid speaking or acknowledging something was eye opening (and totally relevant).
June 15, 2016
I'm not used to fabricating arguments using observations and stories without systematic analysis anymore :/ The first chapter overly reiterated euphemisms. But there are some new stories I didn't know before.
April 6, 2015
An interesting read with eye-opening concepts, as with most of Zeruvabel's work. But, still so many examples that it becomes repetitive and elongated more than need be. An easy read, and worth the read, but not particularly intensely academic. Meant for the layperson.
August 31, 2007
A good book on a topic often unthought of: the impact and use of silence and/or denial in our everyday lives....just as the title suggests.
August 8, 2009
Brief, accessible discussion of the sociology of denial (as opposed to the more customary psychology of denial.)
February 26, 2013
Reading this book will help clarify your conceptions about the ethics of denial vs. action. Certainly an antidote for the adage, "silence is golden."
April 4, 2013
found what i was looking for.....indeed!!!
Read
August 3, 2016Clear writing and thinking. It discusses maintaining or breaking silence as social collaborative phenomena and their relations to power structure in given societies.
November 28, 2014
This is an insightful book on the role that denial plays in society. It looks more at the sociological dimension than the psychological.
May 11, 2016
I just finished Chinese version. It's just ok.
October 21, 2022
沉默合谋所造成的问题不仅仅是个人的，很多时候也是社会性的。恰恰是我们为否认大象如影随形的存在所做出的共同努力，才使得大象成为庞然大物。一旦我们开始承认大象的存在，它们便神奇般地缩小，只有当我们不再去忽略这头所谓的大象，才能最终把它赶出房间。打破沉默，从讨论“沉默”开始。
Want to read
January 22, 2010Library
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October 18, 2017I never read the book. Want to listen to how it sound. Want to see if the book is boring or entertaining.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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