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The Anthropology of Ignorance

An Ethnographic Approach

  • Book
  • © 2012

Overview

Editors:
  1. Casey High
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  2. Ann H. Kelly
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  3. Jonathan Mair
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Part of the book series: Culture, Mind, and Society (CMAS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introduction: Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object

    • Jonathan Mair, Ann H. Kelly, Casey High
    Pages 1-32

  3. Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous Objects in Dakar, Senegal

    • Gretchen Pfeil
    Pages 33-54

  4. Discourses of the Coming: Ignorance, Forgetting, and Prolepsis in Japanese Life-Historiography

    • Shunsuke Nozawa
    Pages 55-85

  5. Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in Social Networking’s Ideals of Reciprocity

    • David S. Leitner
    Pages 87-118

  6. Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism

    • Casey High
    Pages 119-135

  7. “I Don’t Know Why He Did It. It Happened by Itself”: Causality and Suicide in Northwest Greenland

    • Janne Flora
    Pages 137-161

  8. Inhabiting the Temporary: Patience and Uncertainty among Urban Squatters in Buenos Aires

    • Valeria Procupez
    Pages 163-188

  9. “Fertility. Freedom. Finally.”: Cultivating Hope in the Face of Uncertain Futures among Egg-Freezing Women

    • Tiffany Romain
    Pages 189-215

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 217-220
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Reviews

"The Anthropology of Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach brings an interesting balance of theory , conceptualisation, and case studies, mainly for scholars and not for undergraduates. As a matter of fact, many future essay s and books could be written thanks to the doors this book just opened." - European Journal of American Studies

About the authors

Janne Flora (Cambridge) P.W.Geissler (LSHTM) Gretchen Pfeil (Chicago) Shunsuke Nozawa (Chicago) David S. Leitner (Cambridge) Valeria Procupez (John Hopkins) Tiffany Romain (Stanford).

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