85. (New) Territories of Ignorance: what do ignorance studies ignore?
Laura Barbier, CERMES3; Lisa Claussmann, CERMES3 INSERM U988; Justyna Moizard-Lanvin, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Maël Goumri, CERMES3 INSERM U988
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês
Ignorance studies have produced a significant body of work (Gross & McGoey 2015) that has deeply renewed social studies of knowledge. They have highlighted strategies used by powerful actors, such as doubt in the emblematic cases of tobacco industry (Proctor 2008) and global warming(Oreskes 2010). However, an overview of this field identified that some “territories of ignorance”, both geographical and epistemic, remain understudied (global south, systemic effects of fragmented knowledge, materiality of ignorance, etc.).
This panel invites to approach Ignorance Studies through the notion of territories, where different forms of ignorance accumulate, as is the case for undone science (Hess 2016) or “institutional ’ignorance” (Frickel et Edwards 2014). We wish to explore the accumulation of ignorance in these territories with a focus on the “unequal distribution of power” (Frickel et Moore 2006) and “slow violence” (Nixon 2011). We aim to investigate the difficult access to resources that would allow citizens to build alternative knowledge that could challenge the institutional expertise in local configurations.
This panel also questions how the construction of “fragmented” (Fortun et al. 2014) objects and fields of research, by separating a single problem into multiple ones without bringing them into dialogue, tends to (re)produce some territories of ignorance. We encourage reflexive contributions that challenge this “fragmentation of knowledge” without reproducing it. Particular attention will be given to intersectional work that focuses on the accumulation of different forms of oppression (including postcolonial and feminist studies). The proposed papers could also explore other perspectives of Ignorance Studies.
