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Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance
Abstract
What don't we know, and why don't we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotologyâthe study of ignoranceâprovides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about "how we know" to ask: Why don't we know what we don't know? The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.
... Potencializadas pelas redes sociais de seus apoiadores as falas de Trump e Bolsonaro assumiram a condição de verdade (Adorno, 2020;Proctor, Schiebinger, 2005) produzindo desinformação e adesão às propostas que negavam a gravidade da pandemia. ...
... Embora a hipótese da diferença ontológica permita compreender algumas nuances da pandemia nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil, sustentamos também a hipótese de que o negacionismo configura-se como uma ferramenta de produção sistemática da ignorância (Proctor;Schiebinger, 2005), portanto, como projeto político que abrange todas as dimensões da vida e da ordem social atravessadas pela crise sanitária. ...
... Embora a hipótese da diferença ontológica permita compreender algumas nuances da pandemia nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil, sustentamos também a hipótese de que o negacionismo configura-se como uma ferramenta de produção sistemática da ignorância (Proctor;Schiebinger, 2005), portanto, como projeto político que abrange todas as dimensões da vida e da ordem social atravessadas pela crise sanitária. ...
Este artigo empreende uma análise comparativa dos editoriais dos periódicos Washington Post e O Estado de São Paulo, examinando a coordenação negacionista da pandemia de Covid-19 sob os governos de Donald Trump e Jair Bolsonaro, bem como suas interseções com a economia e as emoções. Contrariando a percepção de fracasso atribuída à Coordenação da pandemia, nossa tese é que esta representou a concretização de um projeto de poder conservador, assentado na negação sistemática da ciência e dos princípios democráticos. No cerne deste estudo, o negacionismo é entendido como categoria histórica e política voltada à construção da ignorância e a distorção da verdade, servindo de alicerce para governos de extrema direita. Através dessa lente, desdobram-se as camadas dessa estratégia política, mapeando suas ramificações e impactos além da crise sanitária, nos campos da emoção e da economia, sublinhando a multifacetada influência do negacionismo no tecido social contemporâneo.
... In this paper, we critically examine the use of surveys in AI research, development, and governance, as they are recurringly used to assess people's subjective views and experiences of AI (van Berkel, Sarsenbayeva, and Goncalves 2023). Surveys, and related research instruments such as questionnaires, inherently employ abstraction and reduction as methods of knowing and understanding (Ornstein 2013), which may result in overlooking nuances that on the surface level may seem subtle, but in practice can result in amplifying biases and leading to harms (Bhopal et al. 2004;Proctor and Schiebinger 2008;Roberts 2012). The potential misrepresentation of marginalized perspectives by surveys, though unexplored in the AI domain, has been evident in other fields (Mir et al. 2012;Nazroo et al. 2007;Nierkens, de Vries, and Stronks 2006;Agyemang et al. 2009). ...
... Results varied substantially for marginalized ethnic groups between different survey agencies, e.g., one set of results reporting a 1% smoking rate in Bangladeshi women, and another reporting 6% in the same group, a discrepancy not observed in the majority group self-identifying as European (Bhopal et al. 2004). Other researchers also showed that commercial and government entities have post-poned or prevented action on critical public health matters for vulnerable groups as a result of poor survey research practices (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). In parallel, researchers criticize the focus of AI research on Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations, arguing that it may not accurately represent the experiences and concerns of diverse global populations affected by or interacting with AI (Septiandri et al. 2023;van Berkel, Sarsenbayeva, and Goncalves 2023). ...
Calls for engagement with the public in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, development, and governance are increasing, leading to the use of surveys to capture people's values, perceptions, and experiences related to AI. In this paper, we critically examine the state of human participant surveys associated with these topics. Through both a reflexive analysis of a survey pilot spanning six countries and a systematic literature review of 44 papers featuring public surveys related to AI, we explore prominent perspectives and methodological nuances associated with surveys to date. We find that public surveys on AI topics are vulnerable to specific Western knowledge, values, and assumptions in their design, including in their positioning of ethical concepts and societal values, lack sufficient critical discourse surrounding deployment strategies, and demonstrate inconsistent forms of transparency in their reporting. Based on our findings, we distill provocations and heuristic questions for our community, to recognize the limitations of surveys for meeting the goals of engagement, and to cultivate shared principles to design, deploy, and interpret surveys cautiously and responsibly.
... Esta pesquisa foi iniciada formalmente e parcialmente executada durante os anos da pandemia Covid-19 (2020/21) e no decorrer de 2022, ano de eleições majoritárias para presidente e governadores, além de proporcionais para senadores, deputados federais e estaduais no Brasil. Foi um período atípico e disruptivo, tanto por fatores relacionados ao isolamento social, como pelos intermináveis atentados à democracia ocasionados por agentes públicos que utilizaram, para este fim, notícias falsas, negacionismo científico e técnicas de agnotologia -quando um processo socialmente construído difunde, intencionalmente, a promoção deliberada da ignorância ou da incerteza na opinião pública sobre determinado assunto (Proctor e Schiebinger, 2008). ...
... O termo agnotologia foi criado a partir de uma série de conferências e da publicação do livro chamado Agnotology -The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, de Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger e explica como a ignorância é produzida ou mantida em diversos cenários, por meio de mecanismos como: negligência deliberada ou inadvertida, sigilo e supressão, destruição de documentos, tradição inquestionável e inúmeras formas de seletividade cultural ou política inerente (Proctor e Schiebinger, 2008). ...
A pandemia da COVID-19 acelerou a transição para a virtualidade das redes, consolidando a cultura algorítmica e aumentando a desinformação. Técnicas de agnotologia, que disseminam informações falsas intencionalmente, sustentam camadas do modelo de negócios de grandes empresas de tecnologia. Este artigo apresenta evidências de como técnicas de desinformação foram usadas em ações ideológicas e políticas para promover medicamentos ineficazes, divulgar pesquisas falsas e desacreditar cientistas e instituições com o objetivo de confundir a opinião pública. O estudo utiliza dados empíricos e estatísticos de livros, artigos científicos, pesquisas de instituições nacionais e internacionais, notícias de agências de pesquisa e resultados de laboratórios universitários e empresas. A investigação confirma a emergência de uma faceta da cultura algorítmica que cria e mantém bolhas de desinformação globalmente, atendendo a diversos interesses de governos, partidos políticos, grupos religiosos, empresas entre outros que criam notícias falsas, difundem desinformação e operam manipulação algorítmica como ideologia e/ou negócio.
... In this paper, we critically examine the use of surveys in AI research, development, and governance, as they are recurringly used to assess people's subjective views and experiences of AI (van Berkel, Sarsenbayeva, and Goncalves 2023). Surveys, and related research instruments such as questionnaires, inherently employ abstraction and reduction as methods of knowing and understanding (Ornstein 2013), which may result in overlooking nuances that on the surface level may seem subtle, but in practice can result in amplifying biases and leading to harms (Bhopal et al. 2004;Proctor and Schiebinger 2008;Roberts 2012). The potential misrepresentation of marginalized perspectives by surveys, though unexplored in the AI domain, has been evident in other fields (Mir et al. 2012;Nazroo et al. 2007;Nierkens, de Vries, and Stronks 2006;Agyemang et al. 2009). ...
... Results varied substantially for marginalized ethnic groups between different survey agencies, e.g., one set of results reporting a 1% smoking rate in Bangladeshi women, and another reporting 6% in the same group, a discrepancy not observed in the majority group self-identifying as European (Bhopal et al. 2004). Other researchers also showed that commercial and government entities have postponed or prevented action on critical public health matters for vulnerable groups as a result of poor survey research practices (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). In parallel, researchers criticize the focus of AI research on Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations, arguing that it may not accurately represent the expe-riences and concerns of diverse global populations affected by or interacting with AI (Septiandri et al. 2023;van Berkel, Sarsenbayeva, and Goncalves 2023). ...
Calls for engagement with the public in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, development, and governance are increasing, leading to the use of surveys to capture people's values, perceptions, and experiences related to AI. In this paper, we critically examine the state of human participant surveys associated with these topics. Through both a reflexive analysis of a survey pilot spanning six countries and a systematic literature review of 44 papers featuring public surveys related to AI, we explore prominent perspectives and methodological nuances associated with surveys to date. We find that public surveys on AI topics are vulnerable to specific Western knowledge, values, and assumptions in their design, including in their positioning of ethical concepts and societal values, lack sufficient critical discourse surrounding deployment strategies, and demonstrate inconsistent forms of transparency in their reporting. Based on our findings, we distill provocations and heuristic questions for our community, to recognize the limitations of surveys for meeting the goals of engagement, and to cultivate shared principles to design, deploy, and interpret surveys cautiously and responsibly.
... Lyseology is the use and misuse of science to suggest that it is in the future, populated by new but not yet existing engineered artifacts, that a better world is believed to lie. It is a modified version of agnotology (Proctor, 2008) -the use and misuse of science to produce ignorance in support of corporate interests. (Chapter 6 discusses similar topics and may interest readers of this chapter.) ...
... Agnotoloji, güçlü kurum ve liderlerin bilinçli olarak insanları bilgisizlik ve cehalete mahkum etmelerini inceleyen politik epistemolojinin yeni bir alanıdır (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008;Tuana, 2006;Peels & Blaauw, 2016). Agnotolojinin siyaset felsefesi ile olan ilişkisi, konuların dağılımı açısından oldukça zengindir. ...
... These links, and any examples of the harms done by science, are omitted from the triumphalist image that is presented of science in textbooks and public discourse. Judging by the perspective article, and a veritable tsunami of similarly poorly-conceived writings, scientists seem to be more susceptible than others to the lies-byomission and partial truths that help make up the public image of science (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008). ...
This commentary responds to a perspective article by a group of 27 co-authors, most affiliated to universities in the USA, with a sprinkling of international others: two each from France and Germany; one each from the UK, Australia and New Zealand; and three listing dual-country affiliations to USA as well as Israel, Germany and Australia. The perspective article claims that science is in serious danger from the replacement of merit by identity as the basis for assessments in science education, hiring of scientists, and research funding decisions. Although stopping just short of saying this ‘is’ happening, its purpose is to issue a warning that the future of science is under threat, if such trends were to continue. Given its relevance to science and science education in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is important for us as Māori and non-Māori to understand the claims and arguments it makes. Below, I list and discuss its key ideas, summarise its scholarly flaws, and comment on its meta-level significance in context.
... For instance, we would say that some people are ignorant about the history of black culture in America, even if said persons knew something of that history but do not recognize the importance of the subject or are not able to experience first-hand the effect of it -the so-called white ignorance (Mills, 2007). Moreover, we would dub it ignorance spreading what in agnotology Proctor and Schiebinger (2008) called "doubtmongering," as the intentional spreading of rumors and doubts regarding the dangers of certain substances (e.g., what tobacco companies have done in the Sixties and Seventies - (Oreskes & Conway, 2011)). ...
... Nor does it resemble a search for confirmatory information, as studied in the selective exposure literature (see Sweeny et al., 2010). The study of deliberate ignorance is also to be distinguished from the study of agnotology (Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008) and the sociology of ignorance (McGoey, 2014), which investigate the systematic production of ignorance by obscuring knowledge or disseminating fake news, as in generating and supporting public ignorance about global climate change. ...
Deliberate ignorance is the willful choice not to know the answer to a question of personal relevance. The question of whether a man is the biological father of his child is a sensitive issue in many cultures and can lead to litigation, divorce, and disinheritance. Thanks to DNA tests, men are easily able to resolve the uncertainty. Psychological theories that picture humans as informavores who are averse to ambiguity suggest men would do a DNA test, as does evolutionary theory, which considers investing in raising a rival’s offspring a mistake. We conducted two representative studies using computer-based face-to-face interviews in Germany (n = 969) and Spain (n = 1,002) to investigate whether men actually want to know and how women would react to this desire. As a base line, Germans (Spanish) estimated that 10% (20%) of fathers mistakenly believe that they are the biological father of their child. Nevertheless, in both countries, only 4% of fathers reported that they had performed a DNA paternity test, while 96% said they had not. In contrast, among men without children, 38% (33%) of Germans (Spanish) stated they would do a DNA test if they had children, mostly without telling their partners. Spanish women with children would more often disapprove of a paternity test or threaten their husbands with divorce (25%) than would German women (13%). We find that a simple test of risk aversion, measured also by the purchase of non-mandatory insurances, is correlated with not wanting to know.
... These are exciting times for the psychedelic humanities. Psychedelic science is becoming increasingly heterogeneousthrough ever-more-sophisticated basic scientific research, the increasingly complex array of tactics and strategies by which industrial psychedelic science is producing both knowledge and ignorance (Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008), and more creative local psychedelic trial designs that strike the balance between controlled experimentation and real-world evidencing afresh as psychedelic medicine is normalized and barriers to entry for research are diminished. The psychedelic humanities will no doubt engage with all of this, but also find its own pathways, in search of new modes of flourishing in the intimacies of our relationships with and through psychedelic substances. ...
... Works in agnotology are mainly located in history of science, maybe because most Introduction 17 of the scholars who use the term and work in this field are historians of science (cf. Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). Some scholars try to relegate work on ignorance from epistemology to agnotology, but as I will argue in the next section, ignorance does belong with epistemology and not with agnotology. ...
... Pour ce faire, nous allons nous appuyer sur la notion d'agnotologie qui correspond à la production culturelle de l'ignorance (Proctor et Schiebinger, 2008). C'est une notion qui a en premier lieu servi à comprendre les efforts de l'industrie du tabac pour discréditer le lien de cause à effet entre les cigarettes et plusieurs maladies comme le cancer, lien que la plupart des recherches sérieuses (et indépendantes) mettaient en évidence. ...
... Ichd ankeA lexander Christian für den Hinweis auf Proctors Arbeit. 43 Proctor giltz usammen mit Londa Schiebinger als Begründer dieses Forschungsfeldes.R epräsentative Arbeiten verschiedener Agnotologen und zu weiterenThemen finden sich in Proctor und Schiebinger(2008) Risiken des Rauchens in Zweifel gezogen (Bedingunga )) und andererseits haben Oreskes und Conwaydetailliert aufgezeigt, dass sie dies mit sachfremden Motiven tat (Bedingungb )). Die Annahmel iegt nahe, dass das Wissenu md ie Möglichkeit solcher Handlungendie Wissenschaft,Politik und Bevölkerungwachsamer gegenüber der Tabakindustrie werden lässt und dass es hierdurch schwieriger wird, solche Handlungenerfolgreich auszuführen. ...
... They are unable, or, possibly unwilling, to understand that such privilege is not available to other, non-elite students. Of note is that the location of this agnotology (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008) can differ. In some cases, elites' ignorance of their privileges can be seen as "innocent" because "knowledge has not yet penetrated" (Procter, 2008, p. 4) their understanding of "the other". ...
... In environmental policy and public health, scientists have described monitoring as a "co-evolutionary race" between researchers who seek knowledge and firms that seek to evade that research [19]. The threat to research validity from deliberate ignorance is so common that it is now the subject of a social science subfield on "agnotology" [51]. ...
In July 2023, New York City became the first jurisdiction globally to mandate bias audits for commercial algorithmic systems, specifically for automated employment decisions systems (AEDTs) used in hiring and promotion. Local Law 144 (LL 144) requires AEDTs to be independently audited annually for race and gender bias, and the audit report must be publicly posted. Additionally, employers are obligated to post a transparency notice with the job listing. In this study, 155 student investigators recorded 391 employers' compliance with LL 144 and the user experience for prospective job applicants. Among these employers, 18 posted audit reports and 13 posted transparency notices. These rates could potentially be explained by a significant limitation in the accountability mechanisms enacted by LL 144. Since the law grants employers substantial discretion over whether their system is in scope of the law, a null result cannot be said to indicate non-compliance, a condition we call ``null compliance." Employer discretion may also explain our finding that nearly all audits reported an impact factor over 0.8, a rule of thumb often used in employment discrimination cases. We also find that the benefit of LL 144 to ordinary job seekers is limited due to shortcomings in accessibility and usability. Our findings offer important lessons for policy-makers as they consider regulating algorithmic systems, particularly the degree of discretion to grant to regulated parties and the limitations of relying on transparency and end-user accountability.
The Covid-19 Pandemic and Human Resource Management:
Consequences, Possibilities, Difficulties, and Future Organisational Paths
Les sciences et les technologies façonnent profondément les sociétés contemporaines. Au cours des deux derniers siècles, elles sont devenues un puissant moteur de transformation, comptant parmi les formes les plus significatives de l’activité humaine, inséparables de la vie sociale, politique et économique. Analyser leurs modes de production, les dynamiques de leur circulation, les différentes formes de leur mobilisation et leur contestation est un enjeu académique et politique majeur. Cet ouvrage propose un large panorama de travaux menés en France, d’un champ de recherche international pluridisciplinaire dénommé Science and Technology Studies (STS). Cette étude est le fruit de la collaboration d’une trentaine d’auteurs. Elle a pour ambition de présenter ce domaine de recherche, sa formation, ses apports et les nouvelles perspectives qui se dessinent, en rendant accessibles et en mettant en discussion des travaux insuffisamment connus en France, alors que, paradoxalement, de nombreux chercheurs des institutions françaises contribuent de manière décisive à la production internationale dans ce domaine.
While the term “Anthropocene” has gained significant attention, it is important to note that the discussion of its terminology and status has yet to be concluded. Over the past two decades, many narrower “Anthropocene” narratives have been proposed to describe particular aspects of the problem, including “Thermocene”, “Capitalocene”, “Technocene”, “Urbanocene”, and more. This article presents an analysis of the concept “Agnotocene”. This concept explains the problems of the Anthropocene as a consequence of social mechanisms that create zones of ignorance where ecological criticism is discredited, the Earth’s depletion is denied, and corresponding scientific facts are called into question. The Agnotocene highlights that the solution to environmental problems on a planetary scale is not only political and economic but also epistemological. It includes questions about the legitimacy, accessibility, and relevance of knowledge but also requires a deeper understanding of how and why some knowledge is ignored, devalued, or suppressed. The aim of the article is to establish whether the Agnotocene can expand our understanding of global social problems related to climate change. The article proposes the definition of the Agnotocene as a direction of Anthropocene research focused on social relations, which arise on the basis of or as a result of artificial ignorance. Its special task is to detect the types, forms, and specific ways of social production of ignorance that underlie human behavior in the context of global problems of the Anthropocene, to discover the evolution of ignorance and the current “modes” of its activity, as well as to look for possible ways to adjust it in the interests of the social and climatic well-being of mankind. As an example of Agnotocene studies, the article proposes two arguments based on this interpretation. The first follows from how science has maintained the illusion of a fourth wall between an expert community and a layman for a long time, which means that climate solutions requiring citizen participation are not perceived with the expected rigor. The second argument presents climate skepticism as a natural result of the cultural development of intolerance to ignorance and uncertainty within the framework of non-expert rationality.
Varför påstår människor saker om hur tillståndet i samhället är och borde vara? Mot vilken bakgrund görs anspråk på att veta vilken väg som är den rätta?
I Den svenska berusningspolitken undersöker författarna detta genom att gräva djupt i över hundra års historia. Vi får följa utvecklingen från förbudsomröstningar, forskning, styrning, experimentell narkotikaförskrivning till nutidens debatter om Systembolagets framtid. Dessa exempel belyser hur Sveriges restriktiva syn på berusningsmedel har varit allt annat än enhetlig. Innovativa lösningar har prövats och berusningsproblemet har betraktats på olika sätt beroende på substans och tidens normer.
Boken visar att kunskap oavsett om den är erövrad, påstådd eller erfaren ofta gynnar dem som har en agenda för sitt agerande, vilket synliggör att kunskapsbaserad politik ofta består av politikbaserad kunskap. Det här är en bok som manar till eftertanke om hur vi hanterar kunskap om berusning och samhälle.
This research seeks to elaborate on using the epistemology of ignorance to understand the phenomenon of conventional general banking customer behavior. This descriptive research is based on quantitative data and then explored qualitatively. Quantitative data was collected by questionnaire from 46 participants. Apart from questionnaires, data was also obtained by interviews. Data from the interviews were used to deepen the qualitative analysis. The research results show that choosing not to become a Sharia banking customer is a phenomenon that the epistemology of ignorance can explain. A person who believes that bank interest is included in the usury category but is reluctant to become a Sharia banking customer, one of the reasons is because he is hiding behind an epistemology of ignorance. They exploit ignorance as a resource that allows knowledge to be distorted, obscured, hidden, or magnified. Ignorance becomes a strategy to avoid, hide, or make knowledge about usury unreliable. They know that bank interest is included in the category of usury and realize that usury is prohibited, but they pretend not to know and ignore their knowledge. Penelitian ini berupaya mengelaborasi penggunaan epistemologi ketidaktahuan untuk memahami fenomena perilaku nasabah perbankan umum konvensional. Penelitian deskriptif ini berbasis pada data kuantitatif yang kemudian didalami secara kualitatif. Data kuantitatif dikumpulkan dengan kuesioner dari 46 partisipan. Selain dengan kuesioner, data-data juga diperoleh dengan wawancara. Data hasil wawancara itu dimanfaatkan untuk menperdalam analisis secara kualitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa memilih untuk tidak menjadi nasabah perbankan Syariah adalah fenomena yang bisa dijelaskan dengan epistemologi ketidaktahuan. Seseorang yang memiliki keyakinan bahwa bunga bank termasuk kategori riba tetapi enggan menjadi nasabah perbankan Syariah, salah satunya karena berlindung di balik epistemologi ketidaktahuan. Mereka memanfaatkan ketidaktahuan sebagai sumber daya yang memungkinkan pengetahuan dibelokkan, dikaburkan, disembunyikan atau diperbesar. Ketidaktahuan menjadi semacam strategi untuk menghindari, menyembunyikan, atau menjadikan pengetahuan tentang riba menjadi tidak dapat diandalkan. Mereka tahu bunga bank termasuk kategori riba dan menyadari bahwa riba dilarang, tetapi mereka pura-pura tidak tahu dan mengabaikan pengetahuannya.
The US-American sociologist Neil Postman (1931–2003) was one of the most influential media critics in the second half of the 20th century. His analyses of the disappearance of childhood, the destruction of democracy and Bildung via mass media have nothing lost of their pertinence. On the contrary: In times of the so-called social media, fake news, trolls, bots and the increasing algorithmisation in today’s world a critical media analysis is more necessary than ever. Nevertheless he remained an optimist, calling for more Bildung and a Second Enlightenment.
A partir de las ideas pioneras de J.D. Bernal se discute el sentido del modelo educativo llamado Ciencia Tecnología y Sociedad (CTS). Se reconocen las dificultades de su recepción por científicos y docentes de muchos lugares particularmente en la Nueva Escuela Mexicana. Adicionalmente se comparan las ideas de CTS con la de STEM para tratar de identificar hacia dónde se encamina la enseñanza de las ciencias y las tecnologías en sociedades tan diferentes como las que se integran en México y en America Latina.
The debate about Artificial Intelligence/AI is affecting more and more social sciences as well. The public as well as the scientific debate is torn between on the one side of utopias of a brave new world and on the other side Frankensteinschen dystopias. The article reviews three major recent books on the issues of neuro sciences, history and machines. The first, edited by the US-American John Brockman, who asked the 2015 EDGE-question ‘What Do You Think About Machines That Think?’ to 186 specialists from a number of countries and disciplines, however, with heavy bias from North America. This gives a good overview of the state of the art on the issue. The second book was co-written by the historian Dieter Langewiesche and the neuro scientist Niels Birbäumer, both professors at the University of Tübingen. They coin the neologism neuro history and confront the debate about a neuronal turn in humanities, i.e. some argue that to understand history we need just to analyse the functioning of our brain. This hegemonic approach is conclusively refuted by both, although they concede that there is some overlapping between the two disciplines. Finally the Portuguese neuro scientist and psychologist Antonio Damasio, living since 1976 in the USA, instructs as convincingly in his book ‘The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures’ that – against main-stream positions and the designation of our species as homo sapiens sapiens – at the beginning of conscious life, about 500-600 million years ago, it was the feeling, which was there before reason could develop on the basis of it. That is why at the end I refer to the concept of homo sapiens demens by the French social scientist, Edgar Morin, in which he argues that we are both – sapiens and demens – at the same time. This approach explains in my eyes best the paradoxes of human life and action, including sciences.
Fake news, fake sciences, negacionismo científico, teorias da conspiração e testemunhais falsos foram algumas estratégias de desinformação do Governo Federal que marcaram o cenário de desinfodemia da COVID-19 no Brasil. Este artigo objetiva compreender a desinformação propagada durante a desinfodemia de COVID-19 no Brasil como práticas desinformacionais. Baseia-se na análise das declarações públicas do Presidente Jair Bolsonaro durante os dois primeiros anos de pandemia a partir das categorias de desinformação verificadas pela agência de fact-checking Aos Fatos que integram o especial “Todas as declarações de Bolsonaro checadas”. Constata que as declarações do Presidente Jair Bolsonaro relacionadas ao descrédito de autoridades científicas, às distorções sobre a gravidade da doença, às medidas de combate, à eficácia de vacinas e à indicação de medicamentos e tratamentos sem efeito comprovado integram práticas desinformacionais.
Forty years have passed since an inflation-adjusted price cap, widely called RPI-X, was proposed as a way of controlling prices in the UK’s newly privatised monopoly telecommunications company by a form of incentive regulation. The paper traces developments since then in several jurisdictions, within the context of a wider field of changing regulatory governance involving legislatures and governments as well as regulatory agencies. The focus is on, first, the experience of increasing complexity of the incentive schemes adopted, and second on the growing political salience of regulatory decisions which adds goals such as net zero, with more direct quantitative targets, to maximising consumer welfare. The implications of these changes for regulatory interventions are considered.
As studies show, families in contact with child protection services are families with
many poverty issues, such as unemployment, low income, health issues, bad housing.
The adverse living conditions make it often difficult to parent children. In this chapter,
we have chosen to analyze an excerpt from an interview with a mother who has been
deprived of custody of her child. In the interview, the mother explains how the Child
Welfare Service uses attachment theory to support its assessments. By looking at how
attachment theory dominates in the practice of the Child Welfare Service, risks being
applied beyond how it is intended, we show how ignorance can contribute to producing,
maintaining, and developing social work practice. In this way, we have tried to exem�plify and make visible how practice emerges as a result of knowledge we do not have.
Keywords: child welfare, ignorance, attachment theory, Niklas Luhmann, care order
Ignorance is produced through mechanisms related to power relations and socio-cultural context. This article examines whether the theoretical conceptualisation of agnotology may be useful when exploring intersex and the way it has been erased socially and physically. Specifically, based on the work of a PhD in Sociology and History of Science, it proposes categorising three types of mechanisms of ignorance production—cultural, epistemological and physical—with the aim of providing a greater understanding of how medicine, science and technology participate in a continuous process of erasing intersex bodies and lived experiences. Using medical literature, interviews and observations, the article focuses on a specific area of biomedical knowledge and intervention: the prenatal ‘treatment’ of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) with dexamethasone or ‘prenatal DEX’. It shows how this procedure was pioneered by French doctors and how it continues to be practised in France despite numerous uncertainties and controversies inside and outside of the medical sphere.
The concept of violence can be usefully enriched taking advantage of Thom’s theory of morphogenesis, based on the catastrophe theory.
In this chapter I will analyze some important aspects of the organization of Research and Development (R &D) in the case of biopharmaceutical companies, which represent a prototypical situation of what I call impoverished epistemic niches.
Depuis près de quarante ans, la pollution de « l’air intérieur » des espaces clos (domiciles, bureaux, écoles) a été identifiée comme un risque sanitaire important, du fait de la présence de nombreux polluants toxiques. En France, l’État s’est organisé administrativement et techniquement pour prendre en charge ce nouveau risque. Cette structuration de l’action publique fait suite aux alertes émises par des milieux universitaires et techniques internationaux dès les années 1970, mais ne débouche que trois décennies plus tard avec l’adoption de régulations, dont principalement l’étiquetage de certains matériaux de construction selon leur degré d’émissivité et de dangerosité. Ce traitement du problème est particulièrement discret, au sens où il prend la forme d’une régulation technique spécialisée dans laquelle un petit nombre d’experts et d’organismes a joué un rôle central, en particulier en agissant sur la définition des enjeux, de leur importance relative, des outils de connaissance à mobiliser et des leviers d’action à privilégier. Cet article propose de reconstituer la genèse de l’encadrement techno-administratif du problème des pollutions de l’air intérieur pour comprendre, sous l’angle d’une sociologie de l’action publique et de ses producteurs, comment une « politique de l’étiquette » a finalement prédominé, faisant porter la responsabilité du changement sur les consommateurs individuels.
One of the most difficult challenges facing African feminist knowledge production on gendered and sexual violence is its persistent erasure. Despite decades of rich, complex, multimodal and wide-ranging discourse on the meanings of gendered and sexual violence in contexts embedded in colonial legacies of racist and class-based systems, ideas as ordinary to African feminist activism as “rape is not sex; rape is violence” (a mantra of early Rape Crisis teaching in the late 1970s) get systematically “disappeared” by what Gqola calls “rape as a language”. In this article, I explore some of the agnotological technologies at work in disappearing key understandings of gendered and sexual violence, understandings developed through feminist activisms and research. The South African context informs the thinking, which entails rigorous concern with theorisations of gendered and sexual violence rooted in historical and contemporary discussions of race and racialisation. A key difference between Northern-oriented and Southern grapples with questions of gendered and sexual violence lies in Southern integrity regarding the death grip of colonialities and the concomitant epistemological imperative of revolution against these. In the article, I work with a group of participants based in the highly public and effective Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women together with a particular instance of gendered violence against women (Enhle Mbali’s accusation of domestic violence against Black Coffee, in 2021) where it is possible to watch the recirculation of ideas long debunked by African feminist activism. I argue for an approach to knowledge creation alert to the politics of “disappearance".
L’objectif de cet article à deux voix est de réfléchir de manière critique à la production du savoir et de l’ignorance associée aux femmes noires et, ou d’ascendance africaine dans l’épidémie de VIH/sida. Nous partirons d’un cas d’étude spécifique, la PrEP (prophylaxie pré-exposition), qui est devenue une technologie de prévention majeure dans le contexte actuel de réagencement de l’épidémie autour de la prévention combinée. Or, les femmes d’ascendance africaine, qui constituent le second groupe le plus touché par l’épidémie en Europe, ne l’utilisent toujours pas. Cette absence renvoie à des logiques complexes à l’articulation du genre, de la sexualité, de la classe et de la race que nous questionnerons en partant de la classification des formes d’ignorance proposée par Nancy Tuana.
Feminist scholars have identified pervasive gender discrimination in science as an institution, as well as gender bias in the very content of many scientific theories. An ameliorative project at heart, feminist philosophy of science has inquired into the social and epistemological roots and consequences of these problems and into their potential solutions. Most feminist philosophers agree on a need for diversity in scientific communities to counter the detrimental effects of gender bias. Diversity could thus serve as a unifying concept for a potential consensus of the field. Yet there are substantial differences in the kinds and roles of diversity envisaged. This element argues that we need diversity, both in terms of social locations and of values, to overcome former biases and blind spots. Diversity as such, however, is insufficient. To reap its epistemic benefits, diversity also needs to be institutionalised in a way that counters various forms of epistemic injustice.
Misinformation and biased information significantly impact public perception and political decisions, especially on critical issues such as climate change and environmental conservation. This study aims to understand how indeterminacy and contradiction influence public perception and policy formulation by applying neutrosophic theory to model the complexity and multi-dimensionality of ignorance. Using neutrosophic Likert scales, we capture a nuanced spectrum of opinions on the scientific certainty of human impact on climate change. The results are analyzed through a k-means clustering algorithm to identify patterns and segment participants into groups based on their levels of truth, indeterminacy, and falsehood. This approach reveals deeper insights into public perceptions and aids in evaluating their implications for effective communication and policy-making
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