Strategic unknowns

Towards a Sociology of Ignorance

Bibliographic Data

ID2159595
AuthorsLinsey Mcgoey (0000-0002-4404-2574, University of Essex, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume41
Issue1
Pages1-16
Publication date2012-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomy and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03085147.2011.637330
OpenAlexW2040939173
LanguageEN
Citations received262
References cited33

Developing an agenda for the social study of ignorance, this paper introduces the sociology of strategic unknowns: the investigation of the multifaceted ways that ignorance can be harnessed as a resource, enabling knowledge to be deflected, obscured, concealed or magnified in a way that increases the scope of what remains unintelligible. In contrast to theoretical preoccupations that underlie the study of knowledge accumulation, a focus on the importance of strategic unknowns resists the tendency to value knowledge over ignorance or to assume that the procurement of more knowledge is linked in an automatic or a linear fashion to the attainment of more social or political power. Refining and challenging the assumption that modern liberal societies inevitably thrive on the accumulation of information about the public personas, private psyches, consumer habits or political proclivities of citizens, the papers in the special issue explore how the cultivation of strategic unknowns remains a resource - perhaps the greatest resource - for those in a position of power and those subject to it

Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ignorance · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of knowledge · Value (mathematics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Computer Science · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Social and Cultural Dynamics