The Anthropology of Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach (Culture, Mind, and Society)

"Documents the many relationships and practices that depend on the suspension of knowledge or the generation, deployment, or recognition of ignorance"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction: Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object....Pages 1-32 Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous Objects in Dakar, Senegal....Pages 33-54 Discourses of the Coming: Ignorance, Forgetting, and Prolepsis in Japanese Life-Historiography....Pages 55-85 Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in Social Networking’s Ideals of Reciprocity....Pages 87-118 Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism....Pages 119-135 “I Don’t Know Why He Did It. It Happened by Itself”: Causality and Suicide in Northwest Greenland....Pages 137-161 Inhabiting the Temporary: Patience and Uncertainty among Urban Squatters in Buenos Aires....Pages 163-188 “Fertility. Freedom. Finally.”: Cultivating Hope in the Face of Uncertain Futures among Egg-Freezing Women....Pages 189-215 Back Matter....Pages 217-220 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