The Sociology of Ignorance and Post‐Truth Politics

Hess, David J.

doi:10.1111/socf.12577

Cited by 23 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…However, some of the knowledge is also what I and others have termed undone science. The concept of undone science is situated in the broader field of research on knowledge and ignorance as one of the many forms of ignorance (Gross & McGoey, 2015;Hess, 2020). Among the different types of nonknowledge, undone science has two main elements.…”

Section: Background Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Undone Science and Smart Cities: Civil Society Perspectives on Risk and Emerging Technologies

Hess

2021

Knowledge and Civil Society

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This study contributes to the analysis of civil society and knowledge by examining mobilizations by civil society organizations and grassroots networks in opposition to wireless smart meters in the United States. Three types of mobilizations are reviewed: grassroots anti-smart-meter networks, privacy organizations, and organizations that advocate for reduced exposure to non-ionizing electromagnetic fields. The study shows different relationships to scientific knowledge that include publicizing risks and conducting citizen science, identifying non-controversial areas of future research, and pointing to deeper problems of undone science (a particular type of non-knowledge that emerges when actors mobilize in the public interest and find an absence or low volume of research that could have been used to support their concerns). By comparing different types of knowledge claims made by the civil society organizations and networks, the study examines the conditions under which mobilized civil society generates positive responses from incumbent organizations versus resistance and undone science.

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Section: Background Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Undone Science and Smart Cities: Civil Society Perspectives on Risk and Emerging Technologies

Hess

2021

Knowledge and Civil Society

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“…Sociologists of science and science and technology (STS) scholars use a range of approaches to characterize the nature of scientific knowledge and ignorance production in environmental issues (Hess 2009;Howard 2011), with growing attention to ignorance in recent decades (Croissant 2014;Frickel and Vincent 2007;Gross 2007;Gross and McGoey 2015;Hess 2019;Proctor 2008). We follow Frickel and Edwards (2014) in defining ignorance as "domain-based absence of knowledge" (p. 215).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing Ignorance Through Regulatory Structure: The Case of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)

Richter

Cordner

Brown

2020

Sociological Perspectives

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This article examines how ignorance can be produced by regulatory systems. Using the case of contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), we identify patterns of institutionalized ignorance in U.S. chemical regulation. Drawing on in-depth interviews and archival research, we develop a chemical regulatory pathway approach to study knowledge and ignorance production through the regulatory framework, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Investigating TSCA’s operation, we consider why PFAS were relatively recently recognized as a significant public health threat, despite evidence of their risks in the 1960s. The historical context of TSCA’s enactment, including the mobilization of the chemical industry, contributed to the institutionalization of organizational practices promoting distinct types of ignorance based on stakeholder position: chemical manufacturers who have discretion over knowledge production and dissemination, regulators who operate under selective ignorance, and communities and consumers who experience nescience, or total surprise.

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“…STS scholars have intricately traced how knowledge gaps and regulatory fragmentation in environmental management can enable industrial pollution to go unaccounted for. Regulatory exemptions for industry (Wylie 2018), the separation of oversight activities across multiple government agencies (Allen 2003), the spatial fragmentation of environmental monitoring (Frickel and Vincent 2011;Kinchy et al 2016), and other forms of "undone science" (Frickel et al 2010;Hess 2020;Murphy 2006) are all processes that can get in the way of holding polluters responsible and protecting communities from harmful impacts of industry. Building on this critical scholarship, I show that the fragmentation of environmental data, along with its purposeful nonproduction, not only makes it difficult to substantiate claims to environmental harm.…”

Section: Double Bind Of In/commensurationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggregate Airs: Atmospheres of Oil and Gas in the Greater Chaco

Grant

2020

Engaging STS

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In the Greater Chaco region of northwest New Mexico, new fracking technologies are stirring up lands, chemicals, and relations that concentrate attention in the surround. This article argues that extraction’s cumulative atmospheric effects are experienced by Diné residents of the region in ways that cannot be accounted for by the agencies that manage oil and gas. The state’s presumption of atmospheric commensurability is reinforced by techniques of settler governance that fragment ecological and ontological domains like air and land. This fragmentation often preempts the possibility for Indigenous claims to meaningfully disrupt administrative or judicial actions. Unfolding extraction’s atmospheres across three cases, I examine how scale mediates the problem of commensurability. I describe how prevailing approaches to regulating impacts of the oil and gas industry manipulate scale in ways that obscure the cumulative effects of extraction. Drawing on fieldwork with Diné residents of the region who have mobilized to study how fracking affects their wellbeing, and I show how this scalar work facilitates the commensuration of extraction’s impacts across Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds––as well as when this commensuration fails.

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The Sociology of Ignorance and Post‐Truth Politics

Abstract: This essay is written in response to Fujimura and Holmes’s piece “Staying the Course,” published in the December 2019 special issue of Sociological Forum—Resistance in the Twenty‐First Century.

Cited by 23 publications

References 38 publications

Undone Science and Smart Cities: Civil Society Perspectives on Risk and Emerging Technologies

Undone Science and Smart Cities: Civil Society Perspectives on Risk and Emerging Technologies

Producing Ignorance Through Regulatory Structure: The Case of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)

Aggregate Airs: Atmospheres of Oil and Gas in the Greater Chaco

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