Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance
by: Robert Proctor, Londa Schiebinger (Editors)

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 298 pages. 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. Clean copy.