The Anthropology of Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach

226 Pages·2012·1.73 MB·English

by  Casey High

Culture, Mind, and Society
The Book Series of the Society for
Psychological Anthropology
The Society for Psychological Anthropology—a section of the American
Anthropology Association—and Palgrave Macmillan are dedicated to
publishing innovative research in culture and psychology that illuminates
the workings of the human mind within the social, cultural, and political
contexts that shape thought, emotion, and experience. As anthropologists
seek to bridge gaps between ideation and emotion or agency and structure
and as psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical anthropologists search for
ways to engage with cultural meaning and difference, this interdisciplinary
terrain is more active than ever.
Series Editor
Rebecca J. Lester, Department of Anthropology, Washington University in
St. Louis
Editorial Board
Linda Garro, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los
Angeles
Catherine Lutz, Department of Anthropology, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill
Peggy Miller, Departments of Psychology and Speech Communication,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Robert Paul, Department of Anthropology, Emory University
Bradd Shore, Department of Anthropology, Emory University
Carol Worthman, Department of Anthropology, Emory University
Titles in the Series
Adrie Kusserow, American Individualisms: Child Rearing and Social Class
in Three Neighborhoods
Naomi Quinn, editor, F inding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods
Anna Mansson McGinty, B ecoming Muslim: Western Women’s Conversion
to Islam
Roy D’Andrade, A Study of Personal and Cultural Values: American,
Japanese, and Vietnamese
Steven M. Parish, S ubjectivity and Suffering in American Culture: Possible
Selves
Elizabeth A. Throop, Psychotherapy, American Culture, and Social Policy:
Immoral Individualism
Victoria Katherine Burbank, A n Ethnography of Stress: The Social
Determinants of Health in Aboriginal Australia
Karl G. Heider, The Cultural Context of Emotion: Folk Psychology in
West Sumatra
Jeannette Marie Mageo, Dreaming Culture: Meanings, Models, and Power
in U.S. American Dreams
Casey High, Ann H. Kelly, and Jonathan Mair, T he Anthropology of
Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach
The Anthropology of Ignorance
A n E thnographic A pproach
Edited by
Casey High, Ann H. Kelly, and Jonathan Mair
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF IGNORANCE
Copyright © Casey High, Ann H. Kelly, and Jonathan Mair, 2012.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012978-0-230-34082-4
All rights reserved.
First published in 2012 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
Figure 8.1 is reproduced with permission of Extend Fertility and Ina Lim.
Cover image see , hear , speak no evil reproduced with permission of Chris
Walkington.
ISBN 978-1-349-34354-6 ISBN 978-1-137-03312-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137033123
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The anthropology of ignorance : an ethnographic approach / edited by
Casey High, Ann Kelly, and Jonathan Mair.
p. cm.—(Culture, Mind, and Society series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978–0– 230– 34082– 4 (hardback)
1. Ethnology—Philosophy. 2. Ethnopsychology. 3. Ignorance (Theory
of knowledge)—Social aspects. I. High, Casey, Ph. D. II. Kelly, Ann, 1980–
III. Mair, Jonathan, 1977–
GN345.A64 2012
306.4(cid:2)2—dc23 2011036786
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: April 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1 Introduction: Making Ignorance an
Ethnographic Object 1
Jonathan Mair, Ann H. Kelly, and Casey High
Chapter 2 Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous
Objects in Dakar, Senegal 33
Gretchen Pfeil
Chapter 3 Discourses of the Coming: Ignorance, Forgetting,
and Prolepsis in Japanese Life-Historiography 5 5
Shunsuke Nozawa
Chapter 4 Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in
Social Networking’s Ideals of Reciprocity 87
David S. Leitner
Chapter 5 Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in
Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism 1 19
Casey High
Chapter 6 “I Don’t Know Why He Did It. It Happened
by Itself”: Causality and Suicide in Northwest
Greenland 137
Janne Flora
Chapter 7 Inhabiting the Temporary: Patience and
Uncertainty among Urban Squatters in
Buenos Aires 163
Valeria Procupez
vi Contents
Chapter 8 “Fertility. Freedom. Finally.”: Cultivating
Hope in the Face of Uncertain Futures among
Egg-Freezing Women 189
Tiffany Romain
Notes on Contributors 217
Index 219
Tables and Figures
Tables
3.1 I conic characterization of “kinds of texts”:
“Narrative” versus “record” 71
3.2 “Critique” and “Praise”: How to count everybody 7 4
Figures
4.1 I nvesting in networking 104
8.1 Graph of women’s decline in fertility with age 1 94

Acknowledgments
This volume is the outcome of a conversation over several years.
We are grateful to the many people who participated in it and who
helped shape its content, above all to the contributors. We would also
like to thank Matei Candea, Joanna Cook, Liana Chua, Caroline
Humphrey, A. Hurelbaatar, Wendy James, James Laidlaw, Erica
Mansnerus, Juliana Ochs, Maja Petrovic-Steger, Annabel Pinker,
Emilia Sanabria, and Alice Street for their encouragement and for
helpful comments on drafts of the introductory chapter. Samantha
Hasey, our editor at Palgrave Macmillan, as well as the anonymous
readers and copyeditors who have worked on this text also have our
warm appreciation.
Institutional supporters have included the Department of Social
Anthropology, Cambridge University, which provided funding for
a conference on Discourses of Failure in 2006, where our shared
interest in ignorance began to crystallize, and St John’s College,
Cambridge, which provided funding and a wonderful venue for a
symposium held under the title “Anthropology of Ignorance and
Unknowing” in September 2009, where we decided to produce this
collection. St John’s also generously provided funds in support of the
production costs of this book.
In December 2009, at the annual meeting of the American
Anthropology Association in Philadelphia, early versions of the
chapters by Gretchen Pfeil and Shunsuke Nozawa were presented at a
panel titled “Ways of Not Knowing,” and those by Valeria Procupez,
and Tiffany Romain at one titled “Living with Anticipation and
Uncertainty: Anthropology of the Actual and Unknowable.” We
would like to express our thanks to the organizers of these panels
for bringing the work of these young scholars to our attention.