Introduction: knowledge, ignorance, and relations of dominance

Abstract

This mini special issue investigates ethnographically the ways in which the acknowledgment of ignorance gains various meanings and leads to diverse actions depending on the position of those deemed ignorant within the existing relations of dominance. Building on the insight of Hervé Varenne (2007) that acknowledgment of ignorance is a productive moment that pushes one to ponder what one might do with a previously unnoticed object in one's environment, we add an emphasis on the notion of power and examine various uses of ignorance embedded in given fields of relations of dominance. By showing that being ignorant is not a given state of the dominated, a straight-forward cause or effect of the relations of dominance, or an inevitable precursor to knowing, this mini special issue offers an alternative approach to the existing discussion of knowledge and power, which usually connects having knowledge to being in a relative position of dominance.