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Citation |
Mallard G, McGoey L. Br. J. Sociol. 2018; 69(4): 884-909. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2018, London School of Economics and Political Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
unavailable |
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Abstract |
How can we account for the role of ignorance and knowledge in global governance? It is a contention of earlier scholarship in international relations and political sociology that knowledge production is tightly coupled with rational action ? regardless of whether knowledge widely influences different stakeholders or not. This scholarship equally tends to assume an ignorance-knowledge binary relationship that associates ignorance with powerlessness and knowledge with power. This is a view we dispute. Calling for a new approach to the study of ignorance and knowledge in international politics, our article builds on research from ignorance studies, science and technology studies and critical race theory to derive a novel typology of epistemologies of power in which truth and ignorance are defined and combined in a plurality of ways. Approaching differing epistemologies of power in the transnational realm in a general or ?ecumenical? manner, we identify weaknesses in earlier approaches to the study of knowledge production in global affairs, and present four new concepts: ?factual determinism?, ?cynical realism?, ?unseeing proceduralism? and ?hopeful constructivism?. Through this framework, our article calls for greater recognition of the constitutive role that ignorance plays in operations of power on a global scale. |
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Keywords |
epistemic communities; Global governance; knowledge; strategic ignorance; world polity |