With speaker Professor Linsey McGoey, Department of Sociology, University of Essex
PLEASE NOTE: This event has been postponed, a new date to be confirmed. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Abstract
Deliberate ignorance has been known as the ‘Ostrich Instruction’ in law courts since the 1860s. It illustrates a recurring pattern in history in which figureheads for major companies, political leaders and industry bigwigs plead ignorance to avoid culpability. So why do so many figures at the top still get away with it when disasters on their watch damage so many people’s lives?
When the phone hacking scandal rocked the United Kingdom in 2011, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News International, knew nothing of the criminal goings-on. After a fire swept through the Grenfell Tower, it soon came to light that the tragedy was a result of the wilful ignorance of experts. Does the idea that knowledge is power still apply in today’s post-truth world?
Encompassing the building of industrial empires in 19th century America to the legal defences of today, The Unknowers shows that ignorance has not only long been an inherent part big business, but also that true power lies in the ability to convince others of where the boundary between ignorance and knowledge lies.
Speaker bio
McGoey is Professor of Sociology, with expertise in social theory and economic sociology. She is recognized internationally for playing a pioneering role in the establishment of ignorance studies, an interdisciplinary field focused on exploring how strategic ignorance and the will to ignore have underpinned economic exchange and political domination throughout history. Her research on ignorance has led to new conceptual frameworks for understanding the political value of ignorance and the unknown.
She is also recognized for work on philanthropic foundations and their role in the global economy. Her book, No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy, is the first book-length analysis of the Gates Foundation's influence, both negative and positive, on global health and development. Her research on the new philanthropy links to her general focus on the role of power, ignorance and knowledge in contemporary society, with an emphasis on how corporate power and corporate domination affect well-being and inequality around the world
Peer-reviewed articles appear in Economy and Society, Theory, Culture and Society, Science, Technology and Human Values, Politix, and the British Journal of Sociology. Books include No Such Thing as a Free Gift (Verso, 2015) and The Unknowers (Zed, 2019). She is a founding editor, with Matthias Gross and Michael Smithson, of the Routledge Research in Ignorance Studies book series.
McGoey is on the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity, University of Vienna, the Editorial Board of Economy and Society, and the Editorial Advisory Board of Finance and Society. She has held visiting fellowships at the Brocher Foundation, the LSE and Sciences Po.
