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4 books match the query 'Ignorance'

cover of Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering

Historicizing Fear

Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering

Travis D. Boyce

University Press of Colorado, 2019

Historicizing Fear is a historical interrogation of the use of fear as a tool to vilify and persecute groups and individuals from a global perspective, offering an unflinching look at racism, fearful framing, oppression, and marginalization across human history.The book examines fear and Othering from a historical context, providing a better understanding of how power and oppression is used in the present day.
 
Contributors ground their work in the theory of Othering—the reductive action of labeling a person as someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the Other—in relation to historical events, demonstrating that fear of the Other is universal, timeless, and interconnected. Chapters address the music of neo-Nazi white power groups, fear perpetuated through the social construct of black masculinity in a racially hegemonic society, the terror and racial cleansing in early twentieth-century Arkansas, the fear of drug-addicted Vietnam War veterans, the creation of fear by the Tang Dynasty, and more.
 
Timely, provocative, and rigorously researched, Historicizing Fear shows how the Othering of members of different ethnic groups has been used to propagate fear and social tension, justify state violence, and prevent groups or individuals from gaining equality. Broadening the context of how fear of the Other can be used as a propaganda tool, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, anthropology, political science, popular culture, critical race issues, social justice, and ethnic studies, as well as the general reader concerned with the fearful framing prevalent in politics.
 
Contributors:
Quaylan Allen, Melanie Armstrong, Brecht De Smet, Kirsten Dyck, Adam C. Fong, Jeff Johnson, Łukasz Kamieński, Guy Lancaster, Henry Santos Metcalf, Julie M. Powell, Jelle Versieren
 
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cover of On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing

On the Heels of Ignorance

Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing

Owen Whooley

University of Chicago Press, 2019

Psychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invoking the latest medical science in doing so. But, as Owen Whooley’s sweeping new book tells us, the history of American psychiatry is really a record of ignorance. On the Heels of Ignorance begins with psychiatry’s formal inception in the 1840s and moves through two centuries of constant struggle simply to define and redefine mental illness, to say nothing of the best way to treat it. Whooley’s book is no antipsychiatric screed, however; instead, he reveals a field that has muddled through periodic reinventions and conflicting agendas of curiosity, compassion, and professional striving. On the Heels of Ignorance draws from intellectual history and the sociology of professions to portray an ongoing human effort to make sense of complex mental phenomena using an imperfect set of tools, with sometimes tragic results.
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cover of The Second Alcibiades: A Platonist Dialogue on Prayer and on Ignorance

The Second Alcibiades

A Platonist Dialogue on Prayer and on Ignorance

Harold Tarrant

Parmenides Publishing, 2023

Providing a challenging new interpretation of the Second Alcibiades from the Platonic corpus, this treatment sees the dialogue not only as a work of philosophic ethics, but also as one steeped in ancient literature, particularly Euripidean tragedy. The dialogue’s philosophy is underpinned by an epistemology paying special attention to one’s personal viewpoint, as its language shows. Dramatically, it presents a Socrates who falls into a similar trap from the one he steers Alcibiades away from, facing the dangers of a tragic character thanks to their mutual attraction. Understood in this way the dialogue, here retranslated to bring out such features, is revealed as the work of an author with linguistic and literary gifts who is deeply conscious of the human condition. While reminiscent of the Academic Skeptic picture of Plato, it is the work of somebody still moving cautiously in that direction.
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cover of Time, Ignorance, and Uncertainty in Economic Models

Time, Ignorance, and Uncertainty in Economic Models

Donald W. Katzner

University of Michigan Press, 1998

Emerging from the tradition of Marshall, Knight, Keynes, and Shackle, Time, Ignorance, and Uncertainty in Economic Models is concerned with the character of formal economic analysis when the notions of logical or mechanical time and probabilistic uncertainty and the relatively complete knowledge basis it requires, are replaced, respectively, by historical time, and nonprobabilistic uncertainty and ignorance. Examining that analytical character by constructing and exploring particular models, this book emphasizes doing actual economic analysis in a framework of historical time, nonprobabilistic uncertainty, and ignorance.
Donald W. Katzner begins with an extensive investigation of the distinction between potential surprise and probability. He presents a modified version of Shackle's model of decision-making in ignorance and examines in considerable detail its "comparative statics" and operationality properties. The meaning of aggregation and simultaneity under these conditions is also explored, and Shackle's model is applied to the construction of models of the consumer, the firm, microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Katzner concludes with discussions of the roles of history, hysteresis, and empirical investigation in economic inquiry.
Time, Ignorance, and Uncertainty in Economic Models will be of interest to economists and others engaged in the study of uncertainty, probability, aggregation, and simultaneity. Those interested in the microeconomics of consumer and firm behavior, general equilibrium, and macroeconomics will also benefit from this book.
Donald W. Katzner is Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts.
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