I am currently a research fellow at CRASSH, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, at Cambridge University. One of the things I’m working on is an interdisciplinary project on ‘Speaking Ethically Across Borders’....
Part of my argument in the recent neoliberalism debate [Obsolete link removed. Original url: ../2012-12-05-gdat-neoliberalism-anthropology] was that, evidence of discontent about any aspect, be it ever so narrow, of what have been identified as...
On Saturday I had the pleasure of taking part in GDAT, an annual debate on anthropological theory hosted by Manchester University. GDAT, the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory, was started in the late 80s by Tim Ingold, and has been...
Dear Michael, Thanks again for taking the time to engage with me earlier. Sorry that this is a bit of a long reply… In your comment you note: the fundamental questions remains: Why are only “religious” communities able to augment this in-group...
William Robertson Smith (source: Wikipedia) This is a reply to Martin Michael Blume’s comment [Obsolete link removed. Original url: http://jonathanmair.com/evolution-and-religion/#comment-18] to my previous post [Obsolete link removed. Original...
The explanatory power of evolutionary theory is clear. However, these days, people seem to rush to evolutionary explanations for all sorts of real and perceived human behaviours. The danger of doing this is that in going straight to the question...
Here’a another exercise in the anthropology of ignorance, this time focused on ignorance in education — a special issue of Critical Studies in Education from 2009. The introduction, by Neriko Musha Doerr explains: While resonating with Bourdieu’s...
I’ve just come across the work of Joanne Gaudet, a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa who has been working on issues of ignorance and the productivity of ignorance from a sociological — and especially sociology of science — point of view....
Paul Stoller has a post on the Huffington Post on education, ignorance and politics. Some of what he has to say relates to policies that aim to constrain the acquisition of knowledge. Here’s one example I find particularly astounding, not because...
Jenny Diggins (Sussex) and I have just issued the following call for papers for a panel on the anthropology of ignorance, to be held at the IUAES Congress in Manchester next summer. Feel free to get in touch if you’re considering submitting a...