This book discusses the concept of 'agnosis' and its significance for criminology through a series of case studies, contributing to the expansion of the criminological imagination. Agnotology – the study of the cultural production of ignorance, has primarily been proposed as an analytical tool in the fields of science and medicine. However, this book argues that it has significant resonance for criminology and the social sciences given that ignorance is a crucial means through which public acceptance of serious and sometimes mass harms is achieved. The editors argue that this phenomenon requires a systematic inquiry into ignorance as an area of criminological study in its own right. Through case studies on topics such as migrant detention, historical institutionalised child abuse, imprisonment, environmental harm and financial collapse, this book examines the construction of ignorance, and the power dynamics that facilitate and shape that construction in a range of different contexts. Furthermore, this book addresses the relationship between ignorance and the achievement of ‘manufactured consent’ to political and cultural hegemony, acquiescence in its harmful consequences and the deflection of responsibility for them.

“The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know.” Lao Tzu “In the West they only respect experts. But the expert mind is the closed mind.” Shunryu Suzuki What’s the most important step in fixing a puncture? It isn’t jacking up the car, or taking the wheel off, or finding the puncture. There’s something more fundamental than any of those. Something without which you can’t even begin to fix a puncture. The most important step is finding out you’ve got a puncture. Without that you can’t do anything. Instead of saying, “It’s just a bit bumpy, must be the road,” and carrying on, you must acknowledge that something has changed and you don’t know what that is. If you don’t admit you don’t know what’s happening, you can never find out. If you don’t find out, you can never change it. The most important step, always, is admitting you don’t know. That’s the power of ignorance. In this latest collection of real-life stories, Dave Trott provides lessons about problem solving and creative thinking that can be applied in advertising, business, and the wider world. With his trademark wit, wisdom and critical eye, he shows how great problem solvers and creative thinkers are those who are not afraid to say “I don’t know.”

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? Does the idea that knowledge is power still apply in today’s post-truth world? A bold, wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between ignorance and power in the modern age, from debates over colonial power and economic rent-seeking in the 18th and 19th centuries to the legal defences of today, The Unknowers shows that strategic ignorance has not only long been an inherent part of modern power and big business, but also that true power lies in the ability to convince others of where the boundary between ignorance and knowledge lies.

This book challenges the given dichotomies between crime and harm, and criminology and zemiology. The main aim of the volume is to highlight the inexorable interconnectedness between systemically induced social harm and the corrosive flows of everyday crime both perpetrated and endured by those victimised by the capitalist system and its hegemonic vicissitudes. Drawing attention not only to various structurally imbedded harms, the chapters also outline the wider consequences of such harms, as they extend beyond immediate victims and contribute towards the further perpetuation of criminogenic and zemiogenic conditions. Comprising two parts, the first explores the relationship between crime and harm and criminology and zemiology, and the second explores the intersections of crime and harm through various lenses, including those trained on probation; global mobility; sexuality and gender; war and gendered violence; fashion counterfeiting; and the harms of the service economy. An exciting and wide-reaching volume written by world-renowned scholars, this collection is a must-read for students, academics, and policy makers in the fields of law, criminology, sociology, social policy, criminal justice, and social justice.

A startling and important exposé on the state of medicine, research, and healthcare today by the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society How We Do Harm exposes the underbelly of healthcare today—the overtreatment of the rich, the under treatment of the poor, the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians' provide, insurance companies that don't demand the best (or even the least expensive) care, and pharmaceutical companies concerned with selling drugs, regardless of whether they improve health or do harm. Dr. Otis Brawley is the chief medical and scientific officer of The American Cancer Society, an oncologist with a dazzling clinical, research, and policy career. How We Do Harm pulls back the curtain on how medicine is really practiced in America. Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance will pay); a public primed to swallow the latest pill, no matter the cost; and rising healthcare costs for unnecessary—and often unproven—treatments that we all pay for. Brawley calls for rational healthcare, healthcare drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs. Brawley's personal history – from a childhood in the gang-ridden streets of black Detroit, to the green hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, the largest public hospital in the U.S., to the boardrooms of The American Cancer Society—results in a passionate view of medicine and the politics of illness in America - and a deep understanding of healthcare today. How We Do Harm is his well-reasoned manifesto for change.

Sensory Penalties aims to reinvigorate a conversation about the role of sensory experience in empirical investigation. It explores the visceral, personal reflections buried within forgotten criminological field notes, to ask what privileging these sensorial experiences does for how we understand and research spaces of punishment and social control.

The Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology was the first comprehensive and international anthology dedicated to green criminology. It presented green criminology to an international audience, described the state of the field, offered a description of a range of environmental issues of regional and global importance, and argued for continued criminological attention to environmental crimes and harms, setting an agenda for further study. In the six years since its publication, the field has continued to grow and thrive. This revised and expanded second edition of the Handbook reflects new methodological orientations, new locations of study such as Asia, Canada and South America, and new responses to environmental harms. While a number of the original chapters have been revised, the second edition offers a range of fresh chapters covering new and emerging areas of study, such as: conservation criminology, eco-feminism, environmental victimology, fracking, migration and eco-rights, and e-waste. This handbook continues to define and capture the field of green criminology and is essential reading for students and researchers engaged in green crime and environmental harm.

This volume brings together a diverse collection of essays that critically examine issues relating to crime and justice in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Chapters examine the issues that practitioners face in working to advance this agenda and the possibilities that exist to advance sustainable development outcomes.

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.