IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/104404.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dynamics of wilful blindness: an introduction

Author

Listed:
  • Bovensiepen, Judith
  • Pelkmans, Mathijs

Abstract

What are the politics of ignorance in an age of misinformation? How can the concept of ‘wilful blindness’ help us to understand the logics involved? We start the introduction to this special issue by arguing that the intrinsic instability of wilful blindness draws valuable attention to the graded nature of intentionality and perception, and the tensions between them. These features are an essential part of the workings of ignorance, as we illustrate with reference to the shifting intentions of drug couriers, the fleeting moments in which the humanity of victims is recognised in the midst of violent acts, and the affects that channel economic behaviour, such as in the subprime mortgage crisis. When approaching perception and intentionality as complexly entangled in institutionalised fields of power, ‘wilful blindness’ emerges as a powerful and critical diagnostic of the epistemic instabilities of our time.

Suggested Citation

  • Bovensiepen, Judith & Pelkmans, Mathijs, 2020. "Dynamics of wilful blindness: an introduction," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104404, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:104404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/104404/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keene, D.E. & Cowan, S.K. & Baker, A.C., 2015. ""When you're in a crisis like that, you don't want people to know": Mortgage strain, stigma, and mental health," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(5), pages 1008-1012.
    2. Ing-Haw Cheng & Sahil Raina & Wei Xiong, 2014. "Wall Street and the Housing Bubble," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2797-2829, September.
    3. David Tuckett, 2011. "Minding the Markets," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-30782-7, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christophe Bonneuil & Pierre-Louis Choquet & Benjamin Franta, 2021. "Early warnings and emerging accountability: Total’s responses to global warming, 1968-2021," Post-Print halshs-03390521, HAL.
    2. Christophe Bonneuil & Pierre-Louis Choquet & Benjamin Franta, 2021. "Early warnings and emerging accountability: Total’s responses to global warming, 1968-2021," SciencePo Working papers Main halshs-03390521, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kuang, Pei, 2014. "A model of housing and credit cycles with imperfect market knowledge," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 419-437.
    2. Alessia De Stefani, 2021. "House price history, biased expectations, and credit cycles: The role of housing investors," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1238-1266, December.
    3. Dow Alexander & Dow Sheila C., 2011. "Animal Spirits Revisited," Capitalism and Society, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-25, December.
    4. Vásquez-Vera, Hugo & Palència, Laia & Magna, Ingrid & Mena, Carlos & Neira, Jaime & Borrell, Carme, 2017. "The threat of home eviction and its effects on health through the equity lens: A systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 199-208.
    5. Yuming Fu & Wenlan Qian & Bernard Yeung, 2016. "Speculative Investors and Transactions Tax: Evidence from the Housing Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(11), pages 3254-3270, November.
    6. Munday, Tim & Brookes, James, 2021. "Mark my words: the transmission of central bank communication to the general public via the print media," Bank of England working papers 944, Bank of England.
    7. Deeksha Gupta, 2018. "Too Much Skin-in-the-Game? The Effect of Mortgage Market Concentration on Credit and House Prices," 2018 Meeting Papers 512, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Carlos Garriga & Aaron Hedlund, 2019. "Crises in the Housing Market: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Lessons," Working Papers 2019-33, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    9. Liu, Xuewen & Wang, Pengfei & Yang, Zhongchao, 2024. "Delayed crises and slow recoveries," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    10. Zhenyu Gao & Michael Sockin & Wei Xiong, 2020. "Learning about the Neighborhood," NBER Working Papers 26907, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Hadiye Aslan, 2022. "Personal Financial Distress, Limited Attention," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 97-128, March.
    12. Holtemöller Oliver, 2013. "Explosive Preisentwicklung und spekulative Blasen auf Rohstoffmärkten / Explosive behavior and speculative bubbles on commodity markets," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 64(1), pages 405-420, January.
    13. Luc Laeven & Alexander Popov, 2017. "Waking Up from the American Dream: On the Experience of Young Americans during the Housing Boom of the 2000s," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(5), pages 861-895, August.
    14. Emmanuel Laffort & Emmanuelle Cargnello-Charles, 2014. "Reducing the Risk of Fraud in Financial Market: Psychosocial Drivers and Enactment-Based Perspective," Post-Print hal-02010166, HAL.
    15. Pancrazi, Roberto & Pietrunti, Mario, 2019. "Natural expectations and home equity extraction," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    16. Solomon Y. Deku & Alper Kara & Artur Semeyutin, 2021. "The predictive strength of MBS yield spreads during asset bubbles," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 111-142, January.
    17. Pedro Gete, 2015. "Housing demands, savings gluts and current account dynamics," Globalization Institute Working Papers 221, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    18. Cziraki, Peter, 2018. "Trading by bank insiders before and during the 2007–2008 financial crisis," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 58-82.
    19. Maas, Daniel & Mayer, Eric & Rüth, Sebastian K., 2018. "Current account dynamics and the housing cycle in Spain," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 22-43.
    20. Bonnie G. Buchanan, 2016. "Securitization: A Financing Vehicle for All Seasons?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 559-577, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    affect; agnotology; denial; intentionality; political economy of non-knowledge; recognition; strategic ignorance; transparency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:104404. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.