ABSTRACT
Ignorance in all its complexity is fast becoming a legitimate object of study that is gaining increasing traction within the social sciences. This chapter certainly draws inspiration from these crucial insights but explicitly situates ignorance in relation to the practicing of social scientific methods, especially those designed to elicit responses rather than observe practices. It explores the ‘complex patterning of ignorance and knowledge’ a phrase which aims to take in the nexus of relations between, minimally, knowledge, uncertainty and ignorance and the forging of the ‘social scientific research event’. The chapter also explores the parameters of such research events. It provides a very preliminary sketch of how research events entail an epistemic choreography of ignorance and knowledge and considers how in certain research events there is a systematic and layered ignoring of certain sorts of behavior that do not fit in with the ‘rationales’ of the research.
