Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.

Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Social Functions of Ignorance
Frank Uekötter and Uwe Lübken

Chapter 1. Guayule Fever. Los Knowledge and Struggles for a Natural Rubber Reserve in the American West
Mark R. Finlay

Chapter 2. Thinking in Cycles. Flows of Nitrogen and Sustainable Uses of the Environment
Hugh S. Gorman

Chapter 3. The Forests of Canada. Seeing the Forests for the Trees
Susan Herrington

Chapter 4. Forest Law in the Palestine Mandate. Colonial Conservation in a Unique Context
David Schorr

Chapter 5. Perception and Use of Marine Biological Resources under National Socialist Autarky Policy
Ole Sparenberg

Chapter 6. Ignorance is Strength. Science-based Agriculture and the Merits of Incomplete Knowledge
Frank Uekötter

Chapter 7. Expert Estimates of Oil-Reserves and the Transformation of “Petroknowledge” in the Western World from the 1950s to the 1970s
Rüdiger Graf

Chapter 8. Reducing Uncertainty with Scenarios?
Cornelia Altenburg

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