Paper short abstract:

In rural north India therapeutic knowledge is widely regarded as possessed by others, elsewhere, with ethnographic attempts to document local medical expertise resulting in mutual declarations of ignorance. Reflecting on the conditions of 'not knowing', this paper considers the production of local knowledge configurations through reflexive expectations of ignorance. 

Paper long abstract:

In Rajasthan, villagers with limited formal education regard themselves and are represented by others as ignorant. Medical expertise is distributed patchily across a variety of specialist practitioners, who are assumed by their clients to possess esoteric and often secret knowledge of particular kinds. Therapeutic knowledge is widely regarded as something that is possessed by others, elsewhere, so that ethnographic attempts to document local medical expertise sometimes resulted in mutual insistence on its absence; in other words, in declarations of ignorance. Starting from and reformulating Last's characterisation of the importance of 'not knowing', this paper reflects on the extent to which local configurations of esoteric and exoteric forms of medical knowledge are produced through reflexive expectations of ignorance.