This article utilizes the ongoing debates over the role of certain agricultural insecticides in causing Colony Collapse Disorder —the phenomenon of accelerated bee die-offs in the United States and elsewhere—as an opportunity to contribute to the emerging literature on the social production of ignorance. In our effort to understand the social contexts that shape knowledge/nonknowledge production in this case, we develop the concept of epistemic form. Epistemic form is the suite of concepts, methods, measures, and interpretations that shapes the ways (...) in which actors produce knowledge and ignorance in their professional/intellectual fields of practice. In the CCD controversy, we examine how the privileging of certain epistemic forms intersects with the social dynamics of academic, regulatory, and corporate organizations to lead to the institutionalization of three interrelated and overlapping types of ignorance. We consider the effects of these types of ignorance on US regulatory policy and on the lives of different stakeholders. (shrink)

We explored collaboration between scientists and nonscientists through a deliberative process in which stakeholders interested in the health challenges of honey bees gathered on four occasions over two years to design, carry out, and analyze a set of field experiments on honey bee health. We found that issues of trust and authority were crucial matters in constraining and enabling dialogue among our deliberants. Over the course of our deliberations, participants’ trust for one another and appreciation of their respective interests grew, (...) and differences in professional status appeared to play an increasingly less important role in shaping discussion. The field experiments that deliberants crafted and collectively organized over time became an engagement object that was crucial in altering the dynamics of trust and authority. We understand engagement objects as entities that stakeholders with diverse interests, experiences, and expertise collectively build over time to collectively solve overlapping, interacting problems. (shrink)