Iain Boal is an Irish social historian of technics and the

commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...

, based in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

and

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Biography

He was one of the co-founders of the Retort collective, an association of radical writers, artists, and activists in the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments ...

from the 1990s to the present. He co-edited ''Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information'' (1995). He co-authored ''Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War'' (2001), along with T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts. In 2012, he published ''The Green Machine'' - a world history of the bicycle (Notting Hill Editions, out of print). Since 2005, he has also been working on a book manuscript about "The Long Theft: Episodes in the History of Enclosure." As of 2022, he is editing a volume ''Archives of Dissent'', which is under advance contract with PM Press. The historians Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger have credited Boal with coining the term "

Agnotology Within the sociology of knowledge, agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccur ...

" in 1992 In a postscript to their 2012 book, ''Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance'',

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It is currently a member of the Ass ...

, p. 27, Proctor writes that "My hope for devising a new term was to suggest...the historicity and artifactuality of non-knowing and the non-known - and the potential fruitfulness of studying such things. In 1992 I posed this challenge to Iain Boal, and it was he who came up with the term in the spring of that year" to describe the intentional production of ignorance or doubt, often for commercial gain. Originally conceived to explain the behavior of tobacco companies, it has gained more recent currency in the context of commercially motivated

climate change denial Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetor ...

Personal life

He is married to the archivist Gillian Boal.

Publications

* Boal, Iain and James Brook, ''Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information City'', (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995) * As member of

Retort In a chemistry laboratory, a retort is a device used for distillation or dry distillation of substances. It consists of a sphere, spherical vessel with a long downward-pointing neck. The liquid to be distilled is placed in the vessel and heat ...

, "Blood for Oil?" in ''London Review of Books'' (2005) * As member of Retort, ''Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War'' (2009)

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century Irish historians 21st-century Irish historians Social historians Writers from Berkeley, California Independent scholars Irish expatriates in the United States {{Ireland-historian-stub