In this book we take up the challenge of conceptualising and demonstrating in eight empirically based chapters how non-ideal epistemic justice in real-world education settings might be fostered though participatory research. We further make the claim that being able to make epistemic contributions is fundamental to human wellbeing, to a dignified human life and to wide freedoms (Fricker 2007, 2015) and that such contributions and the corresponding capabilities and functionings can be fostered in and through participatory research processes. Although we see Amartya Senâs (2009) capabilities and functionings as the ends of human development (Ul Haq 2003), in the specific space of education, Sen does not talk about epistemic justice although he does emphasise participation in public reasoning practices. At the same time, we are aware, and the chapters demonstrate, that participation in itself does not guarantee egalitarian epistemic outcomes. Projects may both reinforce and undermine reproduction in and through higher education, depending on multi-level contextual influences and the depth of participation. Sen has also said little that could address structural injustices flowing specifically (but not only) from the epistemic domain. Thus in the book, we go beyond Sen in taking participation and deliberation to also have the role of advancing epistemic justice, with a distinctive educational focus on epistemic functionings and not just the capability. This concern with functionings enables us to interrogate and expose the external conditions which may place obstacles in the way of realising epistemic capabilities and hence educational development. To this end, we show through the book chapters the potential to expand peopleâs multi-dimensional capabilities and functionings in and through participatory processes and projects.
The Aims of the Book
A key concern in the book is with epistemic in/justice (Fricker 2007; Kidd et al. 2017) as foundational to a reflexive, inclusive and decolonial approach to knowledge and for its importance to democratic life, deliberation and participation in higher education (Walker 2019). At stake are whose voices are enabled, who gets to tell their stories and who is heard and listened to. The basic challenge posed by a specifically epistemic form of justice is how some personsâand not othersâare advantaged in influencing and contributing to public discourse whether at the micro, meso or macro level and hence in contributing epistemically. We understand this to be important for wider justice. Anticipating many of the current debates on epistemic justice, the late South African activist and philosopher Steve Biko (1978, p. 49) wrote of apartheid, âthat the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressedâ. Biko points compellingly to why the epistemic mattersâthose who hold political and social power, whether in the broader society or in higher education institutions (or both), also wield epistemic power, and such epistemic power holds relations of oppression in place. For example, under apartheid black South Africans were deliberately prevented from placing their stories in the dominant public sphere; under imperial conditions local and non-Western knowledge was (and is) not legitimate for the colonisers (De Sousa Santos 2014). Epistemic injustice may thus preclude some people from speaking for themselves or formulating their own legitimate knowledge claims. Moreover, such exclusions are not abstractions but active and relational in our lives; our epistemic lives involve being, doing and acting with others (Barker et al. 2018). Our ideas and knowledge matter for participation in inclusive meaning-making (and hence to politics, education, the professions, and so on) so that who has access to these epistemic goods at various layers of society is then a matter of justice.
Take this shocking higher education example where epistemic injustice manifested in physical violence. On December 6, 1989, Marc LĂŠpine entered a mechanical engineering class at the Ăcole Polytechnique in Montreal and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. He separated nine women, instructing the men to leave. He stated that he was âfighting feminismâ and opened fire. He shot at all nine women in the room, killing six (https://âwww.âtheguardian.âcom/âworld/â2012/âdec/â03/âmontreal-massacre-canadas-feminists-remember). This is a dramatic example and, while higher education does not normally operate in such a life or death way in most countries, access to higher education curricula and participation in pedagogical arrangements is meant to enable worthwhile epistemic goods, including independent, critical, subject-based and interdisciplinary knowledge. Higher education ought to foster a transformational relationship of students to knowledge that potentially changes how they think and understand their worlds. Thus substantive knowledge concerns (the episteme) are needed to give content to epistemic justice in higher education, for example, a decolonised curriculum. Recently Fricker (2016, p. 3) has elaborated on the knowledge elements of epistemic injustice, pointing out that epistemic injustice not only blocks the flow of knowledge but also âthe flow of evidence, doubts, critical ideas and other epistemic inputsâ. The resulting epistemic oppression constitutes a âpersistent epistemic exclusion that hinders oneâs contribution to knowledge production, an unwarranted infringement on the epistemic agency of knowersâ (Dotson 2014, p. 115).
With this in mind, we aim to bring together three areas of interest to usâepistemic justice (incorporating discursive knowledge; see Walker 2019), participatory research and capabilities formationâand place them in conversation with each other in global South and global North settings in order to challenge the oppressions generated through the exclusion of the less powerful from processes of knowledge-making (see, e.g. Soldatenko 2015 on philosophy) and to work towards a decolonial praxis relevant for both North and South. The point is, as Andrea Pitts (2018, p. 150) makes clear, that knowledge practices âhave never existed merely as forms of abstract argumentation about belief, truth, justification, or cognitionâ. Rather, knowledge production itselfâin and through universitiesââis a materially embedded set of social and historical phenomenaâ embedded in a political economy of knowledge-making. Even in participatory research, we need to be vigilant about how power relations work. We thus work towards De Sousa Santos (2014) inclusive âecology of knowledgesâ which admits excluded voices, subjugated knowledges and disqualified knowledges into knowledge decisions and knowledge production, against colonial productions in which the âsubalternâ cannot speak (Spivak 1994). This should not be confused with the global North (or indeed any researcher with more power) âallowingâ the oppressed to speak for themselves or âgivingâ them voice, within unchanged local or global knowledge relations. Thus if we truly value participation and participatory research, it must be located also in reflexive decolonial practices and commitments to epistemological decolonisation (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018).
Such an approach does not assume that Western knowledge is either universal or better; it can and does draw productively on Western knowledge and ideasâas we do in this book. It is not about closing the door to European or other traditions. It is about defining clearly what and where the centre lies (Mbembe 2016, p. 35). Thus De Sousa Santos (2014) proposes a contextualised âpluri-universitary knowledgeâ, a plurality of ways of knowing. The possibilities and limits of understanding and action of each way of knowing can only be grasped to the extent that each offers a comparison with other ways of knowing. Nonetheless, the comparison is difficult because the relations among ways of knowing are asymmetrical, because of history, politics and epistemology. âSacredâ scientific knowledge is considered to be of greater epistemic worth and credibility than that of other non-esoteric knowledges (such as community-based knowledge or student knowledge). Some academic disciplines may ignore or distort particular intellectual traditions (e.g. treating non-Western philosophy as ethno-philosophy). An ecology of knowledge is contrary to the epistemological exclusions that seek to conceal (even destroy) other ways of knowing, and looks to a reorientation of the relationship between university and society towards solidarity.
Similarly, post-colonial theorists such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012, p. 2) argue that research (the space of knowledge production) is a site of significant (epistemic) struggle âbetween the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of knowing of the otherâ. While we can generally claim that research aims to add value to and benefit society (and we have many good examples of this in health, engineering and other fields), research also âexists within a system of powerâ (Smith 2012, p. 226) and, in contemporary times, within globalisation flows and neo-liberal higher education policies. This requires that knowledge-making through research âtalk back to and talk up to powerâ in order to get the story right and tell the story well (Smith 2012, p. 226). Epistemic injustice need not be a given, it can be contested so that epistemic failure (Fricker 2007) is seldom complete and structural possibility seldom entirely openâboth have implications for more expansive and generous ways of seeing, thinking and knowing in universitiesâfor the potential of participatory research.
Forms of Epistemic Injustice
Drawing substantially on Miranda Fricker (2007), we outline two forms of epistemic injustice, both of which reveal how epistemic oppression is realised through domination and marginalisation practices, suggesting how epistemic justice can be frustrated. Testimonial injustice occurs when a hearer gives a reduced level of credibility to what someone says due to prejudice against the speaker (e.g. of status inequality, race, class, gender). They may regard them as incompetent, stupid or dishonest or all three. For example, a deficit of credibility because of race-based prejudice on the part of white South African students might generate everyday âpinpricksâ of testimonial injustice (if white students insist on checking the work of black students in group projects; e.g. see Kessi and Cornell 2015) or more dramatic race-based conflicts in which racial remarks end up being a substitute for reasoned discussion. Testimonial injustice can occur when knowledge produced through experiential pedagogies is seen as second-class knowledgeâand hence speakers or producers are second-class tooâwhere a more codified form that follows the academic formal structure for its construction is predominant and seen as valid when compared with other types of knowledge (see Boni and Velasco 2020). In this epistemically narrow approach, what counts as legitimate knowledge is decided only by an inner community of scientists who claim that only they can contribute legitimately and rationally to a knowledge consensus. This is not to claim that one way of knowledge-making is better than another, rather it is to argue for a more inclusive and democratic approach that is more epistemically just in its processes and impact.
While testimonial injustices take individual form, they can become systemic (e.g. in accepted knowledge practices) and embedded in the social structure, rather than only transactional. Indeed, it is hard to see how everyday exclusionary patterns do not become structural if secur...