Community Epistemic Capacity

Food Policies Empowering Democratic and Epistemic Self‐Determination

“…42 This concept of epistemic self-determination, like selfdetermination more generally, requires a goal of participatory justice in making this determination and engaging in epistemic projects. Democratic epistemic self-determination is desirable as an instantiation of general self-determination.…”

“…On instrumentalist grounds a group with internal participatory justice can make the group better at achieving their joint goals and in determining goals which capture as many interests of the members as possible. 20 This is in addition to the inherent value of participatory justice as a procedural goal which is often present in the food sovereignty discourse. 21 Fortunately, some of the thornier parts of the discourses on democratic legitimacy or participatory justice are avoided because communities as conceived of in these discourses are not stable nationstates, but smaller groups of affinity, without formal membership criteria or laws.…”

“…By epistemic self-determination, I refer to the ability of community members to jointly determine and engage in the epistemic practices of their community, which can include methodologies for knowledge production and evaluative assumptions. 42 This concept of epistemic self-determination, like selfdetermination more generally, requires a goal of participatory justice in making this determination and engaging in epistemic projects. Democratic epistemic self-determination is desirable as an instantiation of general self-determination.…”

“…Thus, to achieve individual epistemic self-determination, it is important to promote communities' epistemic capacities. 46 It is worth mentioning that this insufficiency for epistemic selfdetermination of state-supported alternatives is closely related to the difference between an epistemic self-determination account and one of epistemic proceduralism arising out of deliberative democracy. 47 Epistemic proceduralism shares commonalities with epistemic self-determination, including a concern for "epistemic fairness," 48 a suspicion of mere consequentialism of finding the single "correct" answer to social questions as the justification of social-epistemic arrangements 49 (although while also sharing an optimism about the possibility of participatorily just social arrangements to produce effective knowledge systems), a recognition of the value of "epistemic diversity," 50 and goals of justice within these structures, such as "transparency and reciprocity."…”

Loss of Epistemic Self-Determination in the Anthropocene

“…This is an important justice issue, and the loss of self-determination is a serious harm, particularly for communities that do not see their values and goals well represented in larger social institutions. This includes those self-determined goals and projects around epistemic practices, such as gaining knowledge, evaluating the knowledge of others, maintaining that knowledge, adapting the knowledge to changing situations, and continuing the knowledge within the community into future generations (see the example of the Karuk people below) (Werkheiser, 2015). Epistemic self-determination has been under-examined by those working on developing frameworks for loss and damage, and this is unfortunate because without the ability for a community to evaluate decisions and information via methodologies that they understand and accept, and which incorporate their values, other forms of self-determination are much more difficult.…”