Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Redlining

Abstract

The practice of Emergency Management in Michigan raises anew the question of whose knowledge matters to whom and for what reasons, against the background of what projects, challenges, and systemic imperatives. In this paper, I offer a historical overview of state intervention laws across the United States, focusing specifically on Michigan's Emergency Manager laws. I draw on recent analyses of these laws to develop an account of a phenomenon that I call epistemic redlining, which, I suggest, is a form of group-based credibility discounting not readily countenanced by existing, 'culprit-based' accounts of epistemic injustice. I argue that epistemic redlining plays a crucial role in ongoing projects of racialized subordination and dispossession in Michigan, and that such discounting tends to have structural causes that can be difficult to identify and uproot. Contrary to the general thrust of recent work on the topic, I argue that epistemic redlining ought to be understood as a form of epistemic injustice.

Denial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery and Responsibility for Epistemic Amends

“…shows how failing to acknowledge epistemic labour of some groups of people may lead to epistemic exploitation. Doan (2017) points out that a theory of epistemic justice should practice acknowledgement and highlight the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations. Almassi (2018) argues that acknowledgment is the first stage of epistemic repair.…”

Resisting Structural Epistemic Injustice

“…As a number of Fricker's critics have pointed out, this explanatory approach ignores the possibility that it is not always and only a lack of conformity to operative epistemic norms, but rather the skillful conformity to those norms that can result in unjust patterns of discrediting, silencing, and epistemic exclusion, regardless of whether prejudice is also in play (see Dotson 2014;Ayala and Vasilyeva 2015;Ayala 2016;Doan 2017). If the principal problem is that the operative norm of credibility is itself epistemically dysfunctional in ways that predictably give rise to "pernicious ignorance" (Dotson 2011, 238), contributing thereby to the epistemic marginalization of groups along lines of gender, race, class, and other dimensions of identity, then solutions focused solely on the psychological constitution of individuals will only scratch the surface of a far more complicated situation.…”

“…so as to possibly change them or shift out of them entirely" (Dotson 2014, 131). My proposed approach to resisting structural epistemic injustice focuses on the importance of examining the epistemic assumptions undergirding legislation at the state level, while tracking how these assumptions are gradually legitimized and normalized through the practices allowed by specific laws, and by the political distinctions these laws enact (Doan 2017). Each of these alternatives relies on the insight that practices of epistemic recognition need to be historicized, directing our attention to the processes through which epistemic values and norms are institutionalized-whether at the level of social imaginaries, discursive conventions, or systems of laws and legislation.…”

Doing Knowing Ethically – Where Social Work Values Meet Critical Realism

“…The article starts with an outline of an ethical orientation premised on acceptance and awareness that I propose could form the foundation for a more ethical way of approaching knowing, something I term 'doing knowing ethically'. The discussion then turns to two key forms of epistemic injustice as outlined by Fricker (2007Fricker ( , 2013 and advanced by others such as Anderson (2012) Doan (2017) and Mason (2011): testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Within this discussion two key issues emerge, the traceability of epistemic injustice to prejudice and the ability to identify the relationship between the individual and collectivein terms of understanding the causal and sustaining mechanisms of the injustice.…”