Special issue: environmental justice and epistemic violence

Beyond participation: How to achieve the recognition of local communities’ value‐systems in conservation? Some insights from Mexico

“…In the SMBR, the promoted practices of environmental management are determined by the conventional scien- Durand et al, 2014;Lecuyer et al, 2018) and elsewhere (Dawson et al, 2018), and suggests that the recognition of local communities' value-systems is still not universally achieved, even in conservation initiatives which uphold good practices of inclusive governance. Addressing the recognition of diverse value-systems in conservation requires exploring the epistemological perspective underpinning such efforts (Coolsaet, 2016;Vermeylen, 2019). Sikor et al (2014) and Kolinjivadi et al (2017) have demonstrated valuesystems are embedded in conservation programmes and instruments.…”

“…At the local level, conservation decisions are affected by a range of interacting factors including power relations (Durand, 2019; Pinkerton, 2019) and cultural norms (Peterson et al, 2010; Roncoli et al., 2011; Teitelbaum et al., 2019). Decision‐making processes about conservation are also embedded in a given symbolic context (Taddei, 2011) and epistemology (Vermeylen, 2019). Finally, other structural factors including laws and policies embedded in national history also affect conservation action (Carías Vega, 2019).…”

“…Addressing the recognition of diverse value‐systems in conservation requires exploring the epistemological perspective underpinning such efforts (Coolsaet, 2016; Vermeylen, 2019). Sikor et al.…”

Conceptualizing epistemic violence: an interdisciplinary assemblage for IR

“…When explicitly used as a key term in IR-related articles, epistemic violence is either hardly explained at all (Ayotte and Husain 2005), deployed as a catch-all that denotes the legitimization of other forms of violence (Gebrewold 2008), or not referenced at all (Cremin et al 2018). The same is true for approaches to epistemic violence in educational studies (Fredericks 2009), linguistics (Branson and Miller 2000), criminology (Kitossa 2014), psychology (Held 2019), area studies (Menski 2016), environmental studies (Vermeylen 2019), social movement studies (Brissette 2018), intercultural studies (Gaitán-Barrera and Azeez 2015), or labor studies (Meléndez-Badillo 2019). 6 Remarkably, this also applies to a comprehensive Postcolonial Studies Dictionary (Nayar 2015), where one would expect to find a substantial entry on one of the field's key terms; instead, it only contains a brief reference to Spivak and Foucault.…”

The Double Force of Vulnerability

“…Th ese works productively provoke EJ toward new horizons of responsibility, theory, and collaboration. With the critical refl exivity that ethnography demands, we must wonder about the ways that ethnography might inadvertently enact modes of epistemic violence (Vermeylen 2019) and trauma on communities long living with the harsh realities of environmental injustice.…”