An applied philosophical investigation into the ontological foundations and impacts of epistemic injustice (EI), from the perspective of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, via three questions:
RQ1. What role does ontology play in constructing our understanding of EI?
RQ2. How does this affect our ability to conceptualise forms of EI which impact on marginalised socioeconomic groups and determine what would constitute restoration, redress or prevention of epistemic oppression?
RQ3. How do marginalised socioeconomic groups experience further ontological harms to their status as agents or persons, as a result of the processes involved in 1 and 2 above?
Epistemic injustice (EI) is unethical treatment in knowledge sharing and production. Valuable existing work recognises that social power plays an important role in, e.g., race and gender-based EI, and seeks to rectify those power imbalances. However, that work overlooks how EI works or can be prevented when the injustice is against groups who are, by definition, less powerful. When welfare claimants are disbelieved in interactions with the state, or working-class children are overlooked in classrooms, the basis for injustice is hierarchical socioeconomic status. Attempts at redress that fail to understand this ontological foundation will fail. This project is therefore an applied philosophical investigation into the ontological foundations, impacts and possibility for redress of EI within these overlooked, hierarchically-defined relationships.
1. That there are differences between structural epistemic injustices and the ordinary background structural injustices which leads to other forms of epistemic injustice. This ontological distinction is important in understanding how to address forms of epistemic harm.
2. That working-class students have epistemic virtues which our current HE practices often prevent from translating into academic success and confidence.
3. That people living in poverty experience a very specific form of epistemic objectification, which is more pervasive to attempts to overcome it than standard accounts of EI recognise.
| Status | Curtailed |
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| Effective start/end date | 1/09/22 → 30/09/23 |
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