Abstract
The paper considers the importance of epistemic justice in democratic life, and the significance of education as a key space to foster the relevant epistemic capabilities. Epistemic in/justice offers resources to think about conditions of possibility (what Amartya Sen calls ‘conversion factors’), given that societies train our sensibilities in ways which are flawed and prejudiced. It is proposed further that Amartya Sen’s emphasis on public reasoning is central to epistemic justice. Using the space of education to make the argument, core ideas in the capability approach are first outlined. Epistemic justice is described, and the claim is then advanced that Miranda Fricker’s ‘epistemic contribution capability’ is generative in education settings for developing democratic and public reasoning capabilities. To be fully involved in learning and development and fair-achieved outcomes in formal education, students would need opportunities to develop their epistemic capability of being able both to receive information and to make interpretive contributions to the common pool of knowledge, understanding, and practical deliberation. Conditions of respect, recognition and equal moral worth would be required so that all students should have access to the capability and to have their contributions taken up as integral to their flourishing. Thus, in universities and schools, epistemic virtues should be educated, trained, developed and scaffolded pedagogically, including cultivating emotions. The paper then considers the challenge of free speech and what this may demand of us educationally.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, E. (2012). Epistemic justice as a virtue of social institutions. Social Epistemology, 26(2), 163–173.
Barker, S., Crerar, C., & Goetze, T. S. (2018). Harms and wrongs in epistemic practice. In S. R. Barker, C. Crerar, & T. Goetze (Eds.), Harms and wrongs in epistemic practice, royal institute of philosophy supplement (Vol. 84, pp. 1–21). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ben-Porath, S. R. (2017). Free speech on campus. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bessant, J. (2014). A dangerous idea? Freedom, children and the capability approach to education. Critical Studies in Education, 55(2), 138–153.
Biko, S. (1978). I write what I like. Northlands: Picador Press.
Bohman, J. (1997). Public deliberation: Pluralism, complexity, and democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Centre for Risk Analysis. (2019). Socio-Economic Survey of South Africa 2019. Richmond.
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fricker, M. (2015). Epistemic contribution as a central human capability. In G. Hull (Ed.), The equal society: Essays on equality in theory and practice (pp. 73–91). Cape Town: UCT Press.
Haq, Ul M. (2003). The human development paradigm. In S. Fukuda-Parr & A. V. Kumar (Eds.), Readings in human development: Concepts, measures and policies for a development paradigm (pp. 17–34). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoffmann, N., & Metz, T. (2017). What can the capabilities approach learn from an ubuntu ethic? a relational approach to development theory. World Development, 97, 153–164.
Hookway, C. (2010). Some varieties of epistemic injustice: Reflections on Fricker. Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, 7(2), 151–163.
Kidd, I. J., Medina, J., & Pohlhaus, G., Jr. (2017). Introduction. In I. Kidd, J. Medina, & G. Pohlhaus (Eds.), The routledge handbook of epistemic injustice (pp. 19–28). London: Routledge.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2013). Political emotions. Why love matters for justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
OECD. (2009). Growing unequal? Income distribution and poverty in OECD Countries. Paris.
Putnam, D. (2015). Equality of intelligibility. In G. Hull (Ed.), The equal society (pp. 91–112). Cape Town: UCT Press.
Robeyns, I. (2017). Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach re-examined. UK: Open Book Publishers.
Sen, A. (1999a). Democracy as a universal value. Journal of Democracy, 10(3), 3–17.
Sen, A. (1999b). Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sen, A. (2003). Development as capability expansion. Readings in human development (pp. 7–10). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sen, A. (2004). Capabilities, lists, and public reason: continuing the conversation. Feminist Economics, 10(3), 77–80.
Sen, A. (2006). Speech to the Common wealth Education conference. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/oct/28/schools.uk4.
Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Spaull, N. (2014). Education in SA – Still separate and unequal. Retrieved from https://nicspaull.com/2014/01/12/education-in-sa-still-separate-and-unequal-extended-version-of-citypress-article/.
Sulla, V., & Zikhali, P. (2018). Overcoming poverty and inequality in South Africa: An assessment of drivers, constraints and opportunities. Washington, DC: The World Bank Group.
United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html.
United Nations. (2018). International Day of Democracy 15 September. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/events/democracyday/index.shtml.
Walker, M. (2012). A capital or capabilities education narrative in a world of staggering inequalities? International Journal of Educational Development, 32(3), 384–393.
Walker, M. (2018). Aspirations and equality in higher education: Gender in a South African University. Cambridge Journal of Education, 48(1), 123–139.
Wolff, J. (2015). Social equality, relative poverty and marginalised groups. In G. Hull (Ed.), The equal society: Essays on equality in theory and practice (pp. 21–41). Lanham: Lexington Books.
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to the referees and the Special Issue editors for their helpful advice, to Monica McLean for first drawing Fricker’s epistemic capability to my attention, and to the National Research Foundation Grant Number 86450 which supports my research on education and human development. An earlier version of this paper was presented as a keynote address at the 19th International Conference on Education Research held in the Seoul National University—17–19 October 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Walker, M. Why epistemic justice matters in and for education. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 20, 161–170 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-019-09601-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-019-09601-4