The practice of philosophy has led to both emancipation and exclusion in society. Questions around how philosophy should be practiced, who should engage in it, and with which issues philosophy should deal are subject to debate and controversy. This volume is dedicated to the special role of epistemic injustice and violence in philosophy. By shedding light on the inherent unjust structures of academic philosophy, the contributors to this volume help to better understand this powerful tool that impacts the academic landscape as well as individual and collective ways of being. From graphic novel to philosophical essay, they design a concept of transformative philosophy and offer various entry points to the conversation.

This outstanding reference source to epistemic injustice is the first collection of its kind. Over thirty chapters address topics such as testimonial and hermeneutic injustice and virtue epistemology, objectivity and objectification, implicit bias, gender and race.

Prejudice influences people’s thoughts and behaviors in many ways; it can lead people to underestimate others’ credibility, to read anger or hysteria into their words, or to expect knowledge and truth to ‘sound’ a certain way—or to come from a certain type of person. These biases and mistakes can have a big effect on everything from an institutional culture to an individual’s self-understanding. These kinds of intellectual harms are known as epistemic injustice. Most people are opposed to unfair prejudices (at least in principle), and no one wants to make avoidable mistakes. But research in the social sciences reveals a disturbing truth: Even people who intend to be fair-minded and unprejudiced are influenced by unconscious biases and stereotypes. We may sincerely want to be epistemically just, but we frequently fail, and simply thinking harder about it will not fix the problem. The essays collected in this volume draw from cutting-edge social science research and detailed case studies, to suggest how we can better tackle our unconscious reactions and institutional biases, to help ameliorate epistemic injustice. The volume concludes with an afterward by Miranda Fricker, who catalyzed recent scholarship on epistemic injustice, reflecting on these new lines of research and potential future directions to explore.

This volume includes original essays that examine the underexplored relationship between recognition theory and key developments in critical social epistemology. Its aims are to explore how far certain kinds of epistemic injustice, epistemic oppression, and types of ignorance can be understood as distorted varieties of recognition and to determine whether contemporary work on epistemic injustice and critical social epistemology more generally have significant continuities with theories of recognition in the Frankfurt School tradition. Part I of the book focuses on bringing recognition theory and critical social epistemology into direct conversation. Part II is devoted to analysing a range of case studies that are evocative of contemporary social struggles. The essays in this volume propose answers to a number of thought-provoking questions at the intersection of these two robust philosophical subfields, such as the following: how well can different types of epistemic injustice be understood as types of recognition abuses? How useful is it to approach different forms of social oppression as recognition injustices and/or as involving epistemic injustice? What limitations do we discover in either or both recognition theory and the ever-expanding literature on epistemic injustice when we put them into conversation with each other? How does the conjunction of these two accounts bear on specific domains, such as questions of silencing? Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Recognition heralds new directions for future research that will appeal to scholars and students working in critical social epistemology, social and political theory, continental philosophy, and a wide range of critical social theories.

This book provides an in-depth, multidisciplinary framework and case-study analysis for understanding the root causes of violence in schooling. Drawing on critical theory, psychology, neuroscience and learning theory, the author provides a holistic analysis of how ‘violent epistemology’ and the ‘non-conducive circumstances’ that it produces can be seen to be at the roots of violence in societies and social institutions such as schools. Chapter 1 outlines how current and historical theories of violence, and interventions based on them, have failed due to their inability to properly conceptualise the root causes of violence. Chapters 2 addresses this by providing a new epistemic and methodological framework for studying violence. Chapters 3 and 4 then demonstrate how violence can be best conceptualised as a problem of specifically ‘violent’ epistemology and the ‘non-conducive social circumstances’ that it fosters. Chapters 5-7 demonstrate in practice how violent epistemology results in multiple manifestations of violence at the global, national, local, and ultimately classroom level. Chapter 8 concludes the book by presenting an early conceptualisation of ‘non-violent’ epistemology, and what fostering this might look like in practice.

Providing coherence in understanding the role that education and higher education played in the colonizing purposes of the rich nations of the North, this book draws from multiple geopolitical spaces across the world to consider how epistemic injustice has characterized colonial higher education systems. Within this text, carefully chosen international contributors explore how colonialism, coloniality, and colonization have impacted indigenous people’s ways of knowing, feeling, behaving, valuing, being, and becoming in fundamental ways and how the West’s idea of education and schooling have been used as key instruments in the project of world domination and subjugation. Beyond these key entry concepts, chapters use ideas of modernity, post-modernism, globalization, internationalization, and neo-liberalism to examine how higher education in colonial and post-colonial societies still answers to a colonial narrative and what can be done to decolonize the system. Unpacking the historical and philosophical antecedents of higher education and critically examining the intentions and impact of colonial assumptions behind higher education in different parts of the world, this is suitable reading for postgraduates and scholars in the field of higher education, as well as senior management teams in universities and practitioners who work directly in the field of transformation in government, and university departments.

This book critically interrogates the notion of transformation in higher education, focusing on epistemological and structural issues in postcolonial and contemporary Africa. The book considers the multifaceted challenges facing higher education in the continent and uses the concept of transformation as a common thread weaving through a range of issues, including epistemology, identity, relevance, research, collaboration and decoloniality. Arguing for a holistic approach towards progressive and innovative education systems, the book calls for a fundamental transformation that expands access, enhances quality and competitiveness, addresses past injustices and improves the capacity to act together for a more sustainable and just future. Overall, the book makes a powerful case for the power of transformation in higher education to shape the social, economic and cultural fabric of society. This book’s critical evaluation of knowledge production in Africa will be an important read for researchers and policymakers involved in Africa’s higher education sector.

Disordered Violence looks at how gender, race, and heteronormative expectations of public life shape Western understandings of terrorism as irrational, immoral and illegitimate. Caron Gentry examines the profiles of 8 well-known terrorist actors, including Andreas Baader, Bernardine Dohrn, Leila Khaled, Dhanu, Anders Breivik, Nidal Hasan and Aafia Siddiqui. Gentry looks for gendered, racial, and sexualised assumptions in how their stories are told. Additionally, she interrogates how the current counterterrorism focus upon radicalisation is another way of constructing terrorists outside of the Western ideal. Finally, the book argues that mainstream Terrorism Studies must contend with the growing misogynist and racialised violence against women.

This book examines the prominent place a commitment to social justice and equity has occupied in the global history of literary journalism. With international case studies, it explores and theorizes the way literary journalists have addressed inequality and its consequences in their practice. In the process, this volume focuses on the critical attitude the writers of this genre bring to their stories, the immersive reporting they use to gain detailed and intimate knowledge of their subjects, and the array of innovative rhetorical strategies through which they represent those encounters. The contributors explain how these strategies encourage readers to respond to injustices of class, race, indigeneity, gender, mobility, and access to knowledge. Together, they make the case that, throughout its history, literary journalism has proven uniquely well adapted to fusing facts with feeling in a way which makes it a compelling force for social change.

Thelma & Louise, the 1991 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, has been described as a road movie, a buddy movie, a feminist parable, and only incidentally as a Western. An Oscar winner for first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise catalyzed a national conversation about women, violence, and self-determination in a Hollywood still shrugging off the West of John Wayne and in an America that still viewed women as accessories to the national mythology. In this latest volume in the Reel West series, Susan Kollin recreates this watershed moment for women’s movies in general and women’s Westerns in particular.