Chapter 3: Practicing Knowledge Justice
Heather Campbell, Lea Sansom, Ashley McKeown, and Kathryn Holmes
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the chapter, learners will be able to:
- Recognize that there are diverse definitions and domains of knowledge, often influenced by culture and positionality
- Define knowledge justice as an approach for addressing epistemic bias
- Begin to practice knowledge justice through self-reflection and identifying how authority and expertise are contextual
Introduction
Chapter 2 introduced the term epistemic injustice and explored how it impacts both our daily lives and the helping professions. But how do we challenge epistemic injustice? We begin our exploration of knowledge justice in this chapter.
First, we need to interrogate our ideas and assumptions about what counts as knowledge and who gets to be recognized as a knower. Throughout this chapter, we’ll encourage you to reconsider what is meant by using an “evidence-based practice”. In becoming members of helping professions, what evidence are you being asked to prioritize? And whose perspectives are overlooked or excluded as a result? Knowledge justice strategies, which we explore in both Chapters 3 and 4, look at how we might address such inequities and disrupt dominant knowledge systems.
When people "undermine, undercut, disvalue, curtail, exclude, outright dismiss, or, in some cases, gaslight a person/or persons in their capacity as potential knowers" (Dunne, 2020).
