Epistemic Injustice and Cultural Processes in Education

Year 2021, Volume: 29 Issue: 1, 218 - 227, 16.01.2021

Duygun Göktürk

https://doi.org/10.24106/kefdergi.732138

Cited By: 2

Abstract

This article provides a framework for understanding social and cultural inequalities in education in the context of cultural processes and epistemic injustice. Insight into the cultural processes and the concept of epistemic injustice direct us to the conceptualization of agency of the actors within the educational domain and the institutionalized relations of domination and recognition. The article employs two cultural processes: identification (stigmatization and racialization) and rationalization (standardization and evaluation) and two epistemic injustice models: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice to understand the production of inequalities and relations of domination in a school setting (Lamont, Beljean and Clair, 2014; Fricker, 2017). This goal is animated by this research question: “How to understand the production of inequalities in a school setting through cultural processes and epistemic injustice?” Taking into account cultural processes and epistemic injustice, this article argues that the literature on education should include diverse epistemic approaches to problematize the ways of the transmission of structural inequalities in society to education and how these inequality forms are complementary to current practices. The result indicates that cultural processes and epistemic injustice forms should be taken into consideration in understanding the production and maintenance of inequalities in education.

Keywords

cultural processes, identification, stigmatization, epistemic injustice, inequality

References

• REFERENCES
• Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J. C. (1979). The inheritors: French students and their relation to culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Brubaker, R. & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond "Identity." Theory and Society, 29 (1), 1-47.
• Cavel, H. & Kidd, I.J., (2017). Epistemic injustice in medicine and healthcare. In Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, (pp.336-346). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Coady, D. (2017). Epistemic injustice as distributive injustice. In Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, (s.61-69). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
• Destmond, M. & Emirbayer, M.(2009). What is racial domination? Du Bois Review, 6:2 (2009) 335–355.
• Fordham, S., and Ogbu, J. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the “burden of ‘acting white.’” Urban Review, 18(3), 176-206.
• Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fricker, M. (2017). Evolving concepts of epistemic injustice. In Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, (s.53-61). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
• Göktürk, D. & Ağın, E. (2020). Okul kurumunun kültürel-toplumsal eşitsizlik ve imtiyazların yeniden üretimindeki rolüne Iilişkin bir değerlendirme. Ankara Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Fakültesi Dergisi, 53 (1), 329-354
• Hookway, C. (2010). Some varieties of epistemic injustice. Episteme, 7: 151–163.
• Ingram, N. (2009). Working‐class boys, educational success and the misrecognition of working‐class culture. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30 (4): 421–434
• Ispa-Landa, S. (2013). Gender, race, and justifications for groups Exclusion: Urban black students bussed to affluent suburban schools. Sociology of Education, 86(3), 218–233.
• Kidd, J. I., Medina, J., Pohlhaus, G. (2017). Introduction to the Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice. Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, (s.1-11). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
• Kidd, I.J. and Carel, H. (2017). Epistemic injustice and illness. Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 34, No. 2, February 2017 doi: 10.1111/japp.12172
• Kinney, D. A. (1993). From Nerds to Normals: The Recovery of Identity among Adolescents from Middle School to High School. Sociology of Education, 66(1), 21-40.
• Kotzee, B. (2017). Education and epistemic injustice. In Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, (pp. 324-335). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
• Lamont, M. (2018). Addressing Recognition Gaps: Destigmatization and the Reduction of Inequality. American Sociological Review, 2018, Vol. 83(3) 419–444
• Lamont, M. & Beljean, S. & Clair, M. (2014). What is missing? Cultural processes and causal pathways to inequality. Socio-Economic Review, (2014) 12, 573–608
• Massey, D. S. (2007). Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Mattias, Iser. (2013). “Recognition.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ recognition).
• Medina, José. (2017). ‘Varieties of Hermeneutical Injustice’, in Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. (New York: Routledge).
• Medina, J. (2013). The epistemology of resistance: gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Online Etymology Dictionary. (2020). Stigma. In Etymonline.com dictionary. Retrieved May 1, 2020 from https://www.etymonline.com/word/stigma).
• Sayılan, F. & Özkazanç, A. (2009). İktidar ve direniş bağlamında toplumsal cinsiyet: Bir okul etnografisi. Toplum ve Bilim, 114, 51-73.
• Timmermans, S. & Epstein, S. (2010). A world of standards but not a standard world: Toward a sociology of standards and standardization. Annual Review of Sociology, 36:69–89
• Turner, B. (2006). The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology. Cambridge University Press.
• Wanderer, J. (2017). Varieties of testimonial injustice. Epistemic injustice as distributive injustice. In Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, (s.27-41). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Willis, P. (2016). İşçiliği öğrenmek: Sınıf, işçilik ve eğitim: İşçi çocukları nasıl işçi oluyor? [Learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs]. (F. D. Elhüseyni, Çev.). Ankara: Heretik Yayınları. (1981)