Understanding Epistemic Trust Injustices and Their Harms

Abstract

AbstractMuch of the literature concerning epistemic injustice has focused on the variety of harms done to socially marginalized persons in their capacities as potentialcontributorsto knowledge projects. However, in order to understand the full implications of the social nature of knowing, we must confront the circulation of knowledge and the capacity of epistemic agents to take up knowledge produced by others and make use of it. I argue that members of socially marginalized lay communities can sufferepistemic trust injusticeswhen potentially powerful forms of knowing such as scientific understandings are generated in isolation from them, and when the social conditions required for aresponsibly-placed trustto be formed relative to the relevant epistemic institutions fail to transpire.