Silent Epistemologies

Abstract

This article presents a conceptualisation of children’s participation rights based on Miranda Fricker’s epistemic injustice. Drawing on research conducted in a secondary school in the UK, the article applies Fricker’s framework, in particular her concepts of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, to explain some of the reasons for adults’ disquiet around children’s participation rights. Fricker’s concept of testimonial injustice explains how prejudice about a social group results in deflated attributions of credibility to their views and opinions. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a social group struggles to make sense of their social experiences because of insufficient interpretive resources in the collective social imagination. By applying these concepts to children, I highlight the role of silence in conceptualising children’s right to be heard and to freedom of expression. I present a conceptual framework of participation, informed by epistemic injustice and based on empirical research, in order to bolster children’s participation rights.

‘Where do you feel it most?’ Using body mapping to explore the lived experiences of racism with 10‐ and 11‐year‐olds

“…Matarasso (2019, p. 75) argues that because of its ambiguous and oblique nature, the art process is ‘a protected space in which to express identity, beliefs and experience’. However, for a space to really feel ‘protected’, it is crucial to work gently and responsively, allowing children to be inconsistent, silent, opaque, upset or hesitant; supported but not scrutinised by another's gaze (Hanna, 2022; Watkins, 2015; Welty & Lundy, 2013). Accordingly, the research team treated the participating children as experts on their own experiences (Brydon‐Miller et al., 2003), with our role being to support their explorations and try to capture and understand the meanings they were making from them.…”

The non‐protesting children in the 2018 Parkland school shooting protests and their freedom not to express views in child participation spaces

“…The HS non‐protesters' ability to disagree and express their disagreement with the protest issues may be due to the in/formal or vicarious education they have received through the years, and therefore, emphasize age holds more power. While the 16‐ to 22‐year‐old Londoners in Arya and Henn's (2021) study also did not mention disagreement with the issues in not participating in various climate protests, Hanna's (2022) framework point to a possible injustice that have rendered the less informed and less articulate children unable to (not) protest.…”

“…In Stafford et al's (2003) study, Scottish children (ages 3–18) expressed the burden of spending a lot of time contributing to decisions and action, the need for preparation and clear information about consultation processes and the desire not to be involved in taking forward results of consultations. In her proposed framework, Hanna (2022) named children's silences in child participation spaces due to children's inability to render their experience intelligible as ‘hermeneutical injustice’.…”

Addressing Epistemic Injustice: Engaging Children as Environmental Communicators to Support the Long-Term Sustainability of Forest Ecosystems

“…The first testimonial injustice assigns a lower level of credibility to a person simply because of their social identity, and so they are not taken seriously or valued for bringing legitimate knowledge to an issue. Testimonial epistemic injustice stems from what Fricker (p. 27) calls "identityprejudice", whereby social identities are shaped by social imagination that contains sets of assumptions about how social identities are to be viewed and treated [45]. For example, in environmental management, knowledge hierarchies can privilege scientific knowledge over other knowledges such as traditional indigenous knowledge [44,46,47].…”

“…Studies are increasingly recognising that children experience and indeed are harmed by epistemic injustices in a variety of settings, most notably in health, for example [12,52], education, for example [10,44,53,54], law, for example [11,45], development and rural studies, for example [13,55], and in environmental issues, for example [56].…”