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Culture, exploitation, and epistemic approaches to diversity

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Abstract

A lack of diversity remains a significant problem in many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) communities. According to the epistemic approach to addressing these diversity problems, it is in a community’s interest to improve diversity because doing so can enhance the rigor and creativity of its work. However, we draw on empirical and theoretical evidence illustrating that this approach can trade on the epistemic exploitation of diverse community members. Our concept of epistemic exploitation holds when there is a relationship between two parties in which one party accrues epistemic benefits from another party’s knowledge and epistemic location and, in doing so, harms the second party or sets back their interests. We demonstrate that the ironic outcome of this nominal application of the epistemic approach is that it undermines the epistemic benefits which it promises. Indeed, we show that epistemic exploitation undermines the relationships and interactions among community members that produce rigor and creativity. Our central argument is that for communities to reap the benefits of an epistemic approach to diversity, to implement a genuine epistemic approach, they need to develop cultures that ameliorate the harms faced by, and protect the interests of, their diverse community members.

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Notes

  1. The research we draw on in this paper assumes a gender binary, as do the cultures we examine. But we want to acknowledge that this belies a more pluralistic reality. Focusing on cis men and women is not the only relevant or the most representative way to talk about gender diversity. However, we use cis language because it reflects the current state of much research and affairs in the academy. We intend, nevertheless, to extend our arguments in this paper to more inclusive sex/gender categories. Wherever relevant, we hope that readers will see the applicability and value of our insights here to folks who are traditionally excluded by binaristic, cis language.

  2. For a fuller picture of the representation of women and people of color in STEM, see Ferguson 2013; Rollock, 2019; Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group, 2017; Walkington, 2017 in addition to the National Science Board, 2018; the data from Statistics Canada in Wall 2019; and Dionne-Simard et al., 2016.

  3. Although we focus on diverse and commonplace practitioners, it is possible there are goldilocks practitioners whose representation in an epistemic community is, roughly speaking, just right. Our focus on two kinds of practitioners, diverse and commonplace, does not assume that the social categories of interest are binaristic. We acknowledge that many of these categories are complex. For example, as we show later in this paper, differences in the representation and experiences of white women, Black women, and Latinas are important in different STEM communities.

  4. See also Williams 2018.

  5. It is possible for situational diversity, without accompanying epistemic diversity, to improve a community’s epistemic practices. For example, Phillips (2017) and Steel et al., (2021) explore the idea that the mere presence of a diverse practitioner in a group is, in some cases, correlated with commonplace practitioners being better epistemic agents—sharing dissenting views and more objectively considering the evidence and arguments available to them. The idea is that the mere expectation of epistemic diversity arising from situational diversity can lead commonplace practitioners to approach their knowledge-production practices more carefully. However, in this paper, rather than focusing on cases in which situational diversity can be beneficial on its own, we focus on cases in which the culture of epistemic communities impedes the development of effective epistemic diversity when diverse practitioners are present.

  6. There can be times in the development of some ideas when they are best nurtured by a community of like-minded supporters, but according to this theory, at that point in development, they remain poorly justified. Once these ideas are developed, they require investigation by a diverse community to become better justified.

  7. Thanks to Samantha Brennan for helping us clarify the relationship involved in our characterization of exploitation.

  8. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for helping us clarify this point.

  9. Although the empirical and theoretical points we raise in the remainder of this section tend to focus on race and gender, we do not claim that this is an exhaustive description of factors supporting epistemic exploitation or that race and gender are the only axes of oppression that are relevant to epistemic exploitation.

  10. We maintain, however, that some commonplace practitioners experience very few, if any, additional costs, beyond those which every practitioner must pay in order to be a member of an epistemic community.

  11. According to Medina (2011), these disproportionate assignments of credibility contribute to many varieties of epistemic injustices that harm not only the direct victim(s) of the injustices but also their larger community (which shares with the victim(s) a collective or social imaginary).

  12. See Saul (2013) for a more detailed analysis of how stereotype threat and implicit biases affect women in philosophy.

  13. Recall that Jerald from Sect. 3.1, “[d]ismayed but at the time jobless,. . reluctantly accepted the position” at the unfriendly/friendly department (McGee & Kazembe, 2015, p. 15).

  14. Henry & Glenn (2009) provide innovative ideas for Black women in the academy who have or had problems connecting and collaborating with others. Their discussion is informed by Black feminist thought and critical race theory.

  15. See also Frye 1983 for a similar discussion about the unintentional objectification of researchers.

  16. See Wylie et al., 2007 for a review of social science literature making this point.

  17. See Heavy Head 2006 for a discussion of how Indigenous scholarship in Canada has been impeded, even when special efforts were made to encourage and support Indigenous scholarship.

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Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Samantha Brennan, Shannon Dea, Peggy DesAutels, Heidi Grasswick, Daphne Gray-Grant, Tim Kenyon, Wren Lamont, Boyana Peric, Kathryn Plaisance, and Sara Weaver for rich discussions of this topic and feedback on various drafts of this paper. We are grateful for constructive feedback from the 2016 Southwestern Ontario Feminist Philosophy Workshop, the philosophy departments at Western, Wilfrid Laurier, and McMaster Universities, and three anonymous reviewers.

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Janet Jones is a recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Carla Fehr & Janet Minji Jones

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Correspondence to Carla Fehr.

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Fehr, C., Jones, J.M. Culture, exploitation, and epistemic approaches to diversity. Synthese 200, 465 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03787-8

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