Knowledge and power
Radio National's Philosopher's Zone has a programme on this week about Power, prejudice and the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Stephen Lawrence was a young black man murdered in a hate crime in the UK in 1993. Noone has been successfully prosecuted for his death, in large part because a friend who was present at the attack wasn't taken seriously as a victim or as a key witness, again because of his race. Miranda Fricker discusses this as an issue of 'testimonial justice': the way in which we construct some people as more valid 'knowers' than others, and the silencing that this entails.
This is interesting for my research because one of my main concerns is the way in which social movement participants try to construct themselves as valid knowers. This might be by trying to find points of leverage within existing power structures, so for example getting prominent researchers or politicians (those already accepted as valid knowers) to speak for their cause. More radically, some movement participants try to shift the terms of debate by making special claims for themselves as privileged knowers. For example, some participants in the Indian movement against genetically modified crops argue that farmers have a closer relationship with nature and a more holistic understanding of agrobiodiversity, and therefore are more valid producers of knowledge than foreign researchers (particularly those employed by agrochemical companies).
Claims such as the latter have broader effects: in highlighting the importance of local, embedded, and marginalised knowledge within one arena, they open up space for similar claims in other arenas. This can shift how different individuals and groups are constructed as knowers, and the value given to their analysis, ideas, and testimony.
As was shown by the botched investigation of Stephen Lawrence's murder, this can have very real and important effects.
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Photo from malik ml williams.