These days, humanity focuses on taking its gradual steps towards equality and inclusion; we can see an increasing number of people actively concentrating on and improving their attitudes towards individuals differing from themselves. Nonetheless, as a society, we still have a long way to go to arrive in the era of prevalent, authentic equality.
To elaborate on the topic of epistemic injustice, we should firstly elucidate the concept of epistemic credibility; it merely is the credibility we attribute to the other person, just because we perceive and respect them as a thinking human being. In the perfect world, we would all live in the state of epistemic justice - treating others seriously, validating their arguments with appropriate respect, and the authority we would attribute to an equally qualified person.
Unluckily, the reality falls far from that utopian vision, with the epistemic injustice being a pervasive phenomenon, deeply rooted in our historical and cultural background. Women tend to be taken less seriously in the boardroom due to their gender; black people happen to be taken less seriously in some contexts set side by side with white people.
Epistemic injustice usually tends to be considered as a topic for debate in the field of philosophy. However, treating someone's knowledge or status in a biased, unfair way is not only a solely social problem. Not only does the epistemic injustice severely influence the global economy, but it also significantly affects our pockets.
How does epistemic injustice affect the economy?
Economics is a social science based on resource scarcity – we have a strictly limited quantity of commodities that can be used to satisfy the limitless amount of needs.
So, what exactly happens when epistemic injustice forges its way into society and the workplace from an economic point of view?
Well, it simply robs us of the possibilities to use our (already limited!) resources in fulfilling the needs of the market. How? When people who have useful information, skills, or ideas are not taken seriously, society cannot profit from their solutions. This situation could be compared to standing in front of a tree full of apples and not taking any of them just because we do not like that tree's height or width.
The variety of thought reflected with equal consideration provided by inclusion is particularly crucial in the times of globalization and the 4th industrial revolution. These ongoing processes result in continually advancing technologies that can solve thousands of problems and satisfy as many needs. Customers have become more selective than ever before. We need as many diverse points of view as we can get to create products and services satisfying the needs of customers all around the globe.
Additionally, attributing less value to the ideas of a particular part of society due to harmful prejudices can effectively block people's potential and permanently harm their morale. Lack of motivation and purpose of working towards a better future is the first step to stagnation and halt in our civilization's development. Those scenarios foreshadow a decline in the countries' GDP and the level of global welfare.
In addition, injustice experienced by individuals can negatively affect their financial security and lead to lowering their living conditions. The less money people have, the smaller their contribution to the economy is.
One of the significant problems related to epistemic injustice is epistemic oppression. It was defined by Kristie Dotson - professor at Michigan State University - in her article, "Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression." Dotson described this term as the "persistent epistemic exclusion that hinders one's contribution to knowledge production." Keeping in mind that we live in the times of the knowledge-based economy, where knowledge is predominantly used to create goods and services, this curtailment poses a significant threat to our long-term prosperity.
Epistemic injustice is inherently connected with discrimination, which has the mighty power of harming the economy. It does so by interfering with the optimal talent allocation. According to Gary S. Becker – a famous American economist who has received the 1922 Nobel Memorial Prize – employers biased against hiring (or giving credibility to) particular social groups, harm themselves, missing out on talented individuals. It effectively reduces the potential of the value-added offered by their company.
Final thoughts
Only when we are entirely ready to face the prejudices straight on and consciously work against them, we can provide our economy with limitless development opportunities. Epistemic injustice is one of the obstacles we have to fight to enter the most promising path for humanity towards the highest global prosperity levels.
Giving everybody equal possibilities to express their ideas, share knowledge, and elaborate on their experiences, while providing them with appropriate respect, is the most powerful tool to advance our economy and society in general.
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