Toward a Sustainable Epistemology

Abstract

I argue that naturalizing normativity—articulating norms that are appropriate given what we know about ourselves and the world—can be framed in terms of sustainability, calling for norms that underwrite practices of inquiry that make it more rather than less likely that others, especially those who are variously marginalized and subordinated, will be able to acquire knowledge in the future. The case for a sustainable epistemology, with a commitment to attending especially to those in positions of vulnerability, can be made, I argue, as much on epistemic grounds as on grounds of social justice.

Keywords:

• Epistemology
• Naturalizing Normativity
• Sustainability

Notes

[1] My interest in vulnerability has been influenced by work being done by researchers at the Umeå Centre for Gender Studies, with which I am affiliated, on a proposal for a large, multi and transdisciplinary study of vulnerability, starting with a specifically Swedish focus on the current situation of growing and inequitably distributed forms of vulnerability, but extending to a reconceptualization of persons as intrinsically—not just contingently and problematically—vulnerable.

[2] I argue for the inability of modern western conceptions of objectivity and realism to actually meet the needs of the subordinated, and of the suitedness of feminist conceptions to do so, in Scheman (2001a, 2001b).

[3] Feminist bioethics is an important site for reflection on the ways in which thinking interactively brings together matters of ethics, epistemology, and ontology. In the words of Lisa Eckenwiler and Carolyn Ells, for example: “We argue for a ‘social connection model’ of responsibility to become the prevailing ethic for research. On this model—conceived as a set of shared, coordinated practices more than individual duties—research ethics and integrity are principally a matter of understanding, cultivating and reckoning with the relationships that constitute the research endeavor all the way down: the relational nature of persons and behaviours, the relationships of collaboration that permeate research, and the social, economic, and institutional structures that shape how research is formulated, reviewed, conducted, and its benefits and burdens are distributed” (Eckenwiler and Ells 2012, emphasis in the original). See also Scheman (2008).

[4] Thanks to Joanna Fiduccia and Nico Machida for introducing me to the work of Miwon Kwon and to thinking about the sitedness of art works as a way to approach the epistemological relevance of place.

[5] I have previously thought about these issues most explicitly in relation to community-based participatory research. See Jordan, Gust, and Scheman (2011).

[6] For a particularly striking example of this problem, see the controversy, discussed by Nicholas and Wylie 2009, concerning community-based participatory research, in Cook and Kothari (2001) and Hickey and Mohan (2004).