The possibility of addressing epistemic injustice through engaged research practice: reflections on a menstruation related critical health education project in South Africa

Abstract

Questions of epistemic injustice in relation to community engagement activities have rarely been interrogated. While it is often purported that when academics and community members are involved in the co-creation of knowledge through a mutually beneficial exchange of resources and expertise, all participants emerge as active stakeholders in the knowledge production process, little research has been done on how academics or community partners experience these processes from an epistemological perspective. Does the proposed process of repositioning research participants in community engagement praxis allows for a new power dynamic to emerge in research such that all parties genuinely share equal responsibility for determining the processes and outcomes of the knowledge production process? Do such activities allow for an epistemological shift away from traditional knowledge construction paradigms to ones in which the democratisation of knowledge is prioritised? Does such an epistemological shift in the knowledge construction paradigm extend beyond simply the knowledge construction process to interpersonal relationships between academics and community members who see themselves as co-protagonists in a shared project? In grappling with these questions I will draw on my own, personal experiences working in a menstruation related engaged research critical health education project in South Africa, to discuss the complexities of whether and how the amelioration of epistemic injustices are being served through community engagement activities.

Keywords:

• Epistemic injustice
• engaged research
• knowledge construction
• menstruation related critical health education

Notes

1. The engaged project described in this reflection may indeed have moved from one end of this spectrum to the other as it evolved.

2. Cognitive justice and epistemic justice may be understood as distinct from one another, though should be seen as operating on a spectrum of epistemic harms and goods in relation to recognising the epistemic agency of human beings.

3. Including elements of mutual planning, execution and evaluation of the projects.

4. Much of the information available to school-going girls about menstruation, as identified both in the literature and in our survey, is highly stigmatised: situating menstruation as shameful, surrounded by various myths and taboos.

5. Initially raised by a community based organisation who approached us, but later through the various school principals and teachers we met with while conducting our survey.

6. Particularly in this project, women and children, but more generally community partners in the research process.

7. For some reflections on the ways in which women’s knowledge systems are minimised in critical public health projects and literature see Hawkes and Buse (2013) and Burgess (2016).

8. Ethical issues arise in relation to participatory work which brings cultural tension to the fore. For a detailed discussion see Paphitis and Kelland (2018).