Research ethics and epistemic oppression

Both in theory and practice, a consistent interrogation of epistemic oppression and the shadows that it casts is the leitmotif of our editorial engagement, or (im)print on the International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP). Whether a particular article puts epistemic oppression center stage thematically, or epistemic oppression is the backdrop for the article, together, our authors, submission by submission, issue by issue, and volume by volume provide us with ways to break past, through, and around it. Through their painstaking political work, we get to see behind that curtain.

Such oppression results from politics and practices of knowledge that oppress some people (and uphold the privilege of others) via the imposition of social, economic, political, and epistemic norms about those people. These knowledge politics and practices rely on and perpetuate norms that treat those with power as credible transmitters of objective knowledge and facts, and others as suspicious conveyors of subjective experience and politicized opinions. These norms are so pernicious and pervasive as to render their function almost invisible. They support broadly shared distinctions between fact and opinion in ways that dismiss resistance as biased opinion when it challenges the ideas that are privileged by conventional norms.

As feminist editors, we situate the following discussion of the journal's publishing ethics in the context of concerns about epistemic oppression as it might be experienced not only by our authors but also by those who are engaged in political struggles in their research sites. Thus, IFJP's research ethics guidelines keep two considerations in mind:

1. the import of feminist publishing for resisting epistemic oppression of feminist ideas among research participants (and the scholars who write about them);

2. the import of feminist publishing for resisting epistemic oppression of feminist scholars.

Considerations of feminist research ethics are both timely and timeless. We offer three such considerations to our authors and readers – considerations that we strive to cultivate in the pages of IFJP:

1. Regardless of the kind of data on which an article relies, we ask our authors to “confirm that all of the research meets the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study country,” as per our submission requirements. However, this bears scrutiny and elaboration. As feminists, we should scrutinize the norms of institutional ethical review. At some institutions, these norms are centered on protecting the author and their institution from scrutiny. For feminists, ethical review norms should entail attending to the historical practices of colonialism, racialized inequalities, caste, gender, and other hierarchies in which the fields of social science research were developed. One form of epistemic oppression within academe is layering research methods on top of these hierarchies without deconstructing their foundations or making them visible for all to see. Thus, while we want to include footnotes that reference the formal ethical review processes to which a researcher subjected their methods, we welcome those who choose to use those notes or their text to make visible the ethical practices that they employed to attend to epistemic hierarchies as well.

2. The use of the phrase “subject” itself comes laden with hierarchical and colonial connotations. Since feminists see research relationships as relationships of mutuality, enabling a transformative movement of making visible and audible what has not been seen or heard before in a particular way, we need ways of talking and thinking together about our relationships with our subject participants that strive to acknowledge that research is a process in which researchers and their interlocutors – human and non-human – co-construct knowledge. As the mediator between this co-constructed knowledge and its articulation in academic scholarship, the researcher bears a distinct epistemic burden associated with that privilege. Thus, the feminist research ethic of IFJP includes fostering a vocabulary of research that challenges or at least renders visible the hierarchical politics of conventional research.

3. Where translators and research assistants have made our authors' work possible, we welcome their being named in articles as appropriate, recognizing that protecting anonymity may also be the most feminist thing to do in a particular context.

These are just three concrete, article-specific ways in which an author can attend to epistemic injustice and oppression.

Even when such considerations do not seem central to an article's purpose, the disruption of norms of knowledge politics that feminist work makes possible is central to the journal and how we as editors choose to curate the pieces that we assemble for each issue. In this issue, we draw your attention to the conceptual juxtapositions with which our authors engage:

• midwifery and conscientious objection (Rebecca Selberg);

• warfare and a café (Greta Lynn Uehling);

• agency and nationalism (Nayia Kamenou);

• subjectivities and uprisings (Erika Biagini); and

• inclusion and peace (Duanghathai Buranajaroenkij).

These juxtapositions stem from the authors' insistence on foregrounding lived experiences through their grounded analysis of the local experience of global politics.

We hope that you enjoy this issue, which will appear online long before the print version while printing is suspended due to the COVID-19 crisis in an effort to protect workers throughout the supply chain. The global inequalities that have been laid bare by the pandemic reveal what those engaged in struggles for justice have long known. Social, economic, and political inequalities in the global system have resulted in disturbing inequalities in the exposure and death rates of the often marginalized workers who are at the center of delivering sustenance and care, as well as their families and communities. With new attention to racial, gender, and colonial inequalities today, perhaps more people will join feminists in recognizing that these are not only historical phenomena, but also phenomena whose consequences are lived today. Feminists, particularly those who keep the politics of knowledge at the forefront of their considerations, can remind us that the first step toward taking on epistemic oppression is the reflection on the politics of knowledge that is foundational to how feminists begin their research.

We will continue to solicit and publish scholarship that makes transparent the politics of knowledge, knowledge creation, and academic publishing.