A Virtuous Hearer: An Exploration of Epistemic Injustice and an Ethic of Care in Public Encounters

Abstract

The traditional street-level bureaucracy literature views public encounters, the interaction between frontline service providers and the people they serve, as inherently problematic and oppressive to both sides. However, an oft-ignored part of this relationship between the state and its citizens are the communicative practices employed when the two meet, which produce and reproduce social meaning and identities, a possible source of injustice. Epistemic injustice happens when a speaker is subject to diminished credibility or intelligibility because of the hearer’s biases toward the speaker’s perceived social identity, affecting their ability as a “knower.” This reduces the speaker’s ability to resist unjust treatment and reinforces their identity as an Other. This paper explores communicative practices of virtuous hearers in public encounters in Arizona’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and argues that communicative practices related to the principles of an ethic of care have potential for resisting or counteracting the production and reproduction of the Other – in this case, mothers who do not live up to a neoliberal identity of a good mother.