Abstract

This article seeks to understand how and why certain locations are excluded from or seen as foreclosed as places of innovation and knowledge production in health research and practice. Rooted in several years of collaborative ethnographic research in Mississippi, we develop this conceptual framework to understand the persistence of – and often ineffective response to – racialized and classed health disparities. We define our concept of epistemic prejudice as a structural inability or resistance to seeing certain places, bodies, and locations as capable of knowledge production and innovation. The history of the community health center movement, paired with the portrayal of Mississippi in contemporary media representations, helps us develop our concept. We use an interface ethnography method as Mississippi scholars to demonstrate the importance of this model of research in understanding persistent inequality in places of ‘lack’, noting that the challenges of addressing health problems in Mississippi stem in part from epistemic prejudice of scholars, health care practitioners, and policy-makers. Epistemic prejudice has broader implications for how global health initiatives are implemented, how postcolonial frameworks still shape knowledge production, and how knowledge is generated and taken as authoritative.

Highlights

  • The American Deep South has often been a region of ridicule, embarrassment, and romanticism in US popular culture

  • Considering the politics of knowledge production, Biehl and Petryna (2013, 15) ask: ‘What or who must be valued in order for knowledge to count as global health science, and what or who remains subjacent or unaddressed?’ In response, we offer the concept of epistemic prejudice, drawing attention to how people in certain privileged locations are valued to create generalizable knowledge in the global health landscape and how specific forms of innovation are silenced or not even recognized as innovative in the first place

  • We argue that the challenges of addressing racial health disparities in Mississippi stem in part from epistemic prejudice on behalf of scholars, health care providers, and policy makers who often presuppose that since Mississippi is poor and sick, it will continue to be so without some significant intervention from outside

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Summary

Introduction

The American Deep South has often been a region of ridicule, embarrassment, and romanticism in US popular culture. Considering the politics of knowledge production, Biehl and Petryna (2013, 15) ask: ‘What or who must be valued in order for knowledge to count as global health science, and what or who remains subjacent or unaddressed?’ In response, we offer the concept of epistemic prejudice, drawing attention to how people in certain privileged locations are valued to create generalizable knowledge in the global health landscape and how specific forms of innovation are silenced or not even recognized as innovative in the first place. We use the term ‘epistemic prejudice’ to explain how this happens

Defining epistemic prejudice
Mississippi in the global South
Conclusion
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