Epistemic racism and sexism in public administration and theory’s unfinished business

Abstract

In this essay, we argue that orthodox theory—mainstream knowledge deemed legitimate and universal—in fact originates from a very specific time and place, from a very specific type of individual. The archetypical orthodox theorist is a White, Western European Christian man from the Enlightenment period. Epistemic silencing universalizes his views as “modern thought” without considering the actual narrowness of its origins. We define and discuss epistemic racism and sexism and end with ideas about how scholars and practitioners can employ practices to dismantle knowledge hierarchies. We take as given the epistemic silencing that Candler, Azevedo, and Albernaz (2010) reveal in public administration research and argue that theory still has an important role to continue exposing epistemic silencing. This represents the ongoing and unfinished business of theory: To continue exploring insights from across the social sciences to inform and illuminate public administration’s path.