ABSTRACT The paper proposes a philosophical re-evaluation of epistemic injustice by introducing the concept of epistemic suicide, which refers to the self-inflicted suppression of indigenous knowledge. Whereas Miranda Fricker’s account centres on externally imposed epistemic harms, epistemic suicide highlights how internalized hierarchies lead communities to abandon their epistemic resources. Focusing on Africa’s development crisis, particularly Nigeria’s electoral democracy, this study argues that epistemic failure stems not only from colonial legacy but also from internal complicity in knowledge erasure. Epistemic suicide here is distinct from Dotson’s testimonial silencing and Tobi’s appreciative silencing, which reflect passive exclusion rather than active self-sabotage. As a constructive response, the paper proposes epistemic creativity, the intentional reconstruction of knowledge practices through both indigenous and external resources, as a path to restoring intellectual agency. Through historical and analytical methods, the study demonstrates that epistemic creativity, grounded in Afro-re-constructivism, enables Africans to reclaim epistemic autonomy and envision new, self-determined models of development.

This study reports the development and empirical evaluation of a culturally responsive flipbook e-module for teaching quantities and units in Indonesian senior secondary physics. Developed using the ADDIE framework and grounded in Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT), the module integrates local measurement systems, mud, tala, lot, and deben, as epistemic resources for scientific reasoning. A quasi-experimental field trial involved 117 Grade 10 students across three intact classes: two experimental groups (digital: n = 41; print: n = 40) and one control group (conventional worksheets: n = 36). Expert validation confirmed strong content validity (Aiken’s V = 0.87), particularly in cultural authenticity and alignment with critical thinking constructs. Student surveys indicated high practicality (89.55%) and positive perceptions (85.75%), with learners highlighting how culturally familiar contexts, such as zakat unit analysis or land measurement using lots, enhanced relevance and cognitive engagement. To evaluate learning impact, a pretest–posttest design was implemented, with critical thinking measured via a validated open-response instrument. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), controlling for pretest scores, revealed a statistically significant effect of instructional modality on posttest performance, F(2, 113) = 58.34, p < 0.001, with a large effect size (partial η² = 0.513). Adjusted means showed that the experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group (Madj = 79.14 (digital); Madj = 80.72 (print); Madj = 42.13 (control); p < 0.001), while there was no meaningful difference between the delivery modes (p = 0.682). These findings suggest that the CRT-based design, rather than the medium, influences learning outcomes, supporting scalable implementation across diverse infrastructural contexts. When cultural knowledge is structurally integrated into disciplinary reasoning, students engage more deeply, affirming the module’s potential as an equitable, contextually relevant tool for improving rigorous science education. Keywords: critical thinking skills, e-module, culturally responsive teaching.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the articulation and institutionalisation of ‘civilisationism’ within an emerging international illiberal network that originated in North American conservatism but now centres on collaborative efforts among Central European right-wing intellectuals and think tanks. The network's declared objective is the renewal of Western politics, institutions, and ultimately ‘civilisation’ itself-conceptualised as fundamentally rooted in Western Christianity and classical antiquity, and positioned in explicit opposition to liberalism. This ideological framework enables a strategic reimagining of the ‘West’ as historically and philosophically distinct from liberal democracy. Our analysis traces the network's evolution, examining the intellectual currents that mobilise epistemic resources, cultivate transnational connections, and navigate internal tensions. Using an analytical framework that combines Gramscian and Bourdieusian sociologies of intellectuals and ideational knowlegde production, we distinguish between a first generation of conservative intellectuals and a more recent second wave of activist organisations engaged in transnational network-building initiatives such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and educational venues, such as the Mathias Corvinus Collegium or Collegium Intermarium.

Abstract Drawing on fifteen years of engagement with researching Israel's sex industry, this article uses accidental ethnography to propose discomfort‐as‐method for feminist anthropology. I argue that discomfort is not a by‐product of fieldwork but a constitutive condition that disciplines researchers and shapes what can be known. Combining formal ethnography with unplanned, routine encounters, I propose a typology of discomfort: discursive, embodied, and political–institutional, emerging at the intersections of stigma, academic precarity, and polarized feminist politics. The analysis shows how pressures to maintain credibility and relationships can produce silences, recalibrate language, and foreclose lines of inquiry, while also generating insight. Attending to these “revelatory moments” reframes discomfort as a methodological lens that treats emotions as epistemic resources and foregrounds the ethical stakes of representation, care, and control. I conclude by suggesting that embracing discomfort as method enables feminist ethnographers to resist binary logics and remain attentive to the uneven terrains of power and recognition

How does knowledge production during crises challenge or maintain contemporary institutions? This article investigates expert knowledge on nuclear accidents in France in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March 2011. It examines the French and European 'lessons from Fukushima' learning exercise, using document analysis, interviews, and ethnographic observation of institutional experts' working practices. The article shows how nuclear safety experts produce limited commensurability. Specifically, through a comparative exercise, they render certain features of the Fukushima accident commensurable by relating them to a diversity of pre-existing evaluation scales and metrics of nuclear safety, while preventing different hypotheses, methods, and data from being brought to bear on nuclear safety. These operations rely on and consolidate experts' epistemic leeway, their discretionary ability to choose from several incommensurable epistemic resources. The article enhances our understanding of the politics of (in)commensurability for expert communities in the context of the pluralization of expert systems. It opens up questions about knowledge on crises, seeing these crises as episodes in which experts redefine the acceptable states of the world.

Qualitative fieldwork in emotionally charged and culturally complex settings presents unique methodological and ethical challenges, particularly for early-career researchers. This paper reflects on a focused ethnographic study of adolescent mothers in Pakistan, examining how emotional entanglement, insider outsider positionality, and repetition shaped the research process. Drawing on reflexive memos and field notes, the paper illustrates how participants’ disclosures, silences, and relational cues created “ethically important moments” that demanded care, humility, and flexibility. Reflections highlight three key areas: (1) the role of emotions as epistemic resources rather than methodological distractions; (2) the fluidity of insider outsider dynamics shaped by shared language, cultural proximity, and symbolic authority; and (3) the affective impact of repeated questioning, which transformed interviews into mirrors for the researcher’s own reflexivity. The discussion emphasizes practical strategies such as journaling, supervisory debriefings, interpretive humility, and positioning reflexivity as an embedded and necessary methodological stance. This paper contributes to ongoing conversations about the relational, and reflective dimensions of qualitative research by offering practice-based insights for researchers conducting ethnographic work. Knowledge shared will be of value to qualitative researchers, research mentors, and ethics boards seeking to strengthen training, methodological rigor, and ethical responsiveness in emotionally intensive fieldwork.

ABSTRACT Education and curriculum development in Africa have always relied on the epistemological positions of Western philosophers. The overreliance on and reverence for Western philosophers and their ideological positions on knowledge discovery in education has culminated in epistemic injustice. Such reverence undermines the validity and relevance of indigenous knowledge systems in educating the African child. Based on a critical discourse analysis of some Ghanaian proverbs, we argue that embedded in the Ghanaian cultures are several epistemologies that can serve as valuable tools and guiding principles in curriculum development and implementation. We argue that most of the Western epistemologies highly revered in our educational systems are inherently embedded in our indigenous knowledge systems, thus using these epistemologies as philosophical frameworks for curriculum development could serve as a valuable step towards the decolonisation of education in Africa as a whole.

ABSTRACTIntroductionThe role of the Peer Support Worker (PSW) has gained increasing prominence in mental health services, yet its institutionalisation raises questions about balancing autonomy and assimilation into service logics. This study examines the narrative positionings of three PSWs, focusing on how they construct professional identity in relation to mandate, collaboration with practitioners, and service organisation.MethodsA qualitative design was adopted using semi‐structured interviews with three PSWs. Data were analysed through Positioning Theory (Davies and Harré 1999) and Bamberg's three‐level model (2022), which investigates positioning in relation to temporality, the other and agency. Particular attention was given to positions regarding the professional mandate, collaboration with practitioners, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practices, and the services in which participants had placements or are currently engaged.ResultsPSW positioning emerged as dynamic and multifaceted, constantly negotiated between institutional mandates and fidelity to lived experience. Three configurations were identified: (1) a critical and independent stance, maintaining symbolic distance from services whilst collaborating with them; (2) an integrated stance, balancing institutional logics with attentiveness to user experience; and (3) a fluid stance, affirming the coexistence of PSW and service‐user roles and challenging conventional boundaries between clinical and experiential knowledge. Across all narratives, PSWs located themselves in liminal spaces that foster transformative possibilities for mental health services.ConclusionPSW identity is not fixed but articulated through multiple positionings, ranging from critical autonomy to institutional integration and fluid coexistence of service‐user and professional roles. This plurality, rather than constituting ambiguity, represents an epistemic and ethical resource that extends the transformative potential of services beyond the dichotomy of transformation versus assimilation. Recognising this plurality means valuing PSW agency and fostering flexible, participatory practices responsive to the complexity of lived experience.Involving the ParticipantsThe research team included both academics and PSWs in a co‐participatory design initiated through voluntary applications. Only interviews with explicit consent were included. The first draft of the analyses was submitted for participant validation: each PSW reviewed their own transcript and related comments, with the option to modify or expand the analysis. Materials were then shared within the group to enable collective reflection and refinement of interpretation. Through this collective process, the group co‐authored the present version of the article.Clinical Trial RegistrationDoes not fit.

This article proposes an ethno-epistemic approach to teaching ontology in the performing arts at the postgraduate level. Ontology is often introduced to students as an abstract philosophical concern, detached from artistic practice and cultural experience. This article reframes ontology as an interpretive inquiry grounded in cultural knowledge, embodied encounters, and reflective analysis. Drawing on scholarship in the anthropology of knowledge, cultural cognition, linguistics, and adult learning theory, the article develops a pedagogical approach that treats students’ cultural backgrounds, artistic lineages, and experiential histories as epistemic resources rather than contextual noise. The discussion does not present an empirical evaluation of learning outcomes. Instead, it offers a theoretically informed articulation of course design, assignment structure, and reflective sequencing that operationalize ethno-epistemic principles in teaching practice. Ontological understanding is framed as emerging through cycles of observation, field-based engagement, analytical writing, and formative feedback. These pedagogical processes support students in identifying and interrogating the cultural assumptions that shape how performance meaning, action, and presence are interpreted. The article positions the proposed approach as context-dependent and provisional rather than universally generalizable. Its contribution lies in clarifying how ontological inquiry can be pedagogically organized in culturally diverse postgraduate settings, where performance traditions carry distinct epistemic and ontological logics. The ethno-epistemic approach advances discussions in performing arts pedagogy by shifting ontology from a static conceptual domain toward a culturally situated practice of interpretation.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we introduce a novel type of hermeneutical injustice. Traditional renderings of hermeneutical injustice describe situations in which marginalised groups encounter gaps in collective epistemic resources or find that such resources do not address their specific experiences. Conversely, the phenomenon we trace arises when certain concepts are polysemous – they mean something different for different groups. This constitutes a hermeneutical injustice when, along a gradient of power/oppression, the dominant understanding of a particular term impedes marginalised groups from being understood. In this paper, we develop a meaning finitist model to capture the dynamics of polysemy-based hermeneutical injustice. We exemplify the process through the example of ‘detransitioning’. We explore the harms generated by this type of hermeneutical injustice and discuss concept pluralism and concept eliminativism as possible ways to address these harms.

This article examines how recognition and epistemic and institutional dynamics shape women's trajectories toward empowerment in Danish women's shelters. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with current and former shelter residents, it explores how professional and lived knowledge interact and are negotiated within shelter encounters. The analytical concept of knowledge encounters developed captures how power, recognition, and meaning are coproduced through these interactions. Findings reveal that empowerment emerges through dialogical sensemaking and access to epistemic and material resources, yet remains conditioned by institutional norms of autonomy and self-responsibility. The study advances feminist social work by illuminating the epistemic dimensions of support and empowerment.

These days, digitization is commonly recognized as a global phenomenon. Digital lifestyles are emerging and continually evolving, further amplifying this phenomenon. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robotics, and autonomous systems are becoming increasingly pervasive. Consequently, human life is undergoing profound digitization. Progressively, the extent of digitization progress is regarded as a crucial determinant of future public and state policy. Successful implementation of digitization projects has significantly influenced human communication, prompted a rethinking of value frameworks, and altered individuals’ perceptions of life’s meaning. In this context, examining the sociocultural and psychological effects of digitization in general - and network identity in particular - is highly pertinent. This study scrutinizes the nature of digitalization through its impact on individuals’ ideological beliefs and on the formation of their identity codes. Given digitalization’s contradictory character, Kazakhstan’s experience stands out: it juxtaposes the risks of migrating human activity into the digital sphere with the ambitious goals of digital transformation and their ensuing achievements. The peculiarities of Kazakhstan’s digitalization policy, with its emphasis on advanced technologies, underscore the need to thoroughly understand the broader phenomenon of digitization. The relevance of this research perspective derives from three imperatives: assessing the potential negative consequences of digitalization, grounding the process in a robust theoretical humanitarian framework, and pinpointing the primary risks associated with network identity in today’s digital landscape. This research leverages the epistemic resources of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy. Such interdisciplinary synergy enables a more thorough understanding of digitalization’s role in shaping a new humanistic worldview. These analytical perspectives enable a comprehensive assessment of both Kazakhstan’s specific context and the wider digitization process.

ABSTRACT This article develops the concept of epistemic dispossession as a distinctive structural form of epistemic injustice arising under platform capitalism. Epistemic dispossession occurs when socio-technical infrastructures systematically extract, suppress, or appropriate epistemic resources, such as knowledge, data, and communicative contributions, from marginalised groups, depriving them of both epistemic agency and the benefits derived from their knowledge production. Building upon Iris Marion Young’s theory of structural injustice and oppression, the article illustrates how epistemic dispossession manifests along Young’s five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Through an examination of contemporary digital platforms, the article demonstrates how algorithmic practices, profit-driven incentives, and content moderation systems structurally reproduce these injustices. The article contrasts epistemic dispossession with existing theories of epistemic injustice, arguing that this concept highlights the political-economic dimensions of epistemic harm that are less salient in the literature. Finally, drawing upon Young’s communicative democracy and social connection model of responsibility, the article sheds light on a range of institutional remedies to counter epistemic dispossession and uphold epistemic justice in digital public spheres.

ABSTRACT This article introduces knowledge-specific epistemic injustice as a third kind of epistemic injustice beside group-based or content-specific epistemic injustice. Knowledge-specific epistemic injustice is caused by a prejudice towards specific forms of knowledge, for example, practical, embodied, or experiential knowledge. The article shows that discounting these forms of knowledge silences knowers in a similar way as prejudice towards certain groups and their capacity as knowers. Thus, in order to achieve full epistemic justice and to overcome unjust power structures upheld by and based on unfairly distributed epistemic resources, all forms of epistemic injustice must be addressed.

Abstract With this contribution, we propose an initial, relational ethics approach to epistemic inclusion in the development and application of medical decision support systems. We revisit issues of epistemic injustice in various forms of medical AI and consider different orders of epistemic oppression. We argue that AI-based decision support risks excluding patients and medical personnel from relevant epistemic processes vital to good medical practice. For example, relating to a subject’s lifeworld, value sets, assumptions concerning good health, and means of overcoming or living with disease. By recognizing medical decision support systems as mediators of shared epistemic resources between patients, medical personnel, and medical research, we contend that a concern for epistemic inclusion ought to guide their conception and development. A relational ethics-based consideration of these epistemic processes further illuminates the structural character of these forms of epistemic exclusion. Ultimately, our approach seeks to reinstate the epistemic privilege of those perspectives being marginalized by these technologies and challenges the proclaimed impending epistemic obligation to utilize AI-based tools as the state-of-the-art in medical diagnosis and, perhaps even, therapy and its planning.

This study investigates how follower size influences social media influencers’ sourcing behavior and credibility assessment rigor when producing content for their audiences. Grounded in Social Capital Theory, this study examines the tension between popularity as a form of social capital and its limited capacity to predict rigorous credibility assessment using a global quantitative survey of 500 social media influencers across multiple languages and regions. The findings suggest that influencers with larger follower sizes utilize more diverse sources; however, follower size does not correlate with credibility assessment rigor. This underscores that follower size functions as a symbolic rather than epistemic resource, where source diversity often serves as a visible signal of professionalism rather than having a deeper verification. Additionally, credibility assessment rigor is not a significant predictor of source diversity, and platform type and content genre did not moderate the relationship between follower size and source diversity. These findings contribute to the influencer marketing literature by challenging assumptions linking popularity with higher scrutiny of content credibility. The study holds implications for platform policy, media literacy education, and influencer–brand collaborations. Recommendations are provided for improving transparency and source vetting among digital content creators in increasingly flooded social media platforms.

The interpretation of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) has long been invoked in Indonesia’s religious, national, and cultural discourse. While normatively understood as a call for tolerance and harmony, it has rarely been examined critically through the lenses of Qur’anic exegesis and discourse analysis. This article investigates how the discourse of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika is constructed and deployed within religious texts and broader social narratives, highlighting its implications for power and ideology. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the study explores how narratives of unity often function less as inclusive engagements with diversity and more as instruments for legitimizing the dominance of majority groups or state authorities. Such interpretations tend to suppress alternative perspectives, particularly those voiced by marginalized communities. The findings indicate that the discourse of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika in tafsir is not neutral or universal but shaped by hegemonic interests and institutional frameworks that privilege uniformity over plurality. The study argues that religious interpretation must move toward a more critical and inclusive hermeneutics—one that not only affirms common values but also recognizes difference as an epistemic and spiritual resource. The broader implication is the necessity of opening tafsir studies to interdisciplinary approaches and dialogical engagement. By doing so, religious discourse can become more just, reflective, and liberating, contributing to a pluralistic public sphere that genuinely honors Indonesia’s foundational principle of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika.

This study investigates the integration of the traditional Goyang Karawang dance (GoKar) into biology education, particularly in teaching the human musculoskeletal system. Using a qualitative case study approach informed by ethnobiological and ethnopedagogical frameworks, data were collected through performance observations, interviews with dance artists and high school biology teachers, and document analysis. The analysis focused on the biomechanics and socio-cognitive meanings of core GoKar movements. Findings reveal that the dance involves coordinated actions of key muscle groups and joints, such as agonist-antagonist pairs and postural control centered in the hip and shoulder areas. Simultaneously, each movement expresses cultural values of grace, confidence, and balance, reflecting Sundanese philosophies of harmony. These embodied elements connect scientific anatomical knowledge with students’ lived cultural experiences. The research contributes to culturally responsive pedagogy by offering an experiential learning model that supports conceptual understanding while reinforcing local wisdom as a valid epistemic resource. This integration aligns with the goals of Indonesia’s Merdeka Curriculum and the Profile of Pancasila Students, promoting critical thinking, autonomy, and appreciation of cultural diversity. Overall, the study offers a transdisciplinary approach to science education that is inclusive, contextual, and pedagogically meaningful.

This article examines women’s accounts of using performance and image-enhancing drugs in the context of fitness and strength-training. It explicitly engages in a mode of feminist knowledge production to rethink the harms women experience as a feature of epistemic injustice and gendered discrimination rather than personal inability, consumption or drug effects alone. Drawing on theorisations of epistemic agency and injustice (Fricker, 2007; Haraway, 1988) alongside 10 qualitative interviews with women who use substances for strength-training in Melbourne, Australia, we attend to the social and political features of drug consumption, and women’s accounts of bodily transformation and harms. Women overwhelmingly described consumption in relation to enhanced autonomy, with substances functioning as technologies of self-realisation within domestic and work responsibilities and gendered relations of power, as well as a route to enhanced social lives. In contrast to epistemically authoritative discourses in which women have little knowledge of the substances they are consuming and knowingly downplay the potential for side effects, our participants possessed detailed forms of knowledge and skill, and actively sought to monitor and prevent side effects, including virilisation, in the absence of reliable, gender-sensitive health information and healthcare. The most pressing forms of harm women experienced were gender-related stigma and discrimination, and insufficient gender-specific healthcare, related, in part, to epistemic exclusion and injustice in research and healthcare. By prioritising women’s accounts and attending to embodiment and social practices, our analysis complicates normative knowledge claims about women’s risk, coercion and pathologies, and suggests new epistemic resources for understanding women’s consumption as socially and materially meaningful, and enhancement harm reduction more broadly.

This study explores the urgent need for a cultural turn in Islamic economic education by emphasizing the integration of local wisdom into its theoretical and pedagogical frameworks. While contemporary Islamic economics has developed rapidly in institutional and academic domains, its educational approaches often remain disconnected from the socio-cultural contexts in which it operates, by overlooking indigenous economic values and practices rooted in local traditions—such as mutual cooperation, ethical trade, and community-based redistribution—Islamic economic education risks becoming abstract, elitist, and less impactful at the grassroots level. This paper argues that local wisdom is not merely a cultural artifact, but an epistemic resource aligned with the maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah, capable of enriching curriculum content and pedagogical methods. Through a conceptual-normative analysis, this research highlights how incorporating local wisdom can bridge epistemological gaps, foster inclusive education, and promote a more holistic understanding of Islamic economics that is both theoretically grounded and contextually relevant. The findings suggest that reclaiming local wisdom is essential for improving educational outcomes and restoring the ethical and social dimensions of Islamic economics in pluralistic and postcolonial societies like Indonesia.