Högskolan Dalarnas logga och länk till högskolans webbplats

Knowledge and theory are developed by adults, for adults, and often about adults. This includes mainstream research about children and youth, which is frequently criticised for being adultcentric. Similar critique is also applicable to feminist theory, feminist philosophy, and other critical studies that focuses largely on adults. With these insights, it is necessary to consider whether and how the feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker's concept of epistemic justice might be useful in attempting to address social justice issues in childhoods and youth.

The concept of epistemic injustice, as discussed by Fricker, has helped to highlight racist and sexist discriminatory practices. Such injustices are claimed to be founded on prejudices and unjustified treatment. However, it could be challenging to conceptualise epistemic wrongdoings in these ways when it comes to how people and groups, such as children and minors, who are often regarded as irrational or cognitively and morally immature, are treated. Children and adolescents are generally regarded to have lower epistemic capacities than adults since they are not fully developed. In developmental psychology, for example, these developmentalist representations are considered as facts and findings, rather than prejudiced. Additionally, the traditional conception of knowledgeable and morally capable subjects may include moral and ethical obligations. Children may not end up in prisons after committing crime in those environments where it is believed that they lack the capacity to discern right from wrong. And yet, the same conception of children also denies them the right to vote in “democratic” societies and be taken seriously as knowledgeable and moral service users, patients or pupils.

In this essay, I make an attempt to elaborate on epistemic justice through the lenses of critical childhood studies, postcolonial feminist theory and intersectionality. Drawing on my doctoral dissertation on intersecting injustices in child welfare social work in Sweden, I describe instances in which children are subject to epistemic injustices. I argue that the psychobiological objectification of children, the exclusion of children's narratives as accounts of evidence and (in)justice but also distinctive modes of moral differentiation and othering of some children's childhoods, are all examples of epistemic injustices in childhoods. Finally, I turn to research on child and youth activism to highlight some important considerations that a recognition of children and young people as epistemic and moral subjects brings to the debate about epistemic justice issues as well as in imagining less adultist and more child-friendly societies and worldviews.