Human Service Organizations As Epistemic (In)Justice Sites and Actors: Bridging Epistemic Justice and Organizational Theory Via Case Applications

Background: Epistemic justice examines the politics, processes, and consequences of knowledge production: who gets to be a knower; how knowledge is created and/or destroyed; and who or what is legitimated, silenced, or erased. While epistemic justice involves individuals, groups, and systems, the organization as an epistemic site and actor remains less considered. Meanwhile, organizational theories examine the logics, incentives, and pressures structuring; the practices of; and the stakes of organizational life for human service organizations, workers, and clients. Organizational theories increasingly contend with the role of evidence in organizational life, e.g., evidence-based practice and policy. How organizations shape and are shaped by the (re)production of epistemic (in)justice is less studied. Bridging epistemic justice and organizational theory opens up introspection for social work as a professional practice and academic field. That is, this roundtable offers space for raising questions and problematizing human service organizations as sites of and actors in epistemic struggle. This roundtable allows a pause, to reconsider assumptions and histories of taken-for-granted practices/knowledges in the field, in therapy rooms, in social work manager meetings, in classrooms, and in research sites/labs. To do so, this participatory roundtable will explore productive tensions between epistemic justice and organizational theory through group-based case applications.

Structure: First, roundtable presenters will offer a brief overview of primary literatures. This overview will foreground key concepts, such as testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, epistemic smothering, embedded agency, and institutionalization, that will be applied in the case example. Second, a presenter will introduce a case for group-based discussion. The case will focus on public districts taking up new forms of health and social service provision amidst a backdrop of welfare retrenchment and the shrinking of public health organizations. Participants will work in groups, accompanied by a roundtable presenter, and use the case to unpack and tackle key debates. Participants will: 1) apply concepts, for example, how does hermeneutical (in)justice help us consider the potential for community leadership vis-a-vis professional leadership; or how might frontline workers and managers make meaning of their work in the context of an epistemic injustice which created community precarity; 2) craft potential research questions and designs; and 3) discuss an epistemic justice-informed research praxis (with community partners). Third, we will reconvene as a large group, and participants will make connections to their own work, after which the roundtable will close.

Learning Objectives: The roundtable aims for the following learning objectives for participants: 1) to deepen theoretical and conceptual understandings of epistemic justice and organizational theory; 2) to gain practical experience in applying theories and concepts to research design and praxis; and 3) to increase knowledge about key debates and tensions about the roles of organizations in an evolving socio-cultural-political context contending with whose knowledge matters.