## 1. Historical Development




As the second wave of feminism progressed throughout the 1970s,
feminist philosophical work began to appear, first in ethics and
political philosophy. At the same time, feminists working in other
disciplines such as the social sciences were documenting the sexism and
androcentrism in their fields. These theorists increasingly found the
methodologies of their disciplines incapable of accounting for their
feminist insights. Their interests turned to epistemological issues
when it became apparent that alternative accounts of knowledge and of
justification were required "in order to overthrow presuppositions in
their disciplines which functioned as obstacles to necessary change"
(Longino 1999, 330).




Two of the earliest pieces clearly identifiable as feminist
epistemology were Lorraine Code's "Is the Sex of the Knower
Epistemically Significant?" appearing in 1981 in
*Metaphilosophy* and Sandra Harding's "Is Gender a
Variable in Conceptions of Rationality: A Survey of Issues"
appearing in 1982 in *Dialectica*. The first significant
collection of articles in feminist epistemology appeared in 1983 with
Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka's
*Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology,
Metaphysics, Methodology and Philosophy of Science*. Soon after
the Harding and Hintikka volume, rates of publication in feminist
epistemology picked up significantly. By contrast, although there are
clear historical roots to the current form of the field (Goldman
2001), social epistemology didn't make its presence felt on the
terrain of contemporary epistemology until the late 1980s and early
1990s. Steve Fuller's book *Social Epistemology* appeared in
1988 and in 1994 Schmitt's volume *Socializing Epistemology*
appeared, the first significant collection of work in contemporary
social epistemology (1994b). Though few articles in this collection
make specific reference to feminist
 epistemology,[3]
 in his introduction Schmitt acknowledges feminist philosophers of
science, along with sociology of science, and naturalistic
epistemology as the major inspirations for social epistemology since
1980 (Schmitt 1994a, 3-4).




The Harding and Hintikka volume represented several angles of
research, and set the stage for future discussions within feminist
epistemology. Several pieces undertook deconstructive projects,
demonstrating how masculinist perspectives and assumptions infiltrate
the philosophies of particular historical figures. Other selections
focused on science studies, offering illustrations of the congruence
between specific scientific theories and the social and political
ideologies of the day, including patriarchal ideologies. Still others
represented reconstructive epistemological projects in response to
such findings, arguing for a requisite role of values in scientific
theorizing, or arguing that rational investigation requires a critical
assessment of the metaphysical (and sometimes gendered) assumptions
underlying a field of study. Additionally, Nancy Hartsock's
contribution to the volume outlined her version of feminist standpoint
theory, invoking the Marxist idea that social position is inversely
related to epistemic
 position.[4]
 Standpoint theory offered an extensive argument for the grounding of
epistemic perspective in one's social position, and would soon form
one of the most fruitful and heavily debated areas of theorizing for
feminist epistemologists.




As feminists turned to the reconstructive projects of developing new
epistemologies, one of their major tasks was to explain the connection
between the rise of the feminist movement and the recognition of sexism
and androcentrism in what had previously been taken to be excellent
cases of objective knowledge production. Why was it only with the rise
of the feminist movement that critiques of the role of gendered
assumptions in canonical figures such as Aristotle and Descartes began
to appear? Why did primatology begin to question research based on male
dominance schemas and begin to develop alternative models involving
closer observation of female primate behavior at the same time that there
was an increase in the number of women in the field? Why did it take feminist
psychologists to point out the androcentrism involved in drawing
conclusions about human beings based on all-male studies? In her
contribution to the *Discovering Reality* volume, Sandra Harding
phrased the question as "Why has the Sex/Gender System Become Visible
Only Now?" To answer it, feminists very clearly needed to develop
*social* epistemologies. They needed to show not only how
feminist interests might motivate such knowledge production, but also
how such feminist motivated work could offer what many (feminists and
nonfeminists alike) considered improved knowledge production, not just
alternative knowledge production.




Harding's 1986 book *The Science Question in Feminism* examined
various epistemological options for feminists seeking to explain such
political-epistemic connections within science. She set out what was
to become a classic tripartite taxonomy of feminist epistemologies:
feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theory and feminist
postmodernism. Harding characterized feminist empiricism as arguing
that the sexist and androcentric biases present in science are the
result of "bad" science and can be corrected by stricter adherence to
traditional norms of science, as represented by the feminist critiques
identifying such biases (for example Bleier 1984; Hubbard 1983;
Longino and Doell 1983). Feminist standpoint theory, according to
Harding, argues that the political engagement of feminists and their
corresponding focus on the lives of women leads to an epistemically
privileged "standpoint" on social reality (for example Hartsock 1983;
Rose 1983; Smith 1974), with the political engagement requirement
distinguishing the idea of a standpoint from the more generic idea of
a "perspective". In contrast, feminist postmodernism, skeptical of
universal claims of reason and the progress of science, argues that
only political solidarity across social locations can ground feminist
findings, there being no independent epistemological groundings (for
example Flax 1990; Haraway 1991).




Feminist epistemologies continued to multiply throughout the 1980s and
early 1990s, quickly cross-fertilizing and in the process undermining
Harding's classification system. Few current works in feminist
epistemology fall unequivocally into a single category given
Harding's three original definitions. For example, the leading
theories of feminist empiricism from the 1990s on have very little in
common with Harding's characterization of feminist empiricism, given
that they do not explain past instances of sexism and androcentrism as
simply "bad science" and they do not accept traditional norms of
science as appropriate
 correctives (Longino 1990, 2002; Nelson 1990,
 1993).[5]
 Even Harding has developed her own position as a blend of standpoint
theory and feminist postmodernism (Harding 1991). In spite of their
significant limitations, however, Harding's divisions are still often
cited, and remain useful in characterizing some of the main directions
of the literature.




Much of the early work in feminist social epistemology was highly
critical of many mainstream epistemological approaches. As feminists
turned to their reconstructive projects in the early 1990s, however,
they focused their criticisms on particular versions of epistemology,
recognizing that not all existing epistemologies were equally
difficult to work with. In particular, post-Kuhnian
historically-oriented philosophies of science as well as naturalized
epistemology proved to be very important resources. Besides the fact
that many feminists have been particularly interested in the workings
of science as a dominant force in society, they have also found many
forms of philosophy of science comparatively open to social
analyses.[6] This
openness stems from a recognition of the historically dynamic nature
of knowledge not often evident in analytic epistemologies that focus
on the general conditions of knowledge rather than the specific
methodologies and activities of the sciences. Even more prominently,
naturalized epistemology has proven to be very conducive to analyses
of the role of gender in knowing. It demands that we look and see,
turning to empirical evidence of how in fact we do know rather than
making a priori announcements concerning how we
know.[7] Thus,
where it has been easy for certain forms of analytical epistemology to
dismiss feminist empirical findings of the role of gender in knowledge
as irrelevant to questions of serious epistemological import,
naturalized epistemology insists that such empirical findings must
have something important to tell us about knowledge production, or at
a minimum, must be accounted for. Hence naturalized epistemology
cannot consistently dismiss such findings of the role of
gender. Despite the individualism of many naturalized epistemologies,
a naturalized approach can operate as a very strong argument for a
social epistemology: looking at how human beings know leaves little
doubt that the vast majority of our knowing takes place socially. Even
if the "socially" is understood in the minimal sense of individuals
interacting with each other by exchanging information, this social
interaction has the potential to be infused with the dynamics of
gender, opening the door for analyses of how gender affects knowledge
exchanges. While rejecting his individualism, many feminist
epistemologists have relied heavily on the resources of Quine, from
his overall naturalized approach to the specifics of his holistic
theory of evidence (Antony 1993; Campbell 1998; Nelson 1990,
1996). Other feminists have followed by adopting a strongly pragmatic
model, encouraging an empirical process of decision making in which
truth is assigned locally and fallibly, and issues of skepticism that
have plagued epistemology are demoted (Clough 2003). 




Throughout the 1990s, the output of works in feminist social
epistemology was rich and varied. Early in the decade substantive
works appeared in feminist philosophy of science (Harding 1991;
Longino 1990; Nelson 1990) along with significant developments in
standpoint theory (Collins 1990; Harding 1991), postmodern feminist
epistemology (Haraway 1991) and analyses of the role of subjectivity
in knowing (Code 1991). By the mid-1990s, articles of feminist social
epistemology were making appearances in numerous mainstream analytic
philosophical journals, with special issues devoted to feminist
epistemology in *The Monist* (1994), *Philosophical
Topics* (1995) and *Synthese* (1995). Throughout the
decade, the work of feminist social epistemologists addressed many
issues being taken up by other social epistemologists as well: the
dynamics of testimony and relations of cognitive authority, communal
analyses of evidence and epistemic agency, the social structure of
scientific knowledge, social conceptions of objectivity, and
understandings of knowledge as social practice. In 2002, *Social
Epistemology* devoted a special issue to "Feminist
Epistemology as Social Epistemology" in which it was noted that
social epistemology and feminist epistemology shared many challenges
and were similarly positioned against "a dominant
epistemological tradition of hypernormative and individualistic
analysis" (Grasswick and Webb 2002). The
journal *Episteme*, which began in 2004 as a journal of social
epistemology (though it later broadened its scope to cover both
individual and social epistemology) devoted two issues in 2006 to
questions of the epistemic relevance of diversity. Yet despite
feminist epistemology's shared interests with others in the developing
field of social epistemology, there has been perhaps less
cross-pollination over the years than one might
 expect.[8] 
A partial explanation for this lies in the different intellectual
agendas that drive the development of the respective fields, including
the fact that nonfeminist social epistemologists have generally had a
less political agenda than feminist social epistemologists. For
example, feminist social epistemologies have been driven by, and
focused on, epistemological questions directly pertinent to knowing
under conditions of oppression, conditions that are very significant
for feminists to come to understand. Ultimately, the direction of
feminist social epistemology as a field has been guided by the needs
and challenges of feminist theory and activism. A good example of this
is evident in the shift to a broadening of social identity categories
taken to be epistemically relevant. As feminist theory in all its
guises developed throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, it became
apparent that gender was not the only significant social category, and
more importantly that gender could not be properly understood in
isolation from other social categories such as race and ethnicity,
class, sexuality, ability status, and global location. Many feminist
theorists were criticized on the grounds that their focus on gender
had assumed a commonality across women and paid inadequate attention
to the ways in which one person's gendered experience is
simultaneously shaped by their other social positions. The feminist
commitment to investigating the role of power relations in epistemic
matters (whatever form they took) soon revealed that the relevant
power relations were complex and dynamic. As a result, feminist social
epistemology began to attend more closely to the intersections between
various social categories. By 1993, Alcoff and Potter noted that
feminist epistemology should no longer be taken "as involving a
commitment to gender as the primary axis of oppression, in any sense
of 'primary,' or positing that gender is a theoretical
variable separable from other axes of oppression and susceptible to a
unique analysis" (Alcoff and Potter 1993,
3-4). Nevertheless, they suggested the continued use of the term
"feminist epistemologies" as marking the body of work that
has historically evolved out of a concern with the relations between
gender and knowledge (Alcoff and Potter 1993, 4). 


## 2. Social Models of Knowers




One of the major contributions of feminist social epistemologies has
been their thorough critique of the individualism of modern
epistemology, and their corresponding reconstructions of epistemic
subjects as *situated* knowers. Elizabeth Anderson argues that
it is feminist epistemologies' investigation into "how the social
location of the knower affects what and how she knows" that properly
place them within the realm of social epistemologies (Anderson 2011).
Along with other social epistemologists, feminists have found
themselves at least initially presenting their work as responses to a
dominantly individualistic tradition. From the Cartesian beginnings of
modern epistemology where knowledge was thought to result from the
careful exercise of an individual's mental faculties, to the dominant
contemporary epistemological frameworks resting on "S knows that
p" formulations where "S" can be any epistemic
subject, feminist social epistemologists have drawn attention to the
inadequacies of the abstract individualism prevalent in epistemology
(Code 1991; Jaggar 1983; Scheman 1995). The problems, feminists have
argued, lie not simply in the claim that knowers are primarily
individuals, but rather that these individual knowers are themselves
conceptualized as generic (or interchangeable) and self-sufficient (or
capable of self-sufficiency) in knowing (Code 1991; Grasswick
2004). The conjunction of these three features forms what has been
called the
*atomistic* model of knowers. The model does not deny that
knowers have identities and social locations, but it does deny that
these are relevant features to include in epistemic
assessments. Though not a full-fledged solipsism, the atomistic view
puts forth a methodological solipsism for epistemological purposes
(Potter 1993), and is antithetical to social analyses of
knowledge. For example, if one's epistemology begins with the
assumption that all knowers are interchangeable, then any differences
in individuals based on social location, including gender, will be
deemed epistemically irrelevant from the start. Similarly, if one's
epistemology begins with the assumption that knowers are or can be
self-sufficient, analyses will focus on the types of knowledge that
might be attainable in solitude, such as simple observational
expressions as "The cat is on the mat", ignoring more complex
knowledge, such as "the economy is in a recession", or "our society
suffers from patriarchy", and leaving out of the analysis the social
interactions that make many forms of knowledge
possible.[9] Many
feminists have identified the prevalence of the atomistic model within
epistemology as an obstacle to the development of an accurate
understanding of the epistemic roles of gender and other features of
identity that track systematic power relations, arguing that
alternative, more social models of knowers are necessary.




In the early 1990s, feminist attention to the identity of the
epistemic subject abounded in such titles as *Who Knows?*
(Nelson 1990), *What Can She Know?* (Code 1991) and *Whose
Science? Whose Knowledge?* (Harding 1991). "Situated knowers"
became a key term in feminist epistemologies, though theorists varied
significantly on the specifics of the concept. Some focused on the
socially differentiated nature of knowers (in contrast to the generic
nature of knowers in the atomistic model), while others focused on
their social interactive nature (in contrast to the self-sufficiency
of knowers in the atomistic model). Still others argued for the
adoption of the community as primary knower (in contrast to the
individual as primary knower in the atomistic model). Many of these
arguments intersect with each other. For example, by emphasizing the
differentiated nature of knowers one strengthens the argument for the
epistemic interdependence of knowers; interaction between knowers
becomes crucial so that individuals can access knowledge beyond the
reach of their specific social location. Since conceptions of knowers
carry normative weight, making distinctions between those who know and
those who don't, or between those who know more or less well, feminist
discussions of situated knowers are very much integrated with their
discussions of the objectivity and justification of knowledge claims
(see Section 3:
 Social Models of Knowledge and Objectivity).


### 2.1 Differentiated Knowers and Standpoint Theory




At the core of many the feminist discussions of knowers is the idea
that experiential differences lead to differences in perspective, and
these perspectival differences carry epistemic consequences. At first,
this suggestion may appear epistemically innocuous. Even a staunch
supporter of the atomistic view can acknowledge that we don't all share
the same experiences, and if one is an empiricist, holding that one
obtains knowledge primarily through experience, one can acknowledge
that different experiences will lead to different knowledge bases. But
for the atomist, this point is not epistemically interesting, because a
different knower *could* know the same thing as another if she
*were* to have the particular experience in question. In this
sense, knowers are interchangeable for the atomist. Feminists who argue
for the epistemic relevance of the identity of knowers, however, are
interested in forms of knowing for which it is questionable whether a
differently located knower *could* have the same experience. To
give an obvious example, sex-specific bodily experiences, such as
knowing pain during childbirth, cannot be accessed by members of the
other sex. Feminists arguing for differentiated knowers expand this
idea, suggesting that there is a vast range of experiences
differentiated along the lines of social location. In a
gender-structured society, for example, a girl's experience in math
class might differ significantly from her male counterpart's
experience. The differences in knowers that feminists attend to are not
random or idiosyncratic, but are socially structured and systematic,
with the potential to be major influences on people's lives. The
feminist arguments that gender is an epistemically relevant category of
social location apply only as long as the society under consideration
is structured along the lines of gender.




What makes these feminist arguments interesting is that they do more
than argue for a direct link between having a certain experience and
obtaining a certain piece of knowledge (though they include such cases
in their analyses too). The intervening concept is that of perspective.
If social location shapes one's perspective on the world (through
differential experiences) and we can only interact with the world and
know it through that perspective, then the areas of knowledge for which
one's social location is relevant may be very broad indeed, and may
include areas of knowledge not obviously connected to the experiences
of a particular social location. According to these arguments, one's
perspective both shapes and sets limits on how a particularly located
individual can know, at least through her own achievements. Such
arguments also suggest that institutions of knowledge production that
are dominated by a particular group may be influenced by the
perspective of that group, without that perspective being recognized.
For example, many who argue that the underrepresentation of women in
science is a concern do so not simply from the belief that women should
be afforded equal opportunities, but also out of a worry that the
science might be shaped by a dominant masculine perspective (Addelson
1983; Keller 1985; Lloyd 1984), making the underrepresentation of women
an epistemic issue as well as a justice issue.




Feminist standpoint theory has done the most to articulate the
importance of perspectival differences stemming from social location.
Adopted from elements of Marxist theory, feminist standpoint theory
also represents one of the more thorough attempts to ground
epistemology and, correspondingly, a view of knowers in a social
theory. It ties social location very closely to epistemic position,
arguing that social locations not only vary from an epistemological
point of view, but that some social locations offer the potential to
be more epistemically reliable than others. According to strands of
Marxist materialism developed by Georg Lukacs, one's social
position with respect to material labor is inversely related to one's
epistemic position. Society is structured primarily along the lines of
two classes, the working class (proletariat) and the capitalists (the
bourgeoisie) who own the means of production. As the privileged class,
the capitalists have a motivation to maintain the status quo, and this
interest interferes in their ability to understand the exploitation of
the working class upon which their capitalist privilege depends. The
working class, however, as the socially underprivileged, can achieve a
richer understanding of social relations; they not only have a
motivation to understand the true nature of the exploitation to which
they are subject (in order to be able to end to the exploitation), but
their position offers the potential for a dual vision. Since they are
subject to the rules of the capitalists who wield social power, the
working class has an understanding of the capitalists' view of the
world. But additionally, they have an experiential understanding of
their own lives as the exploited. Thus, their position as socially
underprivileged affords them the possibility of an epistemic privilege
stemming from this dual vision. 




Early feminist standpoint theory draws on these ideas, but rests on a sexual
division of labor rather than class divisions. Sociologist Dorothy
Smith argues for the epistemic advantage women sociologists have over
male sociologists in their experience of a "bifurcated
consciousness", caught as they are between the conceptual world
of sociology and the material world of their lives as women (Smith
1974). Nancy Hartsock's 1983 articulation of the theory argues that
women's contributions to subsistence and childrearing result in a
systematic difference of experience across the genders. Accordingly,
the activities of women that place them in a socially underprivileged
position can form the basis of a privileged epistemic standpoint,
through which a deeper understanding of patriarchal institutions and
ideologies can be reached (Hartsock 1983). For most feminist
standpoint theorists, including Hartsock, a standpoint is understood
as an "achieved stance" and is not just a synonym for a
"perspective". The achievement of an epistemically
privileged standpoint involves a political engagement that makes clear
to the socially underprivileged the shared nature of their experiences
of oppression and reveals the systematic structure of power
relations. 




Feminist standpoint theories have developed substantially over the
years, especially in response to feminist theorists' recognition that
gender cannot be understood in isolation from other social
categories. For example, the highly influential work of Patricia Hill
Collins puts forth the idea of a black women's standpoint, identifying
specific epistemic resources in black women's experience that are
important to the development of black feminist thought (Collins
1990). Recognizing the intersection of many axes of oppression,
feminist standpoint theorists have had to reconceptualize the idea of
the margins and move away from the original Marxian standpoint premise
of a bifurcated society. As bell hooks has articulated, the margins
must be recognized as both sites of oppression and resistance (hooks
1990). If this is the case, then the Marxian requirement that the
epistemic privilege of the oppressed must stem from their being
positioned as the inverse of the dominant in a bifurcated system, is
mistaken. The oppressed can gain epistemic privilege through their
resistance, without relying on the idea that they complete the system
of power by being positioned as both marginal and central the system's
functioning (Tanesini 1999).




Feminist standpoint theories have been controversial because by
connecting epistemic perspective so closely to one's material and
social location, they appear to posit chasms between knowers,
suggesting knowers are unable to share knowledge across social
locations (Nelson 1990; Walby 2001). Versions of standpoint theory
have also been criticized for failing to adequately account for
phenomenon such as internalized oppression, in which the perspective
of the oppressed is damaged by the forces of oppression and is
unreliable. For example, feminists have argued that many women who
blame themselves for their rapes have internalized damaging false
beliefs about their responsibilities and the causes of their rapes,
making it problematic to consider their perspective epistemically
advantageous or reliable. Some versions of feminist standpoint theory
have had difficulty accounting for the coherence of a feminist
standpoint while acknowledging that women are variously situated and
do not experience gender oppression (or any particular form of
oppression) in the same way. Standpoint theories have also been
criticized for valorizing the agency of those in the margins, and the
same time as falsely theorizing a single central power in society (Bar
On 1993). It has also been important for standpoint theories to
specify the scope of their claims. Claims concerning the epistemic
significance of social location have seemed most plausible for
understanding social relations, and this is certainly the focus of the
original contributions of standpoint theories. But there may be
additional realms of knowledge for which social location is
significant, and social location may not play out in the same way in
all realms. Alison Wylie has argued that it is a contingent matter,
open to empirical investigation, how certain subdominant standpoints
offer epistemic advantages in particular fields of knowledge
(2003).




Looking back on the developments of standpoint theories, Sandra
Harding has argued that while they have been the most controversial of
feminist epistemologies, they have also been the most productive with
respect to their application in research projects across the
disciplines (Harding 2009). Harding argues that they offer an
incredibly effective methodology in the production of sound knowledge
about marginalized groups. As a methodology, standpoint theories
insist that researchers focus their attention on the standpoints of
the underprivileged, striving to understand the world from these
vantage points, and successfully uncovering a good deal of knowledge
about the lives of the underprivileged in the process.




Ultimately, the plausibility of standpoint theories as epistemologies
depends on their specific details, and many versions have developed
significantly since their first articulations. Additionally, many
feminist social epistemologists who ultimately reject standpoint
theory have adopted some form of the idea that social location is
connected to epistemic perspective in significant ways, and hence that
knowers are differentiated. The controversies evoked by standpoint
theories and their criticisms also have stimulated important
discussions concerning how feminist social epistemologists are to
understand the exact nature of the relationship between social
location and epistemic perspective. With such developments, some
feminist empiricists such as Kristen Intemann have become interested
in drawing on the strengths of both empiricism and standpoint theory,
proposing a merger of the two approaches (Intemann 2010). 


### 2.2 Interactive and Relational Knowers




Feminist social epistemologists also stress the socially interactive
nature of knowers, arguing that epistemically, human beings are deeply
dependent on one another. At least three strains of argument support a
recognition of our epistemic dependence and correspondingly, the
interactive nature of knowers.



First, feminist social epistemologists who focus on institutional
forms of knowing such as scientific research, medical practice, and
legal systems understand that in these contexts we are highly reliant
on others to produce knowledge for us. Not only do laypersons rely on
experts for knowledge, but even within epistemic communities such as
in research teams there are cognitive divisions of labor that result
in a dependence on other experts for knowledge relevant to one's
own research. More than many other social epistemologists interested
in cognitive divisions of labor, feminist social epistemologists
develop analyses that attend to the power dynamics within epistemic
communities, examining correlations between structures of cognitive
and social authority, and demonstrating their influence on the
direction of research.


 Kathryn Pyne Addelson (1983), for example,
argues that in order to increase the rationality of scientific
research, we need to include in our assessments criticism of the
social arrangements within the scientific communities. For example, if
social relations are such that men disproportionately hold the most
significant positions of social and cognitive authority within
scientific communities, the direction of research as well as the
choice of methods and metaphysical assumptions underlying research may
disproportionately reflect men's experiences and perspectives.
Understanding the workings of such social arrangements can help us
better assess the overall rationality and quality of scientific
research. Feminists have also stressed the particular vulnerabilities
of the oppressed that stem from their reliance on experts, when lines
of credibility and expertise are woven into an oppressive set of
social arrangements (Code 1991, 2006; Sherwin 1992). Whereas some
social epistemologists take the presence of cognitive divisions of
labor to offer support for a view of communities as
knowers,[10]
those feminist social epistemologists who focus on cognitive divisions
of labor (as opposed to other dimensions of knowing that might point
in the direction of communities as knowers) tend to focus instead on
the epistemic role of trust, allowing that individuals can know beyond
their personal grasp of the evidence, but insisting on philosophical
analysis of the vulnerabilities and negotiations that play out through
such dependence on others (Scheman 2001; Code 2006).




Second, arguments to the effect that knowers are differentiated from
each other along the lines of social location suggest that in many
cases knowers must rely on others differently situated from themselves
in order to attain certain forms of knowledge. If perspectives differ
along the lines of social location, then one cannot necessarily trust
one's own perspective as epistemically reliable in a particular area
of knowledge and one will need to interact with others differently
socially located in order to increase the reliability of one's
knowing. For example, a white male department chair may need to
consult with professors who have experienced sexism and racism in the
classroom in order to determine whether a white male student complaint
about a young Chicana professor is legitimate or not (Alcoff 2001).
Many feminist social epistemologists who focus on socially
differentiated knowers argue that the necessary interaction cannot
just be epistemic in nature; when categories of social location are
hierarchically structured as they are in oppressive societies, social
and political alliances must be built between groups in order to
develop the trust necessary to share knowledge across social
locations. Others have argued that in some cases the distrust across
social locations is so strong that only relationships of friendship
are sufficiently deep to allow for the sharing of knowledge and
understanding across locations (Lugones 1987).




Third, recognizing that as children we are highly dependent on others
both for our care and for the development of our epistemic skills,
some feminist social epistemologists have argued that our epistemic
dependence runs as deep as the conditions of epistemic agency
itself. Building on the work of Annette Baier (1985), Lorraine Code
has argued that epistemically, knowers are best thought of as "second
persons", who acquire epistemic skills through others, and who are
dependent on others' acknowledgment of them as an epistemic agent in
order to develop and exercise epistemic agency (Code 1991). It is
through our interactions with others and our development as children
that we learn the skills of knowing, learn what constitutes knowing,
and come to be counted among others as knowers. An implication of
Code's view is that if one is systematically denied acknowledgment as
a knower and credibility is consistently withheld, as can happen in
systems of oppression, then one's epistemic agency and capacity to
know will be diminished. Her arguments support a relational view of
epistemic agency, one that still recognizes individuals as knowers,
but conceptualizes them as socially constituted and epistemically
dependent on their interactions with others. Similarly Miranda Fricker
takes our role as testifiers to be central to epistemic agency, such
that if credibility is consistently denied, one's epistemic agency is
undermined (Fricker 2007). 




While some feminist social epistemologists such as Code and Fricker focus on
interpersonal relations within a community, others draw attention to
the importance of a knower's relations with multiple communities. They
argue that many of the insights of feminist critics of science were
made possible by bridge knowers, individual feminist scientists
interacting with both scientific communities and feminist communities (Fehr 2011).
Such cases suggest the need for a model of knowers that accounts for an
individual's dynamic relations with multiple communities (Tuana 1995).
The idea of knowers as *individuals-in-communities* has been
suggested as a model that both captures the importance of
interrelations with multiple communities and, by keeping individual
knowers in the foreground, is capable of attending to the power
relations that individual knowers must negotiate within those
communities (Grasswick 2004).




Acknowledgment of the various forms of our epistemic interdependence
has motivated investigations of the dynamics of social interaction and
their effects on knowledge production. For example, recognizing that
we frequently rely on the testimony of others, yet also make judgments
on the worth of the testimony, feminist social epistemologists have
investigated the complex links between assignments of credibility and
social position (Alcoff 2001; Code 1995; Jones 2002). Many conclude
that because of our epistemic interdependence, adequate epistemic
analysis must attend to the political and moral dimensions of our
social-epistemic interactions (Code 1995). For example, Miranda
Fricker argues that there is social pressure to grant greater than
warranted degrees of credibility to those with social power, with the
effect that we do less well at attaining truths and avoiding
falsehoods. Her conclusion is that an adequate social epistemology
must acknowledge and assess the epistemic effects of power
relations. As she writes, "epistemology will not be truly socialized
until it has been appropriately politicized" (Fricker 1998,
174). Feminist arguments for the importance of trust in knowing (Code
1991, 1995; Scheman 2001) coupled with their analyses of the moral and
affective dimensions of trust (Baier 1986; Jones 1996, 2002) also
suggest that the moral quality of social relations is important to
assess as part of one's epistemic analysis. Attention to the links
between the moral and the epistemic have developed in detail with
recent developments on the topic of epistemic injustice (see Section
4: Epistemic Values, Ethics, and Democracy). 


### 2.3 Communities as Knowers




Statements pointing to communities as knowers can be found in a wide
variety of feminist epistemologists (Harding 1993; Longino 2002; Nelson
1990; Potter 1993), though they do not all embrace the same
arguments.




Some arguments to the effect that it is communities rather than
individuals who are properly thought of as knowers build on the
arguments for the interactive nature of knowers. For example, Helen
Longino argues that claims and theories can only achieve the status of
knowledge by going through a public process of critical scrutiny, in
which individual knowers engage with each other epistemically in joint
endeavors. She allows that individuals can know particular claims, but
it is communities who are the knowledge producers, since it takes
social processes of critical engagement to transform beliefs and
theories into knowledge (2002). The norms that must be satisfied to
achieve knowledge are communal norms, requiring certain social
interactions to occur. 




Other feminist social epistemologists who embrace a community model of
knowers do so based on arguments that there are crucial public and
shared elements of knowing that cannot be understood by viewing
individuals in isolation (Webb 1995). Along these lines, communities
can be understood as knowers in the sense that a communal context is
required for knowing. Individuals know only within communities.
Arguments for such a view are supported by claims that language and
conceptual schemas are required for knowledge, which are themselves
community specific and acquired by individuals through participation
in communities. A great deal of work in feminist social epistemology
and feminist science studies has documented how gendered assumptions
that stem from features of our social organization make their way into
the metaphors and conceptual schemas of knowledge production (for
example, Bleier 1984; Haraway 1991; Hubbard 1983; Keller 1985, 1992;
Lloyd 1984; Martin 1991). Many feminist social epistemologists have
found it necessary to turn to the level of the communally-shared
concepts and assumptions in order to explain why gendered work has
been accepted and gone unnoticed within science for so long.




An argument advocating an even stronger model of communities as
primary knowers comes from Lynn Hankinson Nelson (1990, 1993). Nelson's
work is inspired by Quine and his holistic theory of evidence in which
there are no firm boundaries between evidence and theory. What Nelson
includes in her conception of evidence that Quine did not is the larger
social and political context within which science is produced. She
couples this with arguments for the historically dynamic nature of the
category of evidence; changes in public and communal standards of
evidence will result in changes to the evidence itself. According to
Nelson it is communities who construct and share knowledge and
standards of evidence, and thus it must be communities who are the
primary agents of knowledge (Nelson 1990, 256). Nelson's point is that
if we are to understand why a particular theory is supported at a
particular time, we must examine communities, not just isolated
individuals. Her arguments allow her to explain how androcentric
science has lost its evidential support: although androcentric science
may have enjoyed considerable evidential support at one time, changes
in the social and political context of particular communities resulted
in feminist work both revealing and resisting the influence of
androcentric assumptions. This shift in the communal standards of
evidence has diminished evidential support for androcentric
research.




Feminist social epistemologists who argue for a community model of
knowers do not deny that individuals also know. However, their accounts
challenge the possibility of understanding individuals as knowers in
isolation from their communities, and press for a better understanding
of the relative roles of individuals and communities in knowing. For
example, communal accounts of knowing suggest that the epistemic
responsibilities of individuals will need to be understood in relation
to their communal memberships, which set limits on the conceptual
resources and epistemic tools individuals have available to
 them.[11] 
Cynthia Townley has also argued that understanding our relationships
within communities is crucial to understanding epistemic practices,
since those practices involve us in far more than simply generating
knowledge for ourselves; each of us negotiates instead a variety of
epistemic roles and dependencies beyond generating knowledge and being
reliable testifiers (Townley 2011). 


## 3. Social Models of Knowledge and Objectivity




With much of their work drawing attention to the perspectival nature
of knowing and community-specific elements of knowing, feminist social
epistemologists also need to articulate how we are to distinguish
between better and worse knowing, or how we are able to identify
objective knowledge. In a 1988 article, Donna Haraway first introduced
the term *situated knowledges* to feminist epistemology, as a
way of expressing a form of objectivity that takes seriously the
social construction of knowledge and the perspectival nature of
knowledge demonstrated by feminists. By invoking situated knowledges,
Haraway suggests that all knowledge is local and limited, denying the
possibility of the impartial view-from-nowhere that has often been
associated with the perspective of objective knowledge. What Haraway
suggests instead is an embodied objectivity (recognizing our material
locations) that consists in partial connection across perspectives or
locations: given the limited and perspectival nature of all knowing,
the most we can hope for is forms of knowledge that are objective in
the sense that they are translatable across particular subjective
locations. For Haraway, it is through building political solidarities
and engaging in epistemic conversations across our positionings that
we come to agreement on how to know certain aspects of the world, but
these agreements will never completely erase the differences in our
perspectives. Other feminist social epistemologists offer different
analyses of how to attain such partial connection.


### 3.1 Strong Objectivity




Standpoint theorists, and many who are inspired by standpoint theory,
not only maintain Haraway's situated knowledge thesis,
conceptualizing all knowledge as perspectival, but also hold a
stronger thesis that some of those perspectives are epistemically more
valuable than others. In other words, some perspectives lead to
objectivity in a way that others do not. While the privileging of some
epistemic perspectives ensures that standpoint theory bears normative
content, it remains to be explained how one attains a privileged
epistemic standpoint that will lead to objective knowledge, and how
one can identify such a standpoint.




Although a few standpoint theorists argue for a women's standpoint
stemming directly from women's experience, most influential standpoint
theorists including Hartsock (1983) and Harding (1986) insist that the
Marxist-inspired arguments imply that although the feminist standpoint
is deeply connected to the lives of women, the epistemically
privileged nature of the feminist standpoint stems from active
political engagement in the feminist cause, and does not just
represent the perspective of women. Thus, a certain kind of political
activity is required in order to appreciate the situation of women or
other oppressed groups. This sense of standpoint goes beyond the idea
of perspective, and refers to the capacity to develop "a
critical consciousness about the nature of our social location and the
difference it makes epistemically". The idea of a standpoint
builds upon, but is distinctive from the situated knowledge thesis
that recognizes the importance of social location in shaping epistemic
perspective (Wylie 2003, 31). A standpoint does not naturally or
automatically arise from a particular social location, although the
experiences of an oppressed social location can make the achievement
of a standpoint more likely.




Harding has developed this idea further in her call for researchers to
start their research from the lives of women and, more generally, the
lives of marginalized groups, regardless of their own social location
(Harding 1991). This line of reasoning weakens the connection between
social or material location and epistemic perspective, since
presumably a researcher can access a privileged epistemic perspective
without occupying the relevant social location through the appropriate
critical work. Yet it maintains the situated knowledge thesis that
perspectives are differentiated according to social location, and it
calls on researchers to engage in reflexive analysis of how their own
social location shapes their research. Harding argues that such
reflexive analysis, coupled with an active attempt to engage in
research from the perspectives of the oppressed will result in a
stronger form of objectivity than the "weak objectivity"
available through a neutral approach to knowing that ignores the role
of social location and cultural assumptions in shaping one's
perspective. Harding's strong objectivity results from an
acknowledgment of the perspectival nature of all knowing, and a
determined effort to examine the world from the positions of the
socially underprivileged rather than the privileged. The result,
according to standpoint theorists such as Harding, will be knowledge
that is less partial and distorted, and hence, more objective.


### 3.2 Objectivity as a Social Process




Numerous feminist social epistemologists, particularly those working
in philosophy of science, have employed the underdetermination thesis
to argue for the necessary role of background assumptions in theory
choice (Anderson 1995b; Longino 1990, 2002; Nelson 1990; Potter 1996).
If theory is underdetermined by the data, and multiple theories can
always explain the data equally well, then data alone cannot determine
the best theory. Background assumptions must be employed as well. The
problem is that background assumptions, which may include
methodological assumptions, assumptions with empirical content,
metaphysical assumptions, and value-laden assumptions, are rarely
articulated. They may also be gendered, or otherwise shaped by
culturally salient social identity categories. Drawing attention to
the necessary role of these often unarticulated assumptions has
allowed feminist philosophers of science to explain both how
androcentric and sexist assumptions have managed to persevere for so
long in science, as well as why feminist values do not have to be
eliminated from scientific research in order for it to constitute good
science. But in order to make epistemic distinctions and continue to
claim that some theory choices are better than others, they must
explain how we are to sort through and select those background
assumptions we are willing to rely on.




Helen Longino has developed a very influential theory of contextual
empiricism that includes a social conception of objectivity. According
to Longino, a theory is objective if it has undergone and survived a
certain social process of critical scrutiny. Through public critical
scrutiny, the background assumptions upon which particular theories
depend for their support have the potential to be revealed, and
idiosyncratic assumptions can be weeded out. In order to ensure that
this system of public scrutiny is working well, Longino sets out four
governing norms of interaction in an epistemic community: there must
be publicly recognized forums for criticism, uptake of criticism,
public standards, and tempered (to allow for differences in
intellectual capacity) equality of intellectual authority (Longino
 2002).[12]
 To the extent that these norms of social interaction are fulfilled by
an epistemic community, the theories they are considering will be
subject to the appropriate kind of public critical scrutiny, and their
results will be objective. Diverse representation within the community
also becomes important, since "a diversity of perspectives is
necessary for vigorous and epistemically effective critical discourse"
(Longino 2002, 131). The greater the diversity in the community, the
greater the opportunity for revealing background assumptions that may
be shared by large segments of the membership. Once a background
assumption is revealed, the process of critical scrutiny determines
whether it is acceptable or problematic and in need of rejection. The
resultant knowledge will not be aperspectival and will not be free of
background assumptions. However, it will represent a perspective that is
broader than any one individual can bring to the table; it will also have been
found appropriate for the particular epistemic goals of the
community.




Others describe the possibility of objectivity given the perspectival
nature of knowledge in a slightly different way. Using the term
"bias" to refer to interest or perspective, Louise Antony
characterizes the challenge for feminist epistemologists who criticize
the idea of objectivity as neutrality or impartiality as the
"bias paradox": such feminists both criticize neutrality
and impartiality (arguing that such impartiality is impossible due to
the situatedness of knowledge) at the same time as they must appeal to
impartiality in criticizing male bias as "bad" (Antony
1993). Her solution is to adopt a naturalistic and empirical approach
to biases, embracing the idea that biases are an inevitable component
of knowing, but arguing that it is an empirical question to determine
which biases are good in that they lead to the truth, and which are
bad in that they lead us away from truth. Richmond Campbell develops
these ideas further, arguing that armed with realist conceptions of
truth and objective justification, we can explain (without
circularity) how feminist biases can lead us closer to the truth
within contexts of systematic gender bias in epistemic communities
(Campbell 2001, 1998). Elizabeth Anderson uses the case study of
feminist research on divorce to argue that the feminist values (which
Campbell and Antony might consider biases) used in such research are
both empirically testable and supported by the evidence (Anderson
2004). Sharyn Clough suggests that such a holistic relationship
between descriptive facts and prescriptive values forms a core feature
of feminist science studies (Clough 2004). Miriam Solomon
characterizes such views described above as "feminist radical
empiricism" because they adopt the view that not only are
factual claims empirically testable (as do other feminist
empiricists), but more radically they embrace the idea that the values
or biases that inform our theory choices are also empirically testable
themselves (Solomon 2012). Solomon herself argues for a more
pluralistic understanding of the role of values in knowledge
production, noting that values are sometimes relevant to the domain of
inquiry and can be empirically tested, but not always. Still others
such as Audrey Yap caution against any presumption that empirically
testing our values will be useful in promoting social change, given
deep sources of prejudice and stereotyping (Yap 2016). 


## 4. Epistemic Values, Ethics, and Democracy




With its turn to situated knowing, feminist epistemology can be
described as having a pragmatic orientation, with a focus on how
situated knowers can know well and inquire well in their particular
social worlds. By prioritizing questions concerning good inquiry and
knowing activities, and arguing that such activities involve
dependencies on others and social interactions, many feminist
epistemologists emphasize the ethical dimensions of epistemic pursuits,
suggesting that the epistemic cannot be adequately understood if
separated out from ethical analysis (Code 1991, 2006). Once feminists
draw attention to the fact that knowing is something that we
*do* and do through engagement with others, the ethical
dimension of knowing becomes apparent. With their interest in how
agents actively engage in practices of knowing, many feminists have
developed versions of virtue epistemology that are agent-centered,
articulating our epistemic responsibilities that often include an
ethical dimension as we interact with and depend on each other in
inquiry (Code 1991, 2006; Daukas 2006, 2011; Fricker 2007).
Additionally, their focus on situated knowing directs feminist
epistemologists to examine our knowing practices within particular
contexts rather than providing abstract analyses of generalizable
conditions of knowledge acquisition. Such requirements of pragmatic
contextualization tend to result in integrative analyses that consider
the intersection of traditional epistemic goals with other social
values and goals, including those with an ethical dimension. For
example, standards of evidence might rightly differ in various areas
of knowledge production due to the differing risks of social harm that
can come from the generation of certain forms of knowledge. Feminist
analyses also draw attention to the different epistemic strategies
required to address challenges that arise for situated knowers in
specific social contexts. For example, many feminist analyses focus on
the specific challenges that face the socially privileged and
underprivileged when they try to know within contexts of
oppression.




Feminists' pragmatic orientation and interest in epistemic
inquiry within social contexts has led to the development of several
different paths of investigation that explicitly draw connections
between traditional epistemic values and social and ethical values in
our epistemic practices, and expand the range of epistemic values under
consideration. Prominent topics of investigation include epistemic
injustice, epistemologies of ignorance, and the role of democratic
structures in knowledge production.


### 4.1 Epistemic Injustice




While testimony has emerged as a central topic in social
epistemology generally, feminists have been major contributors to
discussions of how social power plays out in the economies of
credibility. Focusing on the power differentials characteristic of
systematic oppression, Miranda Fricker's 2007 book *Epistemic
Injustice* identifies testimonial injustice as one of two important
forms of epistemic injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when a
speaker is given less credibility than deserved (suffering a
credibility deficit) because of an identity prejudice held by the
hearer. So for example, a woman might be less likely to be believed
because of a prejudice on the part of the hearer regarding her gender.
Fricker argues that although it is correct to view testimonial
injustice as an ethical wrong insofar as it is an injustice, it is
important to recognize the wrong as specifically epistemic in nature in
that it involves being wronged specifically in one's capacity as
a knower (2007, 20). Fricker considers our role as testifiers a core
dimension of our epistemic lives, so to suffer a credibility deficit
impedes one's capacity as an epistemic agent, making it both an
ethical and an epistemic wrong when one suffers a deficit due to an
identity prejudice. Fricker also recommends a corrective to such
injustice. She frames her work in terms of a virtue epistemology of a
responsibilist form, and posits an epistemic virtue of testimonial
justice. The virtue of testimonial justice involves an agent's
*reflexive* critical social awareness. Such an awareness allows
a hearer to account for the likely impact of the identity power
relation that mediates between himself and the speaker on his
spontaneous perception, essentially correcting for the problems that
can result in transactions of testimonial injustice (2007, 91). In a
similar vein, Nancy Daukas argues for an explicitly social form of
virtue epistemology that takes as its core epistemic virtue
"epistemic trustworthiness" (2006, 2011). For Daukas,
epistemic trustworthiness includes dispositions to both represent
oneself as a credible testifier and reliably judge the credibility of
others. In order to achieve the latter in contexts of oppression where
there are social prejudices and epistemic practices that contribute to
the maintenance of a culture of domination, one must develop an
"oppositional epistemic agency" that involves a
"critical acuity" through which one can recognize and
resist "the values and theoretical commitments embedded in
epistemic practices and products that maintain a culture of domination
and oppression" (2011, 59).




While Fricker and Daukas focus on the responses of individual agents
as correctives to testimonial injustice, others have expanded on the
breadth and depth of the problem. For example, Elizabeth Anderson
argues for the need to develop large-scale structural remedies such as
ensuring broadly inclusive epistemic institutions in order to fully
correct for the systemic biases that result in testimonial injustices
(Anderson 2012). Kristie Dotson points to the difficulties of even
identifying such practices of silencing and distinguishes two different
kinds of silencing practices: testimonial quieting and testimonial
smothering. While testimonial quieting characterizes the failure to
recognize the speaker as a knower and thus the failure to offer the
speaker appropriate uptake, Dotson describes testimonial smothering as
a coerced truncation of one's testimony. Testimonial smothering
occurs when a speaker recognizes her audience as unwilling or unable to
give the appropriate uptake to her testimony, and in response, limits
and shapes her testimony in order to "insure that the testimony
contains only content for which one's audience demonstrates
testimonial competence" (2011, 244). Dotson characterizes both of
these silencing practices as forms of epistemic violence, and both have
dramatic epistemic effects for the epistemic pursuits of individuals
and communities alike.




Fricker also discusses a second and related form of epistemic
injustice that has generated substantial discussion: hermeneutical
injustice. Hermeneutical injustice, involves a "structural
prejudice in the economy of collective hermeneutical resources"
(2007, 1). Hermeneutical injustice occurs when there exists a lack of
collective interpretative resources required for a group to understand
(and express) significant aspects of their social experience. Fricker
offers the example of the situation of women who experienced episodes
of what we now identify as sexual harassment, prior to it being named
and recognized as such. Without the presence of a socially recognized
concept of sexual harassment, women were ill-equipped to both
understand and convey these significant experiences and their harms.




Many who have found hermeneutical injustice to be a powerful concept
for articulating the challenges of the oppressed in gaining and
expressing knowledge of their experiences have at the same time
pointed out the limitations of Fricker's analysis, and have diverged
from her account accordingly. For example, some have argued that her
analysis misrepresents hermeneutical resources as collective, failing
to acknowledge the pluralism of interpretative communities and
practices through which marginalized groups may have access to
alternative interpretations of their experiences (Mason 2011; Medina
2012). Dotson, for example, argues that a third kind of epistemic
injustice exists, contributory injustice, through which a dominant
group refuses to employ the hermeneutical resources that marginalized
communities have developed to aid in understanding their experiences
(Dotson 2012). In this, Dotson builds on Pohlhaus's conception of
"willful hermeneutical ignorance" through which the dominant refuse to
engage with those hermeneutical resources (of the marginalized) that
would in effect challenge their ability to continue on in their
(comfortable) misinterpretation and ignorance of the experiences of
the marginalized (Pohlhaus 2012). Relatedly, such cases can lead to a
kind of epistemic exploitation, where the dominant assume it is the
responsibility of the marginalized to perform the labor necessary to
educate them (the dominant) in the experiences of the oppressed
(Berenstain 2016). Further, Medina analyses the performative dimension
of hermeneutical injustice, noting that this features demonstrates its
very close links with testimonial injustice. These forms of epistemic
injustice do not operate independently. He argues that we must examine
the communicative dynamics that perpetuate hermeneutical injustices,
in order to understand how agents can exercise hermeneutical
sensitivities and responsibilities that would help erode such
injustices (Medina 2012).




Discussions of epistemic injustice offer an excellent example of work
focusing on the challenges of knowing in contexts of oppression,
analyzing how many of the wrongs that occur within such contexts have
both epistemic and ethical dimensions. Framing epistemic matters in
terms of "injustice" marks a significant development in
social epistemology, through which attention is drawn to the complex
network of epistemic relations between knowers. At the same time, as
the discussions of epistemic injustice have broadened and attention
has turned to the interaction between different forms of epistemic
injustice and the inadequacy of transactional remedies between
individual knowers, some have found the language of epistemic
injustice and justice too limiting and have reached for different
concepts. For example, Dotson frames many of these issues in terms of
"epistemic oppression" that involves "persistent epistemic exclusion"
(Dotson 2014), and Medina develops an "epistemology of resistance" in
response to the epistemic dimensions of oppression (Medina 2013).


### 4.2 Epistemologies of Ignorance




Feminist epistemologists alongside critical race theorists have played
a prominent role in the development of epistemologies of ignorance, an
area closely related to the work on epistemic injustice and epistemic
oppression. They have argued that epistemologists need to attend to
the role of ignorance as well as knowledge if they are to adequately
understand the influence of power relations on epistemic matters.
Hermeneutical injustice offers an obvious example of how some forms of
knowledge important to marginalized groups may be difficult or even
impossible to access as a result of systems of power relations that do
not support the development of the necessary conceptual resources for
that knowledge. Specific pockets of ignorance result from these
systematic power relations. Epistemologies of ignorance maintain that
ignorances are often not simply benign gaps in knowledge that have yet
to be filled. Rather, ignorances can be actively constructed and can
serve purposes of domination (Sullivan and Tuana 2007; Tuana and
Sullivan 2006). On this line of reasoning, the production of ignorance
needs to be understood as a substantive practice itself (Alcoff
2007).




One of the goals of epistemologies of ignorance is to understand the
complexity of the relations of ignorance and knowledge, mapping out
various kinds of ignorances and developing normative frameworks to
help understand when ignorances are problematic, and when epistemic
agents should be held epistemically responsible for their
ignorances. Dotson notes that the ignorances to be concerned about are
those that are both reliable and pernicious (harmful) (Dotson
2011). Clearly, not all forms of ignorance will be pernicious, nor
will they all be avoidable. Cynthia Townley has also argued for the
positive value of ignorance in our epistemic practices, recognizing
that our rich relations of epistemic dependence require trust, which
itself requires ignorance and a commitment to refrain from remedying
it (2011, 23). Furthermore, the specific epistemic relationships we
develop with others require that certain forms of knowledge be shared
with some, but not others, calling into question any idea that the
only epistemic value is the acquisition of knowledge for oneself and
others (Townley 2003, 2011; Grasswick 2011). Feminists have also noted
the importance of "strategic ignorance" through which the
oppressed can use "dominant misconceptions as a basis for active
creative responses to oppression" (Bailey 2007, 88). For
example, the oppressed may act in ways that conform to the
expectations of their dominators, pretending to lack intelligence
perhaps, allowing access to information and resources that may help
them either resist or at least survive. Or the oppressed may engage in
strategic "refusals to understand" when such understanding
would conform to dominant constructions of their experience that
undermine their agency (Pohlhaus 2011). Such work that draws attention
to the complex roles of ignorance in our epistemic practices broadens
the range of epistemic values under consideration beyond the
acquisition of truth to include consideration of how our ignorances
can at times be well placed. At the same time, it emphasizes the
ethical dimensions of the epistemic relationships with others that are
so crucial to our knowing capacities.




While there are various forms of ignorance to be investigated
(Townley 2011), one that has occupied a good deal of feminist attention
is "invested ignorance" (Townley 2011) in which the
ignorance is "systematically produced and sustained to
misrepresent reality in ways that not coincidentally sustain patterns
of... privilege" (Townley 2011, x). In their analyses of
invested ignorance, many feminists have built upon Charles
Mills's work on racial ignorance, in which he argues that whites
(or other dominant groups) have a positive interest in misrepresenting
the world in ways that help support their dominant position (Mills
1997, 2007). Mills conceptualizes whites as engaged in a kind of cognitive
dysfunction that serves their purposes by preventing them from
understanding the social relations of domination in which they are
engaged, making it easier to maintain that domination. His work
connects closely with feminist standpoint theory in providing both an
explanation of the patterns of belief-forming practices that can result
in an ignorance of the social relations of domination on behalf of the
privileged, and an explanation of the potential lack of motivation to
correct such ignorance (Alcoff 2007).




Yet another line of investigation that has proved important for
feminist epistemologists concerns the mapping of the ways in which
particular culturally-embedded ignorances track the interests of
marginalized groups. For example, Nancy Tuana has examined the history
of the science of female sexuality, arguing that structures of power
have played out in both constructing and maintaining the relative
ignorance of female sexuality compared with the knowledge of male
sexuality (Tuana 2004). She has also argued that the women's health
movement of the 1970s that sought to make available to women knowledge
of their bodies and expose those sexist and androcentric practices
that maintained an ignorance of their bodies is best understood as not
only a political resistance movement but an epistemological resistance
movement (Tuana 2006). Given the feminist theme of the situated
nature of knowing, feminists have argued that whatever knowledge is
produced, it is always both perspectival and limited. Work such as
Tuana's draws attention to the political forces that help direct the
research and production of knowledge, shaping patterns of knowledge
and ignorance. Rather than simply focusing on the production of
knowledge itself, an obvious question posed by feminists on such a
situated approach is: "knowledge for whom?" Issues of
responsibility concerning what kind of knowledge communities undertake
to produce, and correspondingly what ignorance those same communities
actively produce are unavoidable (Code 1991, 2006; Heldke
2001). Whereas many epistemologists have noted that our epistemic
goals are best characterized not as the generation of truths per se,
but rather as the generation of significant truths (Kitcher 1993),
feminists working from a situated approach recognize that "what
is significant?" can only be answered with reference to the
questions asked and the interests behind those questions (Anderson
1995b). Feminists further note that differently located persons may
have quite different interests at stake concerning what questions need
to be asked, what knowledge needs to be produced, and what ignorances
matter (Grasswick 2010). Questions then arise concerning to whom
knowers take themselves to be accountable with respect to their
choices of knowledge and ignorance production (McHugh 2011; Code
2011). For many feminist social epistemologists, the goal is to
develop epistemic practices that don't simply generate an
abundance of knowledge, but that generate sound and ethical patterns
of knowledge and ignorance.




The development of epistemologies of ignorance has proved to be a
fruitful framework through which feminists can articulate the
complexities of the weaknesses of current (and past) epistemic
practices and understand in detail the effects of power relations on
those practices. Recognizing the role of ignorance reframes their
conception of epistemic goals, broadening them to include not just the
acquisition of truths, but the development of reliable and significant
knowledge for differently located people, with patterns of knowledge
and ignorance that support healthy epistemic relations between
people.




Many of the recent feminist analyses of epistemic injustice and
epistemic ignorance combine to draw attention to another important
feature of our social epistemic relations: trust and
trustworthiness. Because of our epistemic dependence on each other,
inquirers need to trust others for knowledge, and often must trust
across social locations. Structural features of epistemic injustice
and invested ignorance create challenges for determining how to trust
responsibly (Grasswick 2014), and how to be a trustworthy knower for
those situated differently from oneself. Medina provides account of
how racial ignorance produces systematic distrust across racial lines
(through racial insensitivity) and considers how one could become
aware of such insensitivities (Medina 2016). Recent work on implicit
bias explores just how difficult it can be for a knower to become
aware of how they are perpetuating epistemic injustices (Brownstein
and Saul 2016). How are we to respond to such challenging epistemic
conditions? Feminists have taken different approaches. Daukas argues
that within social networks of inquiry, being trustworthy is a central
virtue (and requires being trustworthy in one's own inquiry, and being
a good judge of others' trustworthiness) (Daukas 2006). Yet
Frost-Arnold argues that trustworthiness is more complex; in some
cases, taking on the role of a trickster by betraying the trust of the
dominant might be epistemically virtuous on the part of the
marginalized, when doing so disrupts the networks of trust that
exclude the oppressed (Frost-Arnold 2014). Turning to the world of
social media, Frost-Arnold also argues for the epistemic potential of
a strategy of "hopeful trust," wherein, in spite of the odds of
experiencing testimonial injustice and other wrongs, a marginalized
person posts about her interpretation of her experiences, in hopes of
challenging the ignorance of the dominant (Frost-Arnold 2016). These
works offer examples of how feminists tend to approach the role of
epistemic trust and trustworthiness differently from other social
epistemologists: by attending explicitly to the relevance of social
positions and existing networks of trust wrought as they are with
problematic features of epistemic injustice and invested ignorance
that infect epistemic processes, and must be grappled with.


### 4.3 Democratic Structures of Knowledge Production




A third area of discussion in which feminists have directly
connected epistemic with social and ethical goals concerns the role of
democratic structures in the production of knowledge. In part as a
response to such challenges as epistemic injustice and the ways in
which the production of ignorances helps support structures of
domination, feminists have developed normative remedies that include
more democratic epistemic institutions and practices. Several different
lines of argument can be identified for why and how democratic
practices can be epistemically beneficial.




Some feminists have focused squarely on the internal democratic
conditions of epistemic communities required for objectivity. For
example, Longino's social process-based idea of objectivity
requires a practice of open discussion and critical engagement between
members of epistemic communities, in order to ensure that the knowledge
produced is objective in the sense of having withstood appropriate
critical scrutiny. Importantly, Longino includes conditions of tempered
intellectual authority and uptake of criticism for the participants of
epistemic communities (2002), arguing that objectivity can only be
successfully pursued in situations where knowers are respected for
their epistemic contributions and not ignored or assigned less
credibility because of who they are. In a related vein, Elizabeth Anderson
(1995c) argues explicitly that the aims of higher education demand that
issues of justice and equality of respect within the academy be taken
up as epistemic issues, securing the ability of all to contribute their
ideas to the public discourse and have those ideas taken seriously.
Kristina Rolin similarly points to the epistemic need for social and
cultural norms within scientific communities that promote inclusive and
responsive dialogue, and worries about the distorting effects on the
credibility of women scientists operating within cultures of
professional interaction that conflate masculine styles of presentation
with competence (Rolin 2002). Many have also drawn attention to the
fact that the critical engagement called for by the likes of Longino
and Anderson will only be epistemically effective if a diversity of
perspectives are represented within that particular epistemic
community. Longino explicitly acknowledges the importance of diverse
representation in order to expose questionable background assumptions
that can be invisible when shared by a group of similarly situated
knowers (Longino 2002). Others have examined in more detail the links
between diversity in social situation and diversity in epistemic
perspectives. For example, Kristen Intemann argues that the epistemic
value of diversity comes from a diversity of experiences being
represented at the table, not a diversity of values or interests
*per se* (Intemann 2011). Still others have examined in detail
the role of "chilly climate" issues within epistemic
communities (Wylie 2011), and the structural and motivational barriers
to change that are present within academic institutions (Fehr 2011),
both factors which contribute to the difficulty of reaping the
epistemic benefits of diversity within epistemic communities. These
arguments suggest that our epistemic projects are harmed when social
relations conspire to either exclude particular knowers from relevant
epistemic communities, or more insidiously deny them the credibility
and epistemic respect they deserve within those communities.




Others have argued that outside of specific epistemic communities
themselves, society-wide improvements in social justice are required so
that sexist and androcentric biases do not continue to weaken our
scientific practices (Kourany 2010). Naomi Scheman has argued that
insofar as scientific communities and institutions fail to be
trustworthy from the perspective of marginalized groups who have
experienced a poor historical relationship with them, those
institutions fail in achieving objectivity, given that the function of
objectivity is to rationally ground trust (Scheman 2001). According to
such arguments, epistemic improvement requires improvement to the
structure of our social relations understood more broadly than just
inside the epistemic communities themselves. Situations of oppression,
and the marginalization of groups within society damage the epistemic
potential of both specific epistemic communities and society at
large.




Finally, many feminist social epistemologists explicitly invoke
democratic goals as guides for the direction of research. Arguments
here build upon the idea that that knowledge is limited, and cannot be
assumed to serve the interests of everyone equally. Sandra Harding, for
example, calls for "the reinvention of sciences for the many to
replace sciences that are often only for the elite few" (1991,
312). Heidi Grasswick builds upon Scheman's line of reasoning
concerning the need for scientific institutions to be trustworthy from
particular social vantage points. She argues that among the
requirements for such trustworthiness, there must be available evidence
that scientific institutions are taking up at least some research
questions that are significant for the social group in question and
providing meaningful answers to those questions. Furthermore, she notes
that engagement and sound communication between scientific and
variously situated lay communities are required in order to establish
the necessary trusting relations that would allow for particularly
situated lay persons to responsibly rely on scientific institutions for
their knowledge (Grasswick 2010). Broadening the scope beyond just
scientific practices, Lorraine Code argues for a guiding ecological
principle of *cohabitability* in epistemic decision-making
(2006). Ultimately, she argues, we should select directions of research
and methods of research that permit and foster our living well amongst
one another, clearly bringing an ethical dimension into epistemic
decision-making.




In various ways then, feminist social epistemologists have argued
for deep connections between democracy and the success of epistemic
practices. They have attended to the effects of social relations
internal to epistemic communities, social relations external to those
communities, and social relations between knowledge-producing
communities and lay communities.