Challenging epistemic violence and building peace in school communities

• In Event: Reimagining Positive Peace

Proposal

Recent research on the contemporary application of Galtung’s ideas in education has highlighted the usefulness of the concept of epistemic violence in understanding how structural and cultural violence are sustained in schools and beyond (Paulson and Tikly, 2023). This paper considers how, and with what impact, epistemic violence is enacted towards an ‘othered’ group – migrant students and their parents - in everyday school spaces. The paper draws on a two-year qualitative study of educational experiences among migrant and minority ethnic families in Northern Ireland, a setting in which conflict transformation efforts, in education and elsewhere, have typically overlooked so-called ‘new communities’. The analysis focuses particularly on data collected through interviews with 45 parents and 35 children who have migrated to the region.
Adopting the lens of testimonial and hermeneutical (in)justice (Fricker, 2007), the paper identifies critical instances where migrant parents’ or pupils’ capacity as epistemic agents is undermined within educational settings, particularly when reporting concerns about their children’s learning needs or experiences of racism and bullying at school. Moreover, the analysis considers how migrant children and families’ status as ‘knowers’ is further undermined by gaps in the interpretive resources available within the school – that is, the curriculum and accumulated institutional knowledge, which serve to invisibilise their perspectives and experiences. More hopefully, the paper also identifies instances where epistemic violence is resisted, either by parents asserting their epistemic agency or by schools recognising and redressing institutional epistemic gaps, and it considers how these moments challenge hierarchies of knowing. The paper concludes with some reflections on promoting epistemic justice as a means of challenging structural and cultural violence and fostering positive peace in school communities.

References

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press.

Paulson, J. and Tikly, L. (2023). Reconceptualizing violence in international and comparative education: Revisiting Galtung’s framework. Comparative Education Review, 67(4), 771-796.

Author

• Rebecca Loader, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge