Crossing “Spatial Injustice” and “Epistemic Injustice” to Analyse the Inequalities of Knowledge Production in the Field
Résumé
My proposal, in the form of a position paper, presents my research project in which I propose to broach the question of inequalities of knowledge production by crossing science studies and political geography, and focusing on fieldwork as a hotspot of the relationships between space and power in science. I will argue that it is of particular interest to articulate the concepts of “spatial injustice” and “epistemic injustice” (Bhargava, 2013; Fricker, 2007) and to concentrate on field sciences and fieldwork. Doing so, I will discuss the way to analyse the spatial injustice taking place in the fieldwork locations and practices, as well as in the interaction between places where the research is directed and studied places. On a global scale, for example, a little part of the scientific production only is produced in Africa (Eckert et al., 2018) but some of its spaces and populations are over-researched (Desvaux, 2019). This inequality, which can be analysed as an injustice, finds its roots for a large part in the colonial history and in the globalization but also offers the opportunity to explore other dominations. I’ll show that this reflexion is interesting for political geography in two ways. On the one hand, political geography approaches can bring tools to study world scientific dominations. On
the other hand, critical research on science production can provide reflexion on political geography practices, mainly on the fieldwork, and more precisely on how topics and field locations are chosen and what this choice means and produces.