In this post Anki Bengtsson from Stockholm University, Sweden shares her thinking on epistemic justice in career guidance. The article draws on her recent article for the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling entitled On epistemic justice in career guidance.

In this post Anki Bengtsson from Stockholm University, Sweden shares her thinking on epistemic justice in career guidance. The article draws on her recent article for the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling entitled On epistemic justice in career guidance.

Just career guidance is complex, multifaceted and at times controversial. How we evaluate problems is linked with our access to knowledge about our world and also to what knowledge is considered to be valuable and worthy of dissemination. There is a risk that career development and career guidance ignores or dismisses certain knowledge and experience and that this leads to discrimination.

Injustice manifests in many forms such as social and economic injustices. In recent decades, the terminology of ‘epistemic injustice’ has gained increased attention, which has given us new ways of reasoning about how, when and where injustice occur in knowledge production and in social practice.

The British philosopher Miranda Fricker has developed a theoretical framework for uncovering epistemic injustices in her book Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. She claims that epistemic injustice is a denial of a person’s credibility, this is not simply an assertion that they are not telling the truth, but also a denial of a person’s capacity as a knower.

In the context of career guidance, practitioners listen to the client’s story about her or his personal experiences, but they also validate the client’s credibility to tell about one’s experiences. Think of the situation of an asylum seeker who tells her or his story in a conversation and yet prejudice about asylum seekers prevents the practitioner from understand what the client is saying. This situation is disempowering rather than empowering for the client and this is what I write about in my article.

Pursuing epistemic justice

How, then, can we pursue epistemic justice in the field of career research and professional practice? One suggestion would be that we have to make ethical stands. We do so by make injustice visible in career theories and research and enquire into what knowledge that is rendered irrelevant, inadequate, silenced or ignored. To mention a few examples, we may think of knowledge of the global south, indigenous knowledge, and knowledge of disability in various contexts – work, education, and social networks.

Turning to career guidance practice, it is central to correct for harm caused to individuals by active and deep listening, but also to reflect upon who we give credibility, what knowledge and interpretations we make use of, and how we do it.

Career guidance education trains practitioners in active listening and self-reflection, but it cannot be reduced to a tool for managing epistemic injustice. If epistemic justice is to be incorporated in the career guidance profession it depends on practitioners’ will to act upon the moral duty of justice and the existence of conducive work conditions.

In essence, to take ethical standpoints we need to challenge the view of impartial career guidance. Furthermore, if we are to engage in epistemic justice it requires supportive conditions within the institutions where we work.

Finally, we need to ask whether the education for career guidance counsellors is sufficiently addressing epistemic justice? Are colleagues and management teams supporting discussions about enhancing ethical practices concerning treating people equally as knowers? These are questions for further research.