Epistemic Decentralizing: Revisiting Knowledge Asymmetries from the Periphery Open Access
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Published:June 2025
Leandro Rodriguez Medina, 2025. "Epistemic Decentralizing: Revisiting Knowledge Asymmetries from the Periphery", Decentralizing Knowledges: Essays on Distributed Agency, Leandro Rodriguez Medina, Sandra Harding
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Epistemic decentering and decentralization are two sides of the same phenomenon: the diversification of ideas supported by infrastructures increasingly extended to the margins. Based on empirical research on knowledge production and circulation, the chapter uses these dimensions to configure four types of epistemic relations: indifference, extractivism, co-optation, and mutualism. These relations are analyzed with illustrations from Peruvian archaeology facing the repatriation of archaeological remains from Yale, and the impact of the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) on Chilean astronomy. The chapter shows that the processes of inclusion of more knowing subjects (with their respective increase in the diversity of ideas) are complex, uncertain, and open and evidence epistemic (in)justices.