Resisting epistemic injustice: The potential of vulnerability in research ethics

This article explores how the concept of vulnerability in procedural ethics may influence knowledge production in qualitative research. We suggest that the ethical and methodological precautions taken towards ‘vulnerable populations’ may be detrimental to research participants, as their voices might be silenced, or their interpretations might be excluded from the research. To address this issue, we put the concept of vulnerability in research ethics into dialogue with the normative framework of epistemic injustice as developed by Miranda Fricker. In doing so, we discuss how epistemic injustices may occur, but also how they may be resisted through ethical and methodological considerations based on a more critical understanding of vulnerability. We start this article by tracing and problematizing the often-used understanding of vulnerability as rooted in the biomedical field. We then discuss the skepticism of social scientists regarding the idea of vulnerability, before presenting its reconceptualization from critical and feminist scholars. Finally, we show how using vulnerability in research ethics can lead to either the maintaining or resisting of dynamics of epistemic injustice in qualitative research. To illustrate this proposition, we use examples from qualitative field research and discuss our research process in relation to participants.