Epistemic Justice and Corruption Prevention

Epistemic injustice occurs when someone's testimony or knowledge is dismissed or discredited based on prejudice about their identity. Corruption-fighting depends on epistemic justice: valuing the testimony of street vendors, domestic workers, and poor communities who witness corruption firsthand but are often unheard. Sor Juana's written defense of women's intellectual capacity directly challenged epistemic injustice—the systematic dismissal of women's knowledge. Applied to corruption, this means: listen to communities' complaints about officials, credit the knowledge of front-line workers, and believe accusers regardless of their status. Many corruption cases go unpunished because authorities dismiss evidence from marginalized sources. Corrupt elites maintain power partly by controlling who is deemed credible. Anti-corruption systems must actively counter this by creating multiple channels for reporting, believing diverse voices, and investigating rather than dismissing allegations. Sor Juana's insistence that all minds are equally capable of truth-seeking demands that anti-corruption institutions treat all testimony with equal respect and rigor.