Epistemic Justice in Maker Stories

Philosopher Miranda Fricker defines epistemic justice as giving credibility to knowledge from marginalized speakers. Sor Juana's own experience—her authority constantly questioned by institutional powers—demonstrates why this matters. In ethical consumption, epistemic injustice occurs when corporations tell sanitized stories about artisans and workers, stripping them of agency and complexity to serve marketing. The fair-trade coffee farmer becomes an abstraction; the textile artisan becomes aesthetic backdrop. Epistemic justice means seeking the actual knowledge, analysis, and voices of makers: What do they say about their own labor? What systemic changes do they advocate? What knowledge about quality, sustainability, or value do they hold? This might mean reading interviews with workers, supporting cooperatives where producers speak directly, or choosing transparency models where makers' perspectives are featured. Sor Juana fought to be heard as a thinking subject, not merely as an object of others' narratives. Ethical consumption honors this same right—treating producers as knowledgeable authorities about their own work, not as props in consumer narratives.