ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relation of epistemic injustice to medicine and healthcare as they arise from epistemic asymmetries and differential power relations. Healthcare systems rely on complex structures of epistemic norms and expectations, both implicit and explicit, that create knowledge asymmetries - for instance, privileging the knowledge derived from medical training and theory, rather than that potentially rooted in patient experience, which effectively limits epistemic authority to healthcare practitioners. The chapter describes some of the relevant structural and epistemic features of medicine and healthcare, and indicates some potential ameliorative strategies. Agential testimonial injustice is generated by culturally prevalent stereotypes of ill persons, the majority of which build in negative accounts of their epistemic abilities. In the case of illness, hermeneutical injustice arises because the resources required for the understanding of the social experiences of ill persons are not accepted as part of the dominant hermeneutical resources.
