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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Expanding Capabilities for Epistemic Justice Through Social Innovation: The Case of Business and Management Courses in UNIMINUTO, Colombia

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The chapter addresses the consideration and development of students’ competencies for social innovation in higher education by generating spaces of engagement with local communities. We combine concepts from the capability approach and epistemic injustice to address this topic and ask these specific questions: which epistemic capabilities can be generated in students when engaging with local communities in fostering social innovation processes, and how? And, how are these processes contributing to challenging epistemic injustice? To address these questions, we propose an original framework connecting ideas from Sen and Fricker and address the specific case of six pilot courses in UNIMINUTO University (Colombia), by using a qualitative methodology and information from interviews, workshops, and secondary sources. Results suggest that (1) fostering social innovation competencies by connecting teaching processes with local communities may expand epistemic capabilities; (2) very different factors, internal and external, are at play in these processes; and (3) they are also full of potential tensions and contradictions regarding their contribution to epistemic justice.