2025/07/24 by Patricia Marino · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/1350178x.2025.2535370
openalex publication_date 2025/07/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This paper draws on feminist epistemology and epistemologies of ignorance to consider debates over ‘minimal’ economic models and to showcase implications for diversity. Minimal models are highly idealized models put forward without specific empirical support. Criteria for evaluation include intuition, fit with background knowledge, and imagination. Minimal models may be interpreted modally, as giving us ‘how possibly’ rather than ‘how actually’ explanations; they are said to add to our ‘menu’ of possible explanations. Feminist epistemology emphasizes that perspectival differences have epistemic consequences; epistemologists of ignorance show how social position influences what we do not know. Using the checkerboard model of segregation as an example, I argue 1) that because evaluation of minimal models rests on subjective criteria, their use gives us reasons to pursue diversity in the epistemic community and 2) that because of ignorance, adding to our menu of possible explanations can have epistemic risks.