The intersection of shrinking society and epistemic justice / Extracting structural patterns via 5-lab integration

This note sits in the synthesis phase of the Social Design Foundations Lab (ISVD-LAB-003). It re-reads the objects that ISVD's five labs have each treated separately, from the intersection of two concepts — shrinking society and epistemic justice — and extracts structural patterns that recur across all five labs.

Japan has entered a phase of shrinking. Population, tax revenue, social infrastructure, the number of administrative staff, the number of seats in local assemblies — all sit on downward-sloping lines. This change is often discussed as a change in quantity. So many people fewer, so many hundred million yen less in tax, so many facilities closed. The numbers are shrinking.

But this shrinking is not a phenomenon that ends at quantity. Quantitative shrinking often carries with it the question of "whose voice shrinks first." Which layer's opinions are the first to fade in the debate over higher National Health Insurance premiums? In discussions over the reuse of shuttered school buildings, who is placed outside the debate from the outset? Among the residents left along trunk roads, whose complaints reach the authorities and whose do not? The asymmetry of "quality" behind "quantity" is the point here.

The framework of epistemic justice as formulated by Miranda Fricker (2007) offers vocabulary for digging into this qualitative dimension. Fricker distinguished two forms of injustice. One is "testimonial injustice," where a person's testimony is unfairly discredited because of prejudice. The other is "hermeneutical injustice," where the very concepts needed to understand one's own experience are socially lacking. The two become tools for tracking whose voice shrinks behind the shrinking of quantity.

ISVD's five research labs have so far dealt with different objects. The Agnotology Lab asks "why do we not know." The Machikarte Lab asks "what is spoken and what is not spoken in local assemblies." The Public Asset PPP Lab studies "the reallocation of closed schools and unused facilities." The Social Design Foundations Lab studies "how to integrate six disciplines." The Traffic Noise Lab studies "environmental justice around sound." On the surface, these are different objects. Yet what this note shows is that when the five labs are placed at the intersection of "shrinking society and epistemic justice," the same structural patterns appear again and again.

Three common patterns surface. First, the asymmetry of shrinking. Quantitative shrinking does not hit the whole domain evenly. It shrinks the voices of specific layers first. Second, the difficulty of late detection. Once a voice has shrunk, the cost of recovering it is structurally high. Third, the trinity of attention-control, silence-structuring and epistemic-exclusion. The individual objects observed across the five labs can be read as combinations of these three mechanisms. These three patterns define the target of counter-design.

The lineage of shrinking-society research and Japan's position

The term "shrinking society" connects to the older tradition of "shrinking cities" research in urban studies. Shrinking Cities Vol. 1 (2005) edited by Philipp Oswalt examined four cities — former East Germany, Detroit, Manchester, Ivanovo — and dealt with the simultaneous progression of population decline and industrial hollowing. The paper "Urban shrinkage in Germany and the USA" by Karina Pallagst and Thorsten Wiechmann (Wiechmann & Pallagst, 2012) compared shrinking cities in Germany and the USA and analysed the gap between political recognition and the actual process of shrinking.

In Japanese-language scholarship, the lineage of Yoshinori Hiroi has developed an argument that reads shrinking not as an "undesirable event" but as "the starting point for a new social vision." Hiroi's stationary-state society theory, presented in Post-Capitalism / The Future of Science, Humanity and Society (2015), faced the question of how to envision society after quantitative growth ends and contributed to the semantic redefinition of "shrinking."

Yet these lineages share a common blank. Shrinking-society theory has often stayed within the debate over "how to accept quantitative shrinking" and has not made the qualitative dimension — "whose voice shrinks first under quantitative shrinking" — a central subject. This blank creates room for intersection with epistemic-justice research.

The lineage of epistemic-justice research

The theoretical organisation of epistemic justice began with Fricker (2007) and was compiled systematically by Kidd, Medina, Pohlhaus (eds.) (2017) in The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. José Medina's The Epistemology of Resistance (2013) is an attempt to connect the theory of epistemic justice to the practice of resistance. Linsey McGoey's The Unknowers (2019) theorises the structure by which ignorance is functional for power as "strategic ignorance."

These lineages developed along the question of "whose voice is recognised as knowledge." But the main battlefield lies in the context of race and gender in North America and Western Europe. Research that takes "epistemic exclusion under a shrinking society" as its subject is scarce.

The blank at the intersection and ISVD's position

Shrinking-society research and epistemic-justice research treat, respectively, a quantitative and a qualitative dimension. The intersection — "whose voice shrinks qualitatively under quantitative shrinking" — has few Japanese-language works as its subject. The agnotology lab's essay-strategic-ignorance-ebpm and the Machikarte lab's case-sakiokuri-rate touch on this intersection, but no cross-cutting integration across the five labs exists yet.

The six-field integration model presented by the Social Design Foundations Lab offered a map that integrates six disciplines — social policy, agnotology, epistemology, participatory design, EBPM, civil society studies — through the three concepts of wicked problems, Mode 2 knowledge production and boundary objects. This note is an implementation of that integration: it places "shrinking society and epistemic justice" as a boundary object and connects the observations of the five labs.

Re-read the objects that each of the five labs has observed at the intersection of "shrinking society and epistemic justice." The same mechanism recurs across different domains.

Agnotology axis / Whose ignorance is produced under a shrinking society

What the Agnotology Lab has treated through its 7-axis coding scheme is the process by which ignorance is produced not as an accident but structurally. As the lab's 22-article cross-cutting analysis shows, the top-down power direction among Japanese institutional actors is coded in 18 of the 22 articles (82%), and attention-control is coded in 10 of those articles (45%).

Reading this pattern in the context of a shrinking society, one sees a structure in which specific layers' voices are systematically excluded from the venues where the burden of shrinking is allocated. case-poverty-epistemic-exclusion treats the pattern where the testimony of the poor is dismissed as "subjective." case-disability-testimonial-injustice treats the pattern where the testimony of people with disabilities is structurally distrusted. essay-epistemic-injustice-npo treats the pattern where the field knowledge of NPOs is dismissed as "not evidence."

These are not isolated cases. Under a shrinking society, layers judged to "have little impact even if reduced" are selected during the debate over burden allocation. That judgment is often made in a state where the voices of those very layers have been excluded in advance. Because the voice does not reach, the impact is invisible. Because the impact is invisible, the reduction is justified. This closed loop is the basic structure of epistemic exclusion in a shrinking society.

Machikarte axis / How does the quality of assembly answers change under shrinking

The Machikarte Lab built its assembly-record database of about 1,788 assemblies with the aim of seeing "what is spoken and what is not spoken in assemblies" as a national distribution. The lab's methodology-corpus-construction organised the common schema of one utterance per row, the distributed-processing design using partition and clustering, and the three-tier publication-granularity rule.

When assembly answers are re-read in the context of a shrinking society, one sees not only the trend in the sheer number of utterances but a qualitative bias in the answers. case-sakiokuri-rate analyses the national distribution of the phrase "under consideration" (kentō) using 18.97 million answers from 870 municipalities, and presents as a national distribution the pattern by which answers are postponed without reaching a substantive decision. trends-fiscal-health-2018-2024 tracks the seven-year trend of the fiscal-health debate and treats how the language of assemblies changes in a shrinking phase.

What these analyses suggest is that even within the institutional speech space of the assembly, discussions of shrinking tend to converge on specific language patterns. The vocabulary of judgment deferral — "consider," "take into account," "adjust" — grows, while the channels through which the voice of the people directly affected by the policy is taken up in the answers are institutionally limited. In principle the assembly is a public venue, but the selection process that decides what is placed on the public agenda proceeds out of sight.

Public asset PPP axis / Whose life foundations are protected under shrinking

The objects the Public Asset PPP Lab treats in its hypotheses and scope are the reallocation of closed schools, unused facilities and public land. That 1,951 of 7,612 closed schools nationwide remain unused is a representative manifestation of quantitative shrinking.

But this reallocation does not stay in the realm of quantity. The three walls (image, partner, feasibility) shown in abandoned-school-small-concession-structure describe the process by which the actors who can enter closed-school reuse are structurally narrowed. Small and medium-sized businesses rooted in the area, social enterprises and NPOs are eliminated at the document-review stage by the walls of track-record requirements, proof of operational continuity and the difficulty of income forecasts. Local stakeholders are structurally unable to participate in the reallocation of the region's own life foundations.

pfs-adoption-structural-gap treats the structure by which PFS (a contract scheme paying the provider based on outcomes) reaches only a 9% adoption rate. It is also recorded that in small-municipality PPP sites the biggest difficulty is "lack of know-how and knowledge". Under a shrinking society, the knowledge needed to reallocate public assets is itself biased on the side of those able to participate. Bias in knowledge produces bias in participation, and bias in participation produces bias in reallocation.

Social Design Foundations axis / Who can pose the "question" under shrinking

The nature of "wicked problems" presented in the six-field integration model of the Social Design Foundations Lab applies precisely to the challenges of a shrinking society. Definitions are not unique, solutions are not fixed, and problem and solution mutually constitute each other. This nature foregrounds the power over "who defines the problem."

essay-6field-operationalization treats, as a barrier when the six-field integration model is applied to individual practice, the structure in which "the way a question is posed" is itself defined by the customs of the existing disciplines. Under a shrinking society, the right to define "what is the problem" is concentrated in the established channels of administration, academia and journalism, and almost none remains on the side of those affected. The theoretical tradition of participatory design has treated "participation in design," but "participation in the process of posing the question" has not yet been sufficiently thematised.

This is the Japanese manifestation of Fricker's hermeneutical injustice. The very concepts required to put one's experience into language are socially insufficient. Under a shrinking society, the people who have the vocabulary to speak of "why the voice does not reach" are limited, and the range within which that limited vocabulary reaches is also limited.

Traffic noise axis / Who enjoys quiet under shrinking

Of the four research hypotheses of the Traffic Noise Lab, H2 "zoning regulation and noise disparity (environmental-justice hypothesis)" is developed in earnest in essay-noise-inequality. Low-income households tend to concentrate in cheap housing along trunk roads, and the severity of noise damage is inversely proportional to income. This structure has an accumulation of empirical research in the USA and Europe, and systematic empirical work in Japan is the target of the lab's Phase 2.

Reading this pattern in the context of a shrinking society, one sees the qualitative unevenness of the environment as a structure. case-soundproof-subsidy-disparity treats the disparity structure of the roadside-housing soundproofing subsidy scheme, and treats the process by which even residents on the same trunk road are institutionally sorted into those eligible and those not eligible for subsidy. Under the shrinking of the city, those who continue to live in roadside housing along trunk roads are, in many cases, residents who have no option to move away.

The fact that the environmental quality standards notification places, on spaces adjacent to trunk roads alone, special limits 15-20 dB more lenient than ordinary residential areas, and grants areas where attainment is remarkably difficult a grace period exceeding ten years, can be read as the institutionalisation of epistemic exclusion. The existence of a layer that has no choice but to live in "different-standard locations" is built into the institution, and the channels through which that layer's complaints reach have been structurally narrowed.

Structural patterns visible at the five-lab intersection

When the observations of the five labs are placed at the intersection of "shrinking society and epistemic justice," three common patterns can be extracted.

Pattern 1

Asymmetry of shrinking

Quantitative shrinking shrinks specific layers' voices first

The debate over shrinking society often treats "what decreases as a whole." But the observations of the five labs show that shrinking does not hit the whole domain evenly. In the agnotology axis, the testimony of the poor and of people with disabilities. In the Machikarte axis, the voices of those directly affected by the policy inside assembly answers. In the public asset PPP axis, the participation of local stakeholders. In the Social Design Foundations axis, the subject who poses the question. In the traffic noise axis, the right to enjoy quiet. In all of them, the burden of shrinking concentrates on specific layers. This asymmetry is not an accident but the result of structural biases built into the institutions of attention allocation, agenda selection, track-record requirements and environmental standards.

Pattern 2

Difficulty of late detection

Once a voice has shrunk, the cost of recovering it is structurally high

Recovering after the fact a voice once placed outside the debate is extremely difficult. In the Machikarte axis, the pattern is observed that topics not taken up in assembly answers are also unlikely to be taken up in later sessions. In the public asset PPP axis, actors eliminated by track-record requirements are eliminated by the same requirements at the next call for proposals, and the opportunity to build a track record itself is structurally closed. In the agnotology axis, as the pattern of silence-structuring shows, once silence is institutionalised it persists in a self-reinforcing way. The difficulty of late detection is the temporal dimension of epistemic exclusion under a shrinking society.

Pattern 3

Trinity cycle

Attention-control, silence-structuring and epistemic-exclusion reinforce one another

What recurs across the five labs is the simultaneous activation of the three mechanisms. Attention-control chooses what is shown. Silence-structuring structures what is not spoken. Epistemic-exclusion defines whose voice is not accepted. These three do not work independently. They support one another. Attention-control lays the ground for silence-structuring. Silence-structuring justifies epistemic-exclusion. Epistemic-exclusion defines the new target of attention-control. The individual objects of the five labs can be read as different manifestations of this trinity. Untangling the interlocking of these three mechanisms is the target of counter-design discussed next.

Read the three patterns as targets for counter-design.

On the policy side, the indicator-isation of epistemic justice in shrinking-society policy becomes a task. In addition to quantitative KPIs such as population, tax revenue and number of facilities, qualitative KPIs that measure the degree to which the voices of those affected are taken into the debate should be designed. The Machikarte Lab's assembly-answer database already functions as a base for aggregating "the frequency of utterances by those affected regarding specific policy topics" as a national distribution. The route by which this base is connected to the indicator-isation of epistemic justice becomes the focus of the next research plan.

On the practice side, the introduction of an epistemic-justice perspective into participatory processes is necessary. Track-record requirements at public-asset-reuse sites, weighting of voices in urban-planning consensus building, evaluation of outcomes in NPO grant applications. Building into each institution a step that examines "whose voice is structurally excluded" is the smallest unit of counter-design. The six-field integration model of the Social Design Foundations Lab offers the vocabulary for designing that step.

On the research side, building a long-term corpus across the five labs becomes a task. The recurrence of the three patterns is not visible from a single lab's observations alone, and conversely the robustness of the patterns increases when observations from the five labs are integrated. The Machikarte Lab's assembly-answer database, the Agnotology Lab's 7-axis coding, the Public Asset PPP Lab's typology, the Social Design Foundations Lab's integration model, the Traffic Noise Lab's environmental-justice fieldwork — continuously connecting these along the common axis of "shrinking society and epistemic justice" defines the next phase of ISVD's entire research programme.

• The intellectual coordinates of social design / Reading through six academic sources The overall map of this lab's research
• Six-field integration model The theoretical companion to the integration implemented in this note
• Cross-cutting 7-axis analysis of 22 articles Pattern extraction from internal data on the agnotology axis
• Methodology of assembly corpus construction The data base of the Machikarte axis
• Structural analysis of the three walls of small concessions Representative analysis on the public asset PPP axis
• Those who live along trunk roads suffer greater noise damage The environmental-justice hypothesis on the traffic noise axis