Insiders are best positioned to elucidate their own situation.

Evidence

When we look at such arrangements from outside, we do not consider each interaction in particular or ask whether it is fair. What we consider is the “basic structure” (Rawls 1971), and we typically judge it unfair. When we live inside a society, however, we rarely if ever focus on its basic structure. We take it for granted and evaluate social interactions within it. The individual behavior of aristocrats, slave owners, or members of high caste is judged more or less fair, rather than automatically considered unfair. … Still, there are circumstances when people look at their own institutions with a fresh eye, as did the American, the French, and the Russian revolutionaries, and then they often question their fairness. Moreover, a range of empirical works suggest that, even in the daily life of traditional societies, women do occasionally revolt against men, the poor against the wealthy, the young against the elders (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1986; Neff 1997; Turiel 2002). In other terms, hierarchies are to some extent protected from moral evaluation. When they are, however, being so evaluated, and when moral issues arise within hierarchical societies, the morality involved is grounded in considerations of fairness. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 717 (#expands, via linked claim)

The first requirement is that these codifications must necessarily represent situations familiar to the individuals whose thematics are being examined, so that they can easily recognize the situations (and thus their own relation to them). It is inadmissible (whether during the process of investigation or in the following stage, when the meaningful thematics are presented as program content) to present pictures of reality unfamiliar to the participants. The latter procedure (although dialectical, because individuals analyzing an unfamiliar reality could compare it with their own and discover the limitations of each) cannot precede the more basic one dictated by the participants’ state of submersion, that is, the process in which individuals analyzing their own reality become aware of their prior, distorted perceptions and thereby come to have a new perception of that reality. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 331 (#expands, via linked claim)

There is no absolute difference in thought between the insider and the outsider. The insistence on such difference would deny the possibilities of any valid transcultural representation of knowledge. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 568 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Insider and outsider thought are not absolutely different. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 568; Insiders take a society’s basic structure for granted while outsiders judge it unfair. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 717; Educational starting points must be the participants’ own lived situations, not unfamiliar ones. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 331 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Insiders take a society’s basic structure for granted while outsiders judge it unfair. #expands (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 717
• Insider and outsider thought are not absolutely different. #qualifies (0.80) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 568
• Educational starting points must be the participants’ own lived situations, not unfamiliar ones. #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 331