Beyond Epistemicide: Preserving Knowledge Systems through Language, Culture, and AI

"This panel directly addresses the subtheme Knowledge and Evidence: rethinking what counts and who decides. Across the world, social and behavior change communication (SBCC) practices are often framed within Western scientific paradigms that marginalize or erase other epistemic systems. This epistemic dominance not only silences diverse ways of knowing but also undermines the effectiveness of health, education, and climate resilience interventions.The panel brings together linguistics, cultural psychology, and epistemic AI to demonstrate that epistemic diversity is not cultural ornamentation-it is a measurable and indispensable resource for problem-solving. Three interlinked objectives anchor the panel:Documenting knowledge encoded in language – showing empirically that language extinction leads to the loss of ecological, medical, and social reasoning capacities.

Demonstrating the consequences of epistemic erasure – through case studies of health campaigns and education programs where outcomes improved when local rituals and explanatory models were integrated.

Introducing new tools for plural reasoning – presenting AI-enabled methods that preserve and operationalize epistemic plurality, allowing SBCC to integrate diverse knowledge systems without collapsing them into Western categories.

Together, the contributions provide a unified framework for rethinking evidence in SBCC: what counts as valid knowledge, who decides, and how epistemic plurality can be made visible, quantifiable, and actionable. By reframing communication as the preservation and integration of multiple epistemic systems, this panel offers breakthrough thinking with direct implications for the design, evaluation, and policy relevance of SBCC initiatives."