[Forthcoming in Harms and Wrongs in Epistemic Practice: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement Vol. 84 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Do not distribute. Cite only the published version when it is available.] Harms and Wrongs in Epistemic Practice Simon Barker, Charlie Crerar, and Trystan S. Goetze Abstract This volume has its roots in two recent developments within mainstream analytic epistemology: a growing recognition over the past two or three decades of the active and social nature of our epistemic lives; and, more recently still, the increasing appreciation of the various ways in which the epistemic practices of individuals and societies can, and often do, go wrong. The theoretical analysis of these breakdowns in epistemic practice, along with the various harms and wrongs that follow as a consequence, constitutes an approach to epistemology that we refer to as non-ideal epistemology. In this introductory chapter we introduce and contextualise the ten essays that comprise this volume, situating them within four broad sub-fields: vice epistemology, epistemic injustice, inter-personal epistemic practices, and applied epistemology. We also provide a brief overview of several other important growth areas in non-ideal epistemology. This volume has its roots in two recent developments within mainstream analytic epistemology. The first has been an increasing recognition of the active and social nature of our epistemic lives. For most of the 20 th century, the impression generated by the epistemological literature was of epistemic agents as generic and isolated individuals, more or less passively inheriting beliefs from their environments. It was these beliefs, and not the epistemic agents themselves, that served as the prime focus of epistemic analysis, with the two central questions in the field focussing on when it is that beliefs count as justified, and when it is they count as knowledge. This idea of our epistemic lives as something isolated or passive is, of course, a philosophical fiction; a useful one at times, perhaps, but a fiction nonetheless. Knowing, believing, and understanding, and the practices of inquiry, deliberation, and investigation that endow us with these states, are not just things that happen to us, but are very often things that we do, that require making choices about how to act or about what steps to take. What’s more, they are things that we do together, in groups, as part of larger social networks and communities, and with our own particular identities and characters. The recognition of our epistemic lives as something active and involving interaction with other epistemic agents has become a central part of epistemological theorising in the past couple of decades, as manifested in particular by the flourishing fields of social and virtue epistemology. The second development we wish to draw attention to remains somewhat more nascent. Inspired by the work of 20 th century feminist epistemologists and drawing upon insights from moral and political philosophy, a growing number of theorists have begun to place at the centre of their work the insight that, insofar as our epistemic lives involve things that we do, they involve things that we – both as individuals and as