Recognition justice

The political implications of recognition justice are more ambiguous than distributive justice, because recognition is not a resource than can be redistributed, but is rather a phenomenological experience of people and groups.

Background and debate

Nancy Fraser critiques over-reliance on recognition justice, arguing for a combination of distributive and recognition justice to guarantee equal participation in society. Fraser states that since 1989, the political left has entered a post-socialist period marked by the absence of any credible vision for a just society. In this absence, claims by subaltern groups for recognition of difference have become “intensely salient… at times eclipsing claims for social equality.” She further observes that 21st century social movements are increasingly defined as cultural groups rather than as economic classes (as was the case prior to the 1990s when a socialist/Marxist analysis dominated leftist ideology). Fraser aims to integrate claims for recognition with claims for redistribution in the context of rising neoliberalism that has resulted in further concentration of wealth and distributive injustice.

David Ingram in his book World Crisis and Underdevelopment claims that injustice always implies lack of recognition. He promotes recognition justice, stating that “recognition theory takes up everyday feelings of moral outrage, encourages theoretical elaboration of new concepts by which to name and identify the harms that occasion that outrage, and thereby provides theoretical guidance to the formation of social movements aimed at overcoming a vast array of distinctive types of social injustices.”

Schweiger critiques Ingram's claims that injustice implies lack of recognition, stating that certain forms of epistemic injustice have “precisely the form of separating injustices and experiences of misrecognition.” He asserts that phenomenologically, most people do not understand the injustices they face and may unquestioningly accept their own exploitation.