Fraser N - Social Justice in The Age of Identity Politics - Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation
Fraser N - Social Justice in The Age of Identity Politics - Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation
Fraser N - Social Justice in The Age of Identity Politics - Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation
Redistribution, Recognition,
and Participation
NANCY FRASER
Delivered at
Stanford University
April 30–May 2, 1996
N ANCY FRASER is a professor on the Graduate Faculty of
Political and Social Science at the New School for Social Re-
search. She was educated at Bryn Mawr College and the City
University of New York, where she received her Ph.D.,
and her areas of specialization include social and political
theory, feminist theory, nineteenth and twentieth century
European thought, and cultural studies. Previously a pro-
fessor of philosophy at Northwestern University, she has
also been a visiting professor at the Johann Wolfgang
Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, at Stanford, and at SUNY
Binghamton. She has published numerous articles, and her
books include Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gen-
der in Contemporary Social Theory (1989), Feminist Con-
tentions: A Philosophical Exchange (1994, with Seyla Ben-
habib, Judith Butler, and Drucilla Cornell) , and Justice
Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Con-
dition (1996).
In today’s world, claims for social justice seem increasingly to
divide into two types. First, and most familiar, are redistributive
claims, which seek a more just distribution of resources and goods.
Examples include claims for redistribution from the North to the
South, from the rich to the poor, and from owners to workers. T o
be sure, the recent resurgence of free-market thinking has put pro-
ponents of redistribution on the defensive. Nevertheless, egali-
tarian redistributive claims have supplied the paradigm case for
most theorizing about social justice for the past 150 years.
Today, however, we increasingly encounter a second type of
social-justice claim in the “politics of recognition.” Here the goal,
in its most plausible form, is a difference-friendly world, where
assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer
the price of equal respect. Examples include claims for the recog-
nition of the distinctive perspectives of ethnic, “racial,” and sexual
minorities, as well as of gender difference. This type of claim has
recently attracted the interest of political philosophers, moreover,
some of whom are seeking to develop a new paradigm of justice
that puts recognition at its center.
In general, then, we are confronted with a new constellation.
The discourse of social justice, once centered on distribution, is
The preparation and revision of this lecture was supported by the Tanner Foun-
dation for Human Values, to which I am deeply grateful. Thanks as well to Stan-
ford University, especially the Program in Ethics and Society, the Philosophy Depart-
ment, and Professor Susan Moller Okin. I benefited greatly from the responses by
Professors Elizabeth Anderson and Axel Honneth, even where I have been unable to
respond to them adequately. I am grateful, too, for comments from participants at
the Stanford seminars and at other venues where this material was presented. Con-
versations with Richard J. Bernstein, Rainer Forst, Axel Honneth, Theodore Kodits-
chek, Steven Lukes, Jane Mansbridge, Linda Nicholson, and Eli Zaretsky influenced
my thinking greatly at key points during the preparation of the original lectures.
Subsequent comments from Judith Butler, Anne Phillips, and especially Erik Olin
Wright were invaluable in the process of revision, as were further discussions with
Rainer Forst, Axel Honneth, and Eli Zaretsky.
[3]
4 The Tanner Lectares on Human Values
I. REDISTRIBUTION OR RECOGNITION ?
A CRITIQUE OF JUSTICE TRUNCATED
I begin with a terminological point. The politics of redistribu-
tion, as I shall understand it here, encompasses not only class-
centered orientations, such as New Deal liberalism, social democ-
racy, and socialism, 2 but also those forms of feminism and anti-
2
I do not include now defunct Eastern bloc communism, because it failed to
combine its social egalitarian goals with commitments to extensive civil liberties and
political rights. Throughout this lecture I assume (but do not argue) that no pro-
gram for achieving social and/or cultural justice that fails to ensure such liberties
and rights is defensible.
6 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
3
I do not include here movements for national recognition, as they raise issues
beyond the scope of my discussion.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 7
4 In fact, these remedies stand in some tension with one another, a problem I
too, differ importantly from one another, I refer once again to the
whole group of them by the generic term “recognition.” 5
Third, the two orientations assume different conceptions of the
collectivities who suffer injustice. For the politics of redistribution,
the collective subjects of injustice are classes or classlike collectivi-
ties, which are defined economically by a distinctive relation to the
market or the means of production.6 The classic case in the Marxian
paradigm is the exploited working class, whose members must sell
their labor power in order to receive the means of subsistence.7
But the conception can cover other cases as well. Also included
are racialized groups that can be economically defined: for ex-
ample, marginalized members of a racialized underclass, who are
largely excluded from regular waged work, deemed “superfluous”
and unworthy of exploitation. When the notion of the economy is
broadened to encompass unwaged labor, moreover, gendered
groups belong here as well; thus women constitute another collec-
tive subject of economic injustice, as the gender burdened with the
lion’s share of unwaged carework and consequently disadvantaged
in employment and disempowered in relations with men. Also
included, finally, are the complexly defined groupings that result
when we theorize the political economy in terms of the intersection
of class, “race,” and gender.
For the politics of recognition, in contrast, the victims of in-
justice are more like Weberian status groups than Marxian (or
Weberian) classes. Defined not by the relations of production, but
5 Once again, these remedies stand in some tension with one another. It is one
8 For the Weberian definition of class, see Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,“
in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills
(Oxford University Press, 1958).
10 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
Culture Wars (Metropolitan Books, 1995); Richard Rorty, “The Eclipse of the Re-
formist Left” and “A Cultural Left,” lectures II and III of his “American National
Pride: Whitman and Dewey” (unpublished typescript).
10 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in his Multiculturalism: Ex-
amining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton University Press,
1994).
[FRASER] Social Justice 11
mistic way in order to sharpen the contrast to the other ideal-typical kinds of collec-
tivity discussed below. Thus, I treat class as rooted wholly in the political economy,
as opposed to in the status order. This, of course, is hardly the only interpretation
of the Marxian conception of class. At a later step in the argument, I introduce a
less economistic interpretation, one that gives more weight to the cultural, historical,
and discursive dimensions of class emphasized by such writers as E. P. Thompson
and Joan Wallach Scott. See Thompson, T h e Making o f the English Working Class
(Random House, 1963); and Scott, Gender and the Politics o f History (Columbia
University Press, 1988).
12 The Tanner Lectures on Human Va lues
13 Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (Knopf,
1973).
14 One might object that the result would not be the proletariat’s abolition but
only its universalization. Even in that case, however, the proletariat’s group dis-
tinctiveness would disappear.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 13
highly stylized way in order to sharpen the contrast to the other ideal-typical kinds
of collectivity discussed here. Thus, I treat sexual differentiation as rooted wholly in
the status order, as opposed to in the political economy. Of course, this is not the only
interpretation of sexuality. At a later step in the argument, I introduce an alterna-
tive interpretation, which gives more weight to political economy.
14 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
that cries out for redistributive redress. Much like class, gender
justice requires transforming the political economy so as to elimi-
nate its gender structuring. Eliminating gender-specific exploita-
tion and deprivation requires abolishing the gender division of
labor -both the gendered division between paid and unpaid labor
and the gender division within paid labor. The logic of the remedy
is akin to the logic with respect to class: it is to put gender out of
business as such. If gender were nothing but an economic differ-
entiation, in sum, justice would require its abolition.
That, however, is only half the story. In fact, gender is not
only an economic differentiation, but a status differentiation as
well. As such, it also encompasses elements that are more like
sexuality than class and that bring it squarely within the proble-
matic of recognition. Gender codes pervasive cultural patterns of
interpretation and evaluation, which are central to the status order
as a whole. As a result, not just women, but all low-status groups,
risk being feminized, and thereby demeaned.
Thus, a major feature of gender injustice is androcentrism: the
authoritative construction of norms that privilege traits associated
with masculinity and the pervasive devalution and disparagement
of things coded as “feminine,” paradigmatically -but not only -
women. These androcentricnorms do not operate only at the level
of cultural attitudes, moreover. Rather, they are institutionalized,
both formally and informally. Androcentric norms skew entitle-
ments and delimit understandings of personhood in, for example,
marital, divorce, and custody law; the practice of medicine and
psychotherapy; reproductive policy; legal constructions of rape,
battery, and self-defense; immigration, naturalization, and asylum
policy; popular culture representations ; and everyday social prac-
tices and patterns of interaction. As a result, women suffer gender-
specific status injuries. Denied the full rights and protections of
citizenship, they endure sexual assault and domestic violence ; the
absence of reproductive autonomy; trivializing, objectifying, and
demeaning stereotypical depictions in the media; harassment and
[F RASER ] Social Justice 17
commoners, or men and women, shaped the emergence of the capitalist system.
Nevertheless, it was only the creation of a differentiated economic order with a rela-
tively autonomous life of its own that gave rise to the distinction between capitalists
and workers.
20 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
tudes that demean poor and working people: for example, “culture-
of-poverty” ideologies that suggest that the poor deserve what they
get. Likewise, poor and working people may need a counter-
“identity politics” to support their struggles for economic justice;
they may need, that is, to build class communities and cultures in
order to neutralize the hidden injuries of class and forge the con-
fidence to stand up for themselves. Thus, a politics of class recog-
nition may be needed both in itself and to get a politics of redis-
tribution off the ground.19
Thus, even such an apparently univalent economic category as
class has a status component. To be sure, this component is sub-
ordinate, less weighty than the economic component. Nevertheless,
overcoming class injustice may well require joining a politics of
recognition to a politics of redistribution.20 At the very least, it
will be necessary to attend carefully to the recognition dynamics
of class struggles in order to prevent these from generating injus-
tices of misrecognition in the process of seeking to remedy injus-
tices of maldistribution.
19 I am grateful to Erik Olin Wright (personal communication, 1997) for
the economic structure, which comprises an order of economic relations that is dif-
ferentiated from kinship and oriented to the expansion of surplus value. In the cur-
rent “post-fordist” phase of capitalism, moreover, sexuality increasingly finds its
locus in the relatively new, late-modern sphere of “personal life,” where intimate
relations that can no longer be identified with the family are lived as disconnected
from the imperatives of production and reproduction. Today, accordingly, the hetero-
normative regulation of sexuality is increasingly removed from, and not necessarily
functional for, the capitalist economic order. A s a result, the economic harms of
heterosexism do not derive in any straightforward way from the economic structure.
They are rooted, rather, in the heterosexist status order, which is increasingly out of
phase with the economy. For a fuller argument, see Nancy Fraser, “Heterosexism,
Misrecognition, and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler,” Social Text 53/54
(Winter/Spring 1998). For the counterargument, see Judith Butler, “Merely Cul-
tural,” Social Text 53/54 (Winter/Spring 1998).
22 I owe the “weak link” point to Erik Olin Wright (personal communication,
1997).
22 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
NORMATIVE-PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES:
JUSTICE OR SELF-REALIZATION ?
Social Confiicts, tr. Joel Anderson (Polity Press, 1995); and “Integrity and Disre-
spect: Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on the Theory of Recognition,”
Political Theory 20, no. 2 (May 1992).
[F RASER ] Social Justice 25
and jobs as “social bases of self-respect,” while also speaking of self-respect itself as
28 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
But the results are not wholly satisfactory. Most such theorists
assume a reductive economistic-cum-legalistic view of status, sup-
posing that a just distribution of resources and rights is sufficient
to preclude misrecognition. In fact, however, as we saw, not all
misrecognition is a byproduct of maldistribution, nor of maldis-
tribution plus legal discrimination. Witness the case of the African-
American Wall Street banker who cannot get a taxi to pick him up.
To handle such cases, a theory of justice must reach beyond the
distribution of rights and goods to examine patterns of cultural
value. It must consider whether institutionalized cultural patterns
of interpretation and valuation impede parity of participation in
social life.27
What, then, of the other side of the question? Can existing
theories of recognition adequately subsume problems of distribu-
tion? Here, too, I contend the answer is no. To be sure, some
theorists of recognition appreciate the importance of economic
RECOGNIZING DISTINCTIVENESS ?
A PRAGMATIC APPROACH
This brings us to the third question: Does justice require the
recognition of what is distinctive about individuals or groups, over
and above the recognition of our common humanity? Here it is
important to note that participatory parity is a universalist norm in
two senses. First, it encompasses all (adult) partners to inter-
action. And second, it presupposes the equal moral worth of human
beings. But moral universalism in these senses still leaves open the
question whether recognition of individual or group distinctive-
ness could be required by justice as one element among others of
the intersubjective condition for participatory parity.
How should one answer this question? Most theorists appeal
to an a priori philosophical argument. Some seek to show that
justice can never require recognizing difference, others that it must
always do so. Unlike both camps, however, I propose to approach
the issue in the spirit of pragmatism. Thus, one should not answer
the question Does justice require the recognition of distinctiveness ?
by an a priori account of what sort of recognition is always and
everywhere required. One should say, rather, that the form(s)
of recognition justice requires in any given case depend( s) on the
[F RASER ] Social Justice 33
explain in a subsequent section, there are other possible recognition remedies for the
sort of misrecognition that involves denying distinctiveness.
34 This pragmatic approach assumes that denial of distinctiveness can be unjust
a priori that all misrecognition consists in the denial of equal respect, it rules out of
court any consideration of impediments to participatory parity that arise from the
34 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
failure to recognize distinctiveness. But such impediments can and do exist. Witness
the case of the electoral schedule cited above.
36 Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition”; Honneth, The Struggle f o r Recognition.
37 Axel Honneth also theorizes a third level of recognition, the love or care that
arises from intimate primary relationships. See The Struggle for Recognition.
38 I am indebted to Linda Nicholson for this argument. For a more extensive
discussion, see her essay “To Be or Not to Be: Charles Taylor and the Politics of
Recognition,” Constellations 3, no. 1 (April 1996).
[F RASER ] Social Justice 35
talism, the Family, and Personal L i f e (Harper and Row, 1983), Zaretsky provides an
analogous account of the apparent separation and interpenetration of the economy
and the family (the “public” and the “private”) in modern capitalist societies.
42 Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas
and Gender,” in Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Con -
temporary Social Theory (University o f Minnesota Press, 1989).
43 I borrow this expression from Michael Walzer; see his Spheres o f Justice:
A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Basic Books, 1 9 8 3 ) .
[F RASER ] Social Justice 41
44 See Nancy Fraser, “Women, Welfare, and the Polit‘ics of Need Interpreta-
tion” and “Struggle over Needs,” both in Fraser, Unruly Practices. Also, Nancy
Fraser and Linda Gordon, “A Genealogy of ‘Dependency’: Tracing A Keyword of
the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs 19, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 309-36; reprinted in
Fraser, Justice Interruptus.
45 Jeffrey Escoffier has discussed these issues insightfully in “The Political
Economy of the Closet,” lecture delivered at the New School for Social Research,
New York, September 1996.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 43
Not One,” differences 1, no. 2 (Summer 1989). There Schor contrasts Simone de
Beauvoir’s critique of the “othering” of women in a sexist society with Luce Irigaray’s
diagnosis of the “saming” of women in a phallocentric symbolic order.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 47
leave policy while the other side supports the inclusion of preg-
nancy in general disability-leave policy. The proponents of a spe-
cial pregnancy leave hold that women need to be recognized as
women; rejecting the assimilation of pregnancy to a “disability,”
they demand recognition of women’s distinctive ability to bear
children. In contrast, feminists opposed to such a special preg-
nancy leave argue that women need to be recognized as workers
and citizens. Thus, one side seeks differentialist recognition in
order to remedy harms of underfeminization, while the other side
seeks universalist recognition in order to remedy harms of over-
feminization. Both sides argue, moreover, that the other’s position
would harm women economically. Pregnancy-leave advocates
claim that their opponents’ stance exposes women wage-workers
to risks of job loss that are not faced by men. Pregnancy-leave
opponents claim that the advocates’ stance gives employers a dis-
incentive to hire women of childbearing age. Both sides, unfortu-
nately, are right. In both cases, policies aimed at remedying injus-
tices of misrecognition risk exacerbating injustices of maldistribu-
tion. And policies aimed at remedying one kind of misrecognition
risk exacerbating another.
What follows from this analysis? No proposals for recogni-
tion should be evaluated on recognition grounds alone. All should
also be assessed from the standpoint of redistribution. The goal,
in general, should be to avoid two different kinds of tradeoffs.
First, one should oppose reforms that, however unintentionally,
confer recognition in forms that exact high material costs. In their
place, one should seek approaches that confer recognition in forms
that maintain or enhance the economic well-being of claimants,
thereby doubly supporting their capacity to function as full part-
ners in social interaction. Second, one should oppose reforms that
combat one form of misrecognition in ways that exacerbate an-
other. In their place, one should seek approaches that confer rec-
ognition in forms that redress both (or more) forms of misrecog-
nition simul taneously.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 53
see ibid.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 63
vis-à-vis different conceptions of the good. In order to achieve just distribution and
reciprocal recognition, it is necessary to devise policies that challenge conservative
views of family and gender relations. ( I am grateful to Elizabeth Anderson for
clarifying this point in her response to the present lecture.) This conclusion is un-
avoidable, given my account of participatory parity. The view that justice requires
social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one
another as peers is itself not neutral between feminist and fundamental views of
gender relations. And the inclusion within its purview of recognition in addition
to distribution brings to a head the potential conflict between justice and state neu-
trality. For an extended and, to my mind, persuasive argument for the priority of
gender justice over state neutrality, see John Exdell, “Feminism, Fundamentalism,
and Liberal Legitimacy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24, no. 3 (September
1994) : 441-64.
[F RASER ] Social Justice 65
CONCLUSION
Let me conclude this lecture by recapitulating my overall argu-
ment. I have argued that to pose an either/or choice between the
63 Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (Basic Books, 1989).
64 Joan Williams, “ Deconstructing Gender,” in Feminist Legal Theory, ed.
Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy.
66 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values