Money, Sex and Power

The politics of (mis)recognition

Week 3

2011-12

Lecture outline

• 1. The distinction between a politics of distribution and a politics of recognition

• 2. The emergence of a politics of recognition within feminism

• 3. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and how he understands recognition

Nancy Fraser

• Claims for redistributive justice relate to structural inequalities within society

• Claims for recognition relate to cultural practices of misrecognition, domination, disrespect

• Redistributive justice relates to classes or class-like collectivities

• Recognition relates to Weberian status groups who are defined by ‘the relations of recogntion’ and ‘distinguished by the lesser respect, esteem, and prestige they enjoy relative to other groups in society’ (Fraser, 2003:14)

Nancy Fraser

• Gender is a hybrid category ‘rooted simultaneously in the economic structure and status order of society’

• Gender politics is both a politics of redistribution and recognition

• Within feminism conflict about which sort of politics should take precedence

Emergence of politics of difference

• Gender equality always been goal of feminism

• And feminism has always called for a recognition of women’s difference from men (and vice versa)

• But in past few decades difference has taken over from equality

Dilemma – equality or difference?

• The socialist feminist historian Sally Alexander wrote in 1987:

• The dilemma for a feminist political strategy may be summed up in the tension between the plea for equality and the assertion of sexual difference. If the sexes are different, then how may that difference be represented throughout culture without the sex that is different becoming subordinate? (p 162)

Equality doesn’t imply denial of difference

• Differences can be made to be significant, e.g. in the way technology is designed with ‘normal’ (male) worker in mind (Cockburn)

• Need to recognise difference to achieve equal access to jobs

• Nothing follows in terms of social organisation from the biological differences between women and men (Moi)

Recognising difference

• Difference feminists (e.g. Irigaray) ask that specificity of women and their bodies be recognised

• Other feminists argue that emphasising difference legitimates discriminatory treatment

• Justifies women being treated less favourably than men

Race

• Shift away from difference being defined biologically

• Cultural difference valued

• Campaigns for equality criticised because equality implied becoming the same as ‘whites’, men, whatever

Politics of recognition

• Politics of recognition premised on recognition of and respect for significant differences between categories and groups of people.

• This sort of politics is often founded on a relativist theory of knowledge and value.

• Charles Taylor’s essay ‘Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition’ (1992)

• Response by Amy Gutman (details on reading list)

How does Bourdieu understand recognition?

• Influenced by phenomenologist Maurice Merlau-Ponty

• Franz Fanon (1967) Black Skin, White Masks• He conducted an anthropological study of

Kabyle people in North Africa in the 1960s• The development of a sense of self is fully social• We are given sense of self-respect through

others recognising and respecting us

Misrecognition

• Whole categories of people - women, black people, working class - denied respect and recognition

• Denial of recognition (misrecognition) happens systematically

• The dominant – men, white people, the bourgeoisie – have a stake in maintaining it

• Their own status is dependent on this misrecognition/abjection (Kristeva, Young)

• Symbolic violence

Distinction

• Process of claiming distinction inflicts symbolic violence on those whose cultural taste is denied recognition

• Other concepts:– Cultural capital– Habitus– Social field

Social field• Capital Volume (+)• Professions HE

teachers• Private sector executives Artistic producers• Engineers• Secondary school teachers Public sector executivesCultural Capital (+) Economic Capital (+)Economic Capital (-) Cultural

Capital (-)• Social and medical services • Cultural intermediaries• Primary teachers Technicians• Office workers• Foremen• Semi-Skilled• Capital Volume (-)

Habitus

• Embodied

• Experienced as individual, personal

• Acquired through practice

• Primary foundation for taste

• Suggests that male domination/female subordination may be written in the body

• Corporeal text of gender

Summary

• 1. Define politics of redistribution and recognition

• 2. Look at way the politics of recognition in some ways took over from the politics of redistribution within feminism

• 3. Explored Bourdieu’s approach to misrecognition and his idea of symbolic violence