Recognition or redistribution?: Changing perspectives on the moral order of society. Theory, Culture and Society

ANYONE WHO has been following developments in political philos-ophy over the last few years could not have failed to notice the emer-gence of one of those processes in theorizing in which conceptual changes go hand in hand with changes in normative orientation. Well into the late 1980s, the dominance of Marxism in Europe, and the widespread influence of Rawls in the USA, ensured that there could be no doubt as to the guiding principle of a normative theory of the political order. Irrespec-tive of differences in the detail, they were in agreement on the imperative to remove any form of social or economic inequality that could not be justified on rational grounds. In place of this influential idea of justice, which can be seen in political terms as a manifestation of the era of social democracy, there seems to have arisen a novel idea, that, initially, seems politically a good deal less unequiv-ocal. Its normative aim no longer appears to be the elimination of inequal-ity, but the avoidance of degradation and disrespect; its core categories are no longer ‘equal distribution ’ or ‘economic equality’, but ‘dignity ’ and ‘respect’. Nancy Fraser provided a succinct formula, when she referred to this transition as one from ‘redistribution ’ to ‘recognition’. While the former concept is tied to a vision of justice, which aims to achieve social equality through a redistribution of the material necessities for an existence as free subjects, in the latter concept, the conditions for a just society come to be defined as the recognition of the personal dignity of all individuals (Fraser