Elements of a Critical Theory of Justice

Gustavo Pereira

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137263384
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The capacity to take part in dialogues and justify one's positions constitutes the normative core of critical social justice. Ensuring this capacity to every citizen is the main objective of justice, which requires transforming social structures and relations as well as counteracting the effects of capitalist dynamics.

Part I

Models of Justice and Recognition

In Part I, I provide a general presentation of Fraser’s and Honneth’s theories and a critical assessment of them. As they have made a significant contribution to the development of a critical theory of justice, they provide some bases for the development of such a theory, one that will be used in the following parts of the book.

In the first chapter I will convey, as clearly as possible, Fraser’s and Honneth’s normative approaches for the non-specialist reader. The reader familiar with these analyses can skip this general and basic presentation. I show how Fraser and Honneth intend to achieve the ideal of equality by introducing the perspective of recognition as a way to overcome the limitations characteristic of the most influential theories of justice. The selection of these approaches aims to illustrate and project the kind of theoretical matters at stake, which implies identifying a critical point of view from which to criticize social relations, social structures and social institutions and assessing the possibilities of translating these approaches into contemporary societies.

In the second chapter, I elucidate which aspects of these theories are most suitable for the development of a critical theory of justice. In this task it is important to examine the way in which each approach can explain and overcome the problems that historically have arisen from the perspectives that have been part of the justice and recognition debate. The attempt to correct the shortcomings of theories of justice and recognition in order to fulfil what is required from the perspective of equal dignity does have some risks. These are as follows: (a) an asymmetry in the consideration of justice and recognition, due to which justice, in particular distributive justice, can be presented as a mere addition to these approaches; (b) a solution to the shortcomings of theories of justice that ends up introducing, from the perspective of recognition, a comprehensive vision that can undermine individual liberties; and (c) the reliance on an anthropology that can limit the possibility of introducing a broad differentiation of contexts of justice. The evaluation of these risks in the approaches contributes to the construction of a critical theory of justice.

I.1

Justice and Recognition: Two Models

The normative potential of the idea of equal dignity makes it necessary to postulate critical social justice as a conception of justice that is capable of responding to the demands that emerge from what is traditionally associated with justice and what is traditionally associated with recognition. The best way to ensure that a person can be an agent in contemporary societies is by guaranteeing rights, resources, opportunities and access to relational contexts that provide someone with enough self-assurance to participate in the life of society. Fraser and Honneth endorse the aim of securing the individual’s agency, though their approaches interpret how to achieve this objective in different ways. Fraser’s conception of critical social justice aims to harmonize the most contemporary claims articulated by social movements, those of distribution and those of recognition, which are considered suitable means to guarantee the effective participation of a person in democratic societies. Honneth proposes a recognition model in which justice is a specific sphere, and so his theory is more comprehensive than a theory of justice and intends to ensure what recognition patterns require in order to guarantee self-realization. In this process an individual’s self-reliance is acquired, and it enables her to participate in democratic life.

To integrate justice and recognition as a way to realize the egalitarian ideal is a complex task. Although justice and recognition have different scopes in the matters that can be regulated by social institutions, there is a zone of intersection or overlapping of some matters. These two spaces, the overlapped and the autonomous, require a different treatment, which must be taken into account in order to avoid the reduction of one into the other. As Fraser’s and Honneth’s theories deal with this difficulty, they both contribute to the development of a critical theory of justice structured around the idea of equality.

Fraser’s and Honneth’s perspectives are two of the most influential within the scope of critical social justice. They propose different critical points of view, but both are intended to ensure that citizens are agents. Following are the main characteristics of their approaches.

I.1.1 Fraser’s approach

Within the field generated by the introduction of recognition in the discussion of social justice, Fraser advances a framework that widens the scope of strictly distributive issues to integrate recognition issues. In this approach she gives equal relevance to both perspectives, which she calls the paradigms of redistribution and recognition. These paradigms are not philosophical but ‘folk paradigms of justice, which inform present-day struggles in civil society’.¹ In attributing equal relevance to both paradigms, she intends to solve the problems generated when only one of these perspectives is considered.

One of Fraser’s basic assertions is that the paradigm of redistribution has been mainly supported by those liberal positions, such as those of Rawls and Dworkin, that aim to synthesize the ideal of equality and liberty. According to Fraser, these theories were focused on injustices defined in socio-economic terms – one such as economic marginalization, which is the outcome of having poor quality and poorly paid jobs and of being deprived of all the means necessary for a dignified life.

As for the paradigm of recognition, she affirms that it is of Hegelian origin and is constituted around a basic relationship in which each person perceives the other as detached from herself and at the same time as her equal, with this kind of relationship being constitutive of someone’s subjectivity. Examples of this, according to Fraser, are Taylor’s and Honneth’s positions that someone can be an individual subject only through recognizing another subject and being recognized by that other subject. From this perspective, injustices are considered in cultural terms and depend on social patterns of representation, interpretation and valuation.

Redistribution and recognition are two paradigms that in much of the contemporary discussion have rejected each other. Liberal philosophers have claimed that positions from the perspective of recognition express a substantive conception of the good, which violates the condition of equal treatment of those conceptions that liberal proceduralism aspires to guarantee. Conversely, from the perspective of recognition, liberal proceduralism is said to be blind to interpersonal differences and insensitive to the requirements to realize a subject’s identity.

These paradigms of justice express two substantially different claims; Fraser argues that these claims are irreducible and strongly interconnected. Her account of social justice consists of taking both of the aforementioned paradigms to introduce a two-dimensional analysis that can adequately explain the claims for economic justice and social equality, as well as those for the recognition of difference.

Fraser’s approach can be explained by taking a conceptual spectrum in which the logics of redistribution and recognition are situated in the extremes. It is between the extremes where the most complicated cases are located, and this is so because they can be explained by both paradigms.² Considering this approach in more detail, first, there is the extreme of redistribution, which is based on the economic structure of the society and sets an ideal-typical social division. In this case the resulting social injustices of this social division being the consequence of political economy, the keystone of injustice is socio-economic maldistribution, and any cultural injustice can ultimately be explained by the economic structure. Here, social injustice requires only a redistributive intervention in order to be repaired, regardless of the recognition received by the subjects. Class differentiation and exploitation, as Marxism has traditionally understood them, are typical examples of this kind of injustice. Repairing such injustices is necessary in order to intervene in and restructure the political economy, thus modifying the burden and benefits between the classes. According to the Marxian perspective, this restructuring will have as its ultimate consequence the abolition of class division. The only way to repair injustice is to abolish the proletariat and, as a result, cancel the recognition of its difference as a group.³

Second, at the other extreme of the conceptual spectrum there is a typical-ideal social division based on the paradigm of recognition, according to which social injustices are the consequence of the status order of society. This kind of injustice requires recognition instead of redistribution. For instance, the difference between the normative concepts of heterosexual and homosexual is distributed throughout the class structure, and the difference depends on the status order of society. Normative patterns that privilege heterosexuality permeate social interaction and appear institutionally objectified in instances such as family law. According to Fraser, the consequence is to consider ‘gays and lesbians as a despised sexuality, subject to sexually specific forms of status subordination’,⁴ which in addition implies that they suffer shame, aggression and exclusion from marriage and other rights. This is also a clear ‘injustice of misrecognition’. In addition, these injustices also have an effect in economic terms, as can be seen in the difficulty that homosexual individuals have in access to employment, or gay- or lesbian-led families’ lack of social protections to which heterosexual families are entitled. But according to the folk paradigm of recognition, these economic consequences are determined by the current relations of recognition. Therefore, the solution is to modify this kind of relationship and, as a consequence, to intervene in economic injustices. The key concept to explain misrecognition is an unfair cultural and value structure, such that recognition and not redistribution is the way to remove injustice. Equal respect for gays and lesbians will be ensured by the transformation of value patterns, providing in this way a positive recognition of their sexual particularity.

These extremes of the conceptual spectrum in Fraser’s account can be summed up as follows:

When we deal with collectivities that approach the ideal type of the exploited working class, we face distributive injustices requiring redistributive remedies. When we deal with collectivities that approach the ideal type of the despised sexuality, in contrast, we face injustices of misrecognition requiring remedies of recognition. In the first case, the logic of the remedy is to put the group out of business as a group. In the second case, on the contrary, it is to valorize the group’s ‘groupness’ by recognizing its specificity.⁵

Once we move from the extremes and the types of social division situated in the middle of the spectrum are at stake, it is possible to find hybrid forms with features of the cases mentioned above. These social divisions are what Fraser calls two-dimensional, because they are determined by the economic structure and by the status order of society, which are ultimately the elements that explain the injustices. In addition, unlike what happens at the extremes of the spectrum, such injustices cannot be explained as an indirect effect of maldistribution or misrecognition, because both distribution and recognition are primary and co-original in the explanation of injustices. The most important examples Fraser presents as two-dimensional social differentiation are gender and race, neither of which can be understood exclusively as class-like or status differentiation. As gender and race are hybrid categories, situations of social injustice determined by these categories must be explained by distribution as well as recognition.

However, Fraser goes beyond these cases and maintains that social class and gender can also be explained in two-dimensional terms. To reach this conclusion she moves from the initial idealization to the complexities that appear in the real world. It is quite obvious that class injustices are ultimately explained by the economic structure of capitalist society, but those injustices are due to maldistribution as well as misrecognition. For this reason, Fraser claims that the objective of economic transformation demands a questioning of cultural attitudes of contempt for the poor and working people. As such, it is necessary to complement a politics of distribution with one of recognition, which would allow for the emergence of a new self-understanding of the affected people based on an increase in their self-reliance.

The same happens with sexuality. Though heterosexual injustice is ultimately explained by the status order, the consequences of such injustices involve economic harm as a by-product of the status differences. So the objective of transforming the sex status order of society may require fighting against economic inequality. In confronting the requirements of the real world, Fraser concludes that ‘virtually all real-world axes of subordination can be treated as two-dimensional. Virtually all implicate both maldistribution and misrecognition in forms where each of those injustices has some independent weight, whatever their ultimate roots’.⁶ The normative criterion Fraser uses to guide the intervention of her two-dimensional model in reality is participatory parity. It requires social arrangements that allow each member of society to interact with others and to participate in social life under egalitarian terms. In turn, this requires complying with two conditions. The first, the objective condition, consists of the distribution of material resources oriented to ensure the independence and voice of all participants. The second, the intersubjective condition, requires that the institutionalized patterns of cultural value express the same respect for all participants, ensuring equality of opportunities to achieve social esteem. Both are conditions of possibility for participatory parity.

Participatory parity permits an evaluation of the claims for justice, by distinguishing the justified claims from those not justified, and an evaluation of the feasible solutions demanded by the claims for justice or recognition. In addition, Fraser argues that participatory parity operates at intergroup and intragroup levels. In the first, it provides the normative standard to assess how the institutionalized patterns of cultural value affect ‘the relative standing of minorities vis-à-vis majorities’. In the second, the participatory parity ‘serves to assess the internal effects of minority practices for which recognition is claimed’.⁷ That this requirement pair always operates as one implies that the claimants must demonstrate, on the one hand, that the institutionalization of the norms of the cultural majority deprives them of participatory parity and, on the other hand, that the claimed practices of recognition do not deny participatory parity to members or non-members of the group. The application of this criterion demands a background of strong public discussion because the requirements for participatory parity can be accomplished only dialogically. According to Fraser, participatory parity works as a means of discussion and public deliberation about matters of justice.

Fraser’s original two-dimensional approach was transformed in her book Scales of Justice. As a consequence of her reinterpretation of the participatory parity, she integrates a third dimension, politics, because it is quite clear that there can be political obstacles to the exercise of parity which cannot be reduced to maldistribution or misrecognition, though they are intertwined with both possible situations.⁸ This sort of obstacle results from a certain type of social organization, which is political and can only be adequately understood by a theory capable of explaining representation, in addition to distribution and recognition. In this way her two-dimensional approach becomes three-dimensional.

For Fraser, political exclusion is a consequence of a matter of framing – or rather of misframing – justice, which establishes a demarcation of the universe of what is considered part of the community in matters of distribution, recognition and political representation. This raises issues of local and global exclusion. Fraser focuses on the latter as a consequence of the increasing blurring of the figure of the nation state, which highlights injustices that demand a reframing in terms of global justice. Her position leads to a democratic justice that goes beyond the nation state, in which framing issues will be defined in dialogical terms by those affected. She arrives at this position from the standpoint of the participatory parity criterion of justice, since political exclusion represents a blockage for its performance.⁹

To conclude this initial presentation I must emphasize that one of the most significant contributions of Fraser’s approach is that it gives equal importance to distribution and recognition when resolving issues of social justice while also embracing the political with a similar status. She has also given analytical and empirical content...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I   Models of Justice and Recognition
• Part II   Foundations for a Critical Theory of Justice and Reciprocal Recognition Autonomy
• Part III   Scope, Metrics and Principles of Justice
• Part IV   Democratic Ethical Life and Its Promotion
• Notes
• Index