Nancy Fraser seeks to
schematize two types of demands for justice, redistribution and recognition,
and two forms of political demands affirmative and transformative. She develops
this scheme in order to highlight a dilemma she sees in the two types:
redistribution requires the elimination of group difference, and recognition
requires the maintenance of that difference. Redistribution produces political and
economic changes that result in greater economic equality. Recognition redresses
the harms of disrespect, stereotyping and cultural imperialism. Similarly,
affirmative demands maintain the underlying structures that cause group
differentiation while transformative demands radically pluralize the field of
norms such that we have many more groups than before. Fraser articulates these
schemes as an attempt to re-center theories of justice on the needs of economic
transformation, which she sees as lost in current focuses on cultural
recognition. She argues that race and gender based movements are most
susceptible to these contradictions because they include both demands for
redistribution and recognition.
However, Iris Young criticizes
Fraser stating, “Her dichotomy between political economy and culture leads her
to misrepresent feminist, anti-racist and gay liberation movements as calling
for recognition as an end in itself, when they are better understood as
conceiving cultural recognition as a means to economic and political justice.”
(Young 148) In other words, while redistribution and recognition are both pursued
by the social movements, often recognition is used as a means of
redistribution. Young also mentions that Fraser’s dilemma is due to her use of
two arbitrary poles for justice claims.
I tend to believe that Young
is unfairly criticizing Fraser, and being a little short-sighted. First, her
main criticism involves using a dichotomy to polarize her justice claims.
However, Young uses only 5 forms of oppression, to express all different types
of oppression. Additionally, simply eliminating these forms of oppression, most
likely won’t produce justice in and of itself. Fraser uses these two types of
demands for justice as a scale to situate where the goals of the movement lay.
Young claims that the goal
of recognition movements is only to receive redistribution. However, she fails
to consider the reverse. It is a possibility that groups pursue redistribution
schemes because the groups feel that is their only way of receiving
recognition. Then, once that recognition is established, a change in the
environment is more likely. The African-American Civil Rights Movement of the
1960s took this path. Once these political and economic policies were pursued,
the marginalized group received recognition. Fast-forward 40 years later, many
of the same stereotypes, disrespect, and preconception do not occur. What is
interesting is that Young doesn’t criticize the related
affirmative/transformative model. This model is simply the result of pursuing
redistribution/recognition. In simpler terms, we use recognition with the hope
of transforming the social environment, and we use redistribution with the goal
of establishing political and economic policies. Both of these models represent
a valid method of scaling the type of pursuit, as well as the goals (end
result) of social movements.
References:
Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition?” in Justice Interruptus, pp 11-39
Iris Marion Young, “Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory,” New Left Review 222 (March-April 1997)
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