Social Recognition and Non-Domination

Abstract

Social freedom satisfies Dilthey’s concern for freedom, meaning that individuals can express themselves according to their individual character, requiring a range of possible responses and choices within a concrete situation (Ermarth 1978: 121). However, as cultural practices are normatively contesting and contestable, multicultural social justice requires that cultural practices be given recognition, not pre-emptively but through deliberation, treating citizens as being of equal status. As Honohan puts it, ‘[l]iberals and others agree that justice requires equal “respect” for all citizens, but they disagree on what is meant by and required by respect’ (2002: 252). In this chapter, I shall show that non-domination and social recognition are the minimal and common conditions, and that they are complementary and rooted in the normative basis of self-respect that enables us to invoke the ‘egalitarian reciprocity’ of treating one another as citizens of equal status. This is conducive to deliberation on claims for intercultural justice and recognition rather than claiming respect for ‘culture’ in advance, as many multiculturalists demand. However, we need to determine how we should understand social recognition without reifying identity and culture, and this chapter sets out to do that.