Property, Justice, and Global Society

Abstract

The concept of property is notable for its absence from the theory and politics of recognition. This has become particularly striking in the more recent debate about the balance to be struck between ‘recognition’ and ‘redistribution’ as competing or overlapping principles of justice (Fraser and Honneth, 2003). If Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, the two adversaries in this debate, had been aware of the role of property in modern society, they would have been forced to conclude that property is both things: it is the object and target of redistributive policies; at the same time, it is protected by rights and deeply intertwined with demands for recognition. Property is an economic institution which is shot through with moral expectations. As such, it sits at the point of intersection between struggles for recognition and struggles for redistribution. A further factor is that the concept of property is hard to pin down. This gives rise to a twofold task. On the one hand, it is essential to clarify the role of property in the politics of recognition; on the other hand, the concept itself must be defined with greater precision.