From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Postsocialist” Age

Cultural domination supplants exploitation as the fundamental injustice. And cultural recognition displaces Socioeconomic redistribution as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle. The point holds for recognition remedies more generally. Whereas affirmative recognition remedies tend to promote existing group differentiations, transformative recognition remedies tend, in the long run, to destabilize them so as to make room for future regroupments. Like affirmative redistribution, transformative redistribution generally presupposes a universalist conception of recognition, the equal moral worth of persons. Affirmative redistribution can stigmatize the disadvantaged, adding the insult of…