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9 - Recognition

from Part I - Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2025

By
Helder De Schutter
Edited by
Richard Bellamy  and
Jeff King
Richard Bellamy
Affiliation:
University College London
Jeff King
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

The witholding of equal public recognition of national, cultural and language identity often causes severe anguish to sub-state peoples and sometimes leads to war. For this reason, political philosophy has an important responsibility to think through the moral grounds and the appropriate means of recognition. This chapter draws a moral map of the recognitional debate, outlining three normative camps: nonrecognition, monorecognition, and recognitional pluralism. I argue for recognitional pluralism, in two steps. The first step establishes, contra nonrecognition, that nations, cultures and languages are recognition-worthy, and that this is so for two reasons: they give people access to cultural life-worlds, and they are sources of dignity. The second step builds the case for a pluralistic means of according public recognition. To do so, I argue, against monorecognition, that egalitarian recognition of life-world access and dignity is to be the driving principle. Within the pluralist camp, I argue for the principle of equal services, which implies that the state accords comparable cultural services to the cultural groups that share a state or territory. Examples of this can be found in equal language rights regimes, egalitarian public holiday systems, as well as in multinational federalism.

Keywords

recognitionpluralismmulticulturalismcultural rightslanguage rightsmisrecognitionfederalismdignitylife-world
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory , pp. 136 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Recommended Reading

De Schutter, H. (2011). Federalism as fairness, The Journal of Political Philosophy 19(2), 167–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Schutter, H. (2014). Testing for Linguistic Injustice: territoriality and pluralism. Nationalities Papers, 42:6, 1034–1052.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Schutter, H. (2017). Two principles of equal language recognition. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20:1, 75–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Schutter, H. (2020). Intralinguistic Justice. In Peled, Y. and Weinstock, D. (eds.) Language Ethics. McGill University Press, 146–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, N. & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or Recognition? A Political- Philosophical Exchange, London: Verso.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1994). Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State. In Gutmann, A., ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 107–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honneth, A. (1995). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge: Polity Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machiavelli, N. (2005). ‘A Discourse or Dialogue Concerning Our Language’ (ed. and tr. Landon, W. J.), In. Landon, W. J., Politics, Patriotism, and Language : Niccolò Machiavelli’s “secular patria” and the Creation of an Italian National Identity. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 129–142.Google Scholar
Markell, P. (2003). Bound by Recognition, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Okin, S. M. (1999). Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Edited by Cohen, J., Howard, J. and Nussbaum, M.. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Patten, A. (2014). Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Philips, A. (2007). Multiculturalism without Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tamir, Y. (2019). Why Nationalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1994). The Politics of Recognition. In Gutmann, A., ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 25–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tully, J. (1995). Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

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