8 - Rethinking Recognition: What Are the Implications for Identity Governance?

Summary

This book argues for the need to closely examine recognition theories and politics in light of social facts. After digging into the very detailed empirics of recognition conflicts, it is now time to go back to the analytical and theoretical frameworks spelled out at the beginning of the book, and to consider the implications of my findings for broader debates on ethnic diversity and social justice. This concluding chapter makes three main contributions. The first is to summarise the main findings about recognition conflicts and how these can contribute to building bridges across the rigid continental divide that characterises recognition and ethnic conflict scholarship. I then discuss how the empirical evidence should encourage new thinking around the way in which recognition is theorised as a justice principle. Finally, I offer some recommendations on how to incorporate the book’s findings into a policy agenda, or how to tackle these empirical and normative puzzles through concrete action and policy measures. In sum, I argue that the ‘costs’ and seeds of conflict linked to recognition politics should be addressed not by eliminating or curtailing recognition but, on the contrary, by ‘levelling up’ the recognition field so that more social groups can have access to it, and by implementing mitigation strategies that would reduce the ‘side effects’ of recognition on conflict and inequality.