Recognition going awry

ngos and the global rise of the unelected

Volker Heins

pp. 199-219

in: Christopher Daase, Caroline Fehl, Anna Geis, Georgios Kolliarakis (eds), Recognition in international relations, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

There is a growing consensus that the key to social and global justice is to overcome the sense of powerlessness and the lack of self-respect that prevails among impoverished, marginalized, and oppressed populations. As political theorist John Rawls puts it, self-respect is a "primary good" whose production depends on the make-up of basic social and political institutions. More precisely, justice is the name of behaviours that form the 'social bases of self-respect" (1993, p. 319). Like Rawls's liberal theory of justice, neo-Hegelian theories of recognition emphasize the centrality of mutual respect and esteem in the development of human relations and identities (Honneth, 1995; Ikäheimo, 2014; Ricoeur, 2005; Taylor, 1994). The core notion underpinning theories of recognition is that human autonomy and agency are not givens, but are the result of a continuous and dynamic process of mutual recognition between persons and groups. Recognition is about constituting and performing inclusion, actorness, and membership. To be recognized as a legitimate actor and a full member of society implies more than simply having legal rights. In modern societies, there is a wide range of social relations based on respect, esteem, and affection, which, taken together, constitute "the opposite of practices of domination or subjection" (Honneth 2007b, p. 325; Honneth, 2014).

Cited authors

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Ricoeur Paul

Rawls John