All posts by Särkelä Arvi-Antti

Good, Evil and Successful Recognition. A Processualist View on Recognitive Attitudes, Relations and Norms

 

 

“The identity of the idea with itself is one with the process 

(Hegel, The Science of Logic) [1]

 

I

 

In discussions about recognition today, one stumbles almost instantly on a widespread consensus about a distinction between two kinds of theory of recognition. Constructed as tracing back from Butler to Althusser, the first or the so-called “pessimistic” one, understands recognition as intrinsically problematic, whereas the other, referred to as the Taylorian or Honnethian, “optimistic” one is constructed as regarding (proper) recognition as good. Now, in such an ambivalent situation, a desirable outcome might be a theory of recognition that places the problems of recognition at its very core, while giving even more reason for optimism than the optimistic one. The prospects for such an account seem not very promising. But the reasons for trying are good.

 

As a matter of fact, I believe there to be two stories of recognition intending precisely this. The first of these stories is told by Hegel in the section on “Conscience, the Beautiful Soul, Evil and Its Forgiveness” in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Whereas Hegel is widely acknowledged as the founding father of theories of recognition, the author of my second story, John Dewey, has not been considered as a recognition theorist nearly at all. Yet, whenever he is attempting to elaborate his social philosophical perspective systematically, Dewey is relying on, what I argue to be, a recognition-theoretical conception of a “general pattern of social conflicts,” which is, I believe, of great relevance for the systematic recognition-theoretical efforts of today (cf. Dewey 1939 and 1973; Dewey & Tufts 1932, Part III). 

 

Here I will not be able to give enough textual evidence of the hermeneutic work that my reflections are based on. Hence I will confine myself to highlighting some of the conceptual consequences that I believe to result from a close reading of these two stories. My hunch is that by drawing attention to the conception of recognition in play in the section of “Evil and Its Forgiveness” and interpreting Dewey as essentially trying to further develop what Hegel is saying there, marks a shift in ontological implications and commitments of talking about problems of recognition. This is shift is a transition from basically action-theoretic, relational or institutional conceptions of recognition to a processual conception. The “processual view” I am proposing claims further to be able to include, or to speak Hegelian, to determinately negate, the earlier ones. The claim is, thus, to present the ambivalence of recognition not merely as a moment but also as a phase. But before I tell Hegel’s and Dewey’s stories, some pre-considerations are needed.

 

Firstly, it is important to note that the selection of precisely these two texts for considering problems of recognition is all but arbitrary from a systematic point of view. “Evil and Its Forgiveness” is the closing section of the chapter on “Spirit” in Hegel’s Phenomenology; and as such, it marks a significant achievement for the experiencing consciousness. On the phenomenological “path of despair,” this specific struggle for recognition presents, namely, the first successful “experience of consciousness.” It results in a standpoint that is not to be sublated as falsely one-sided in the following chapter. As the end of the movement of spirit and as the result of the successful movement of recognition, it forms the conceptual emergence of the inclusive standpoint that Hegel calls “absolute spirit.” Since this success is presented in recognitive terms, it also gives us an account of what successful recognition or even successful struggling for recognition might be. Therefore, one might even argue this to be the most convenient section in Hegel’s work for clarifying ambivalences of recognition.

 

Surprisingly, this applies in a way to Dewey’s version of the struggle for recognition as well. Dewey, namely, understands his social philosophy as a systematic attempt to aid in the resolution of social conflicts (cf. Dewey 1973, pp. 45-53; Dewey and Tufts 1932, Ch. 16). Social conflicts are, according to Dewey, based on problems of public of recognition between social groups (cf. ibid. 1973, pp. 72-81). Now, for the experimentalist social philosopher, the task is to reconstruct the one-sided conceptions and “ideologies” arising in such conflicts and pathologically blocking their resolution. Thereby the experimentalist claims to be able to work out a more inclusive social-philosophical standpoint, which is reached not in a deliberate conception of absolute spirit, but in a theory of the democratic public become “in-and-for-itself.” Dewey’s version of the movement of recognition presents as such the “general guiding principles” for social-philosophical reconstruction (Dewey 1973, p 64). Thus, for both Dewey and Hegel, the recognition-theoretical accounts considered here are attempts to offer an inclusive standpoint, from which to overcome one-sided perspectives that block a process of successful recognition.

 

Secondly, there is much to recognition that is already worked out at this point of argument forming its background. “Evil and Its Forgiveness” presents the last movement of recognition in the Phenomenology, and thus, according to the method of the “logic of experience,” it preserves what was true and negates what was false in the conceptions of recognition at play in earlier conflicts. As such it offers richer accounts of both the nature of recognitive problems as well as of the grammar of their resolution. The two most important lessons to keep in mind, I think, are those of the experiences of mastery and servitude (a) and reason (b):

 

  1. Firstly, the essential lesson to be learned from the recognitive failures of mastery and servitude, namely, is the concept of spirit as it emerges “for us,” according to which, among many other things, recognition cannot be understood as a one-sided act, but as a dialogical complex of mutual attitudes. A mere recognitive attitude of one party towards another does not suffice to constitute a relation of recognition. On the contrary, according to a dialogical conception of proper recognition, it takes the attitudes of both parties. In other words, in order for a recognitive relation between two persons or groups of persons to succeed, one group’s recognitive attitude towards the other group must be recognized by this other group as relevant.[2]
  2. The “abstract” relations and principles of recognition presented in the chapter on “Reason” result in the concept of an ethos (Sittlichkeit), according to which such dialogical complexes of mutual attitudes must be understood to be institutionally embedded as practices or habitualized as coventions if they are to actualize freedom. Recognition-theoretically elaborated institutions are not, at best, to be understood as external “necessary conditions of the possibility” of freedom. On the contrary, they present an internal moment of the concept of freedom itself.[3]  

 

Now, the question is, what is the lesson about recognizing in which the chapter on “Spirit” results? My suggestion is that “Evil and Its Forgiveness” gives reason to understand recognition not merely dialogically and institutionally but also processually. I read it as making explicit the processuality of recognizing implicit at all earlier stages of recognition in the Phenomenology. Such an interpretation is not only saying that it “makes a difference” whether one is speaking of recognition in terms of a relation or a process.[4] Rather, I think Hegel is putting forward the more robust claim that one ought to understand recognitive relations and institutions as functional distinction within a processual totality.

 

II

 

Both Dewey and Hegel reconstruct the process of a struggle for recognition, firstly, from the perspective of the parties involved, their self-conceptions and their conceptions of the other. Secondly, they present it from the external perspective of the social philosopher observing the development of the one-sided conceptions and working out a more inclusive one. Contrary to earlier shapes in the Phenomenology, in the case of “Evil and Its Forgiveness” these two methodological tracks of “for consciousness” and “for us” coincide at the end. Furthermore, Hegel and Dewey both distinguish three phases of such a process.

 

The first phase Hegel (1977, §§ 632-654) calls “conscience” and Dewey (1973, p. 77) “the period of tacit acceptance of the status quo”: Here consciousness regards “duty” as a recognitive norm claiming universal validity. “Pure duty” is a universal form that can be applied to any relation of recognition as its content. Consciousness has immediate awareness of manifold concrete duties; that is to say, it has habitualized generally acknowledged reciprocal treatments and corresponding attitudes. Confronted with this multitude of recognitive norms, consciousness might find them conflicting or else ambivalent. How can consciousness choose between conflicting duties let alone formulate new ones? As an immediate certainty of duty, the only ground consciousness can fall back on is its own conviction of the good, that is, in Hegel’s terminology, it becomes “conscience.”

 

The second phase is characterized in Hegel (1977, §§ 655-666) by the attitudes of “evil,” “the beautiful soul” and “the hard heart”; Dewey (1973, pp. 77-8) calls it the phase of “challenge.” Acting on such conscientious decisions can, obviously, either succeed or fail: If all goes well, the act as a public expression of a conviction of the good is acknowledged as in accordance with the publicly effective conception of the good. This might, however, as well, not be the case: The success of such conscientious decisions is arbitrary. Thus, in case of failure, there occurs a diremption into two consciences. The first of is a conscience acting according to recognitive norms justified by its own conviction of the good, the second a conscience judging in accordance with effective recognitive norms and the publicly acknowledged conception of the good.

 

As learnt from the lesson of mastery and servitude, recognitive conflicts are characterized by “Doppelsinnigkeit,[5] meaning, firstly, that whatever happens on the one side of the recognitive relation has immediate consequences on the other and, secondly, that the relata will both identify with and negate each other as well as themselves (Hegel 1977, § 183).

 

Now, the acting party first negates what it sees as the false consciousness of the public judging it. It thereby also negates itself as the acting party by withdrawing from public expression in the “dread of besmirching the splendour of its inner being by action” (ibid., § 658). The attitude of such pathological withdrawal from any attempt at resolving concrete recognitive problems at hand, Hegel calls “the beautiful soul” (ibid.).

 

The publicly judging party, on the other hand, responds by judging the beautiful soul as “evil.” Since, in placing its own inner law of conscience above the acknowledged universal, acting conscience is, in fact, evil, as the concept has widely been conceived since Kant. Hegel and Dewey, however, give the concept of evil a recognition-theoretical push by conceiving it as the intentional “singularizing” (Hegel 2007, p. 206) or “isolation” (Dewey 1929, p. 245) of oneself in a recognitive process.

 

Now, it is precisely on the basis of this judgment that the acting party can identify itself with the party of the judging public. In denouncing the acting party as evil, the party of the acknowledged universal is, in fact, itself appealing to its own particular law, which, since the other party’s withdrawal of its acknowledgement, is no longer an acknowledged universal. It thereby presents itself as exactly as evil, negates itself and legitimizes the self-isolation of the acting party by placing itself alongside the latter. By experiencing the evil of the judging party, the acting party identifies itself with the former. In an attempt at a one-sided recognition, it admits to its being evil and expects mutuality. The judging party, however, rejects this attempt at public reconciliation and, thus, it, in turn, becomes a “beautiful soul” and makes the experience of evil corresponding to the one made earlier by the acting party.

 

The third phase, entitled “forgiveness” by Hegel and “fruition” by Dewey, marks a transition that for us observing philosophers seems like a necessity, but for experiencing consciousness requires a moral self-transcendence: Having made the corresponding experience and seen the evil consequences of its particular conception of the good, the judging party is able to identify itself with the acting party. In a mutual attempt at coming to terms with the recognitive problem, the judging party surrenders its one-sidedly particular conception of the good like the acting party puts aside its one-sidedly singular conception. Together they are able to cooperatively resolve the recognitive problem at hand by formulating a new conception of the good, which is not anymore “abstractly universal,” but a concrete universal as including the singularity of conscientious deliberation (as represented by the acting party), the particularity of concrete historical situatedness (as represented by the judging party) and the universality of the law formulated in mutual public recognition.

 

I am inclined to infer that this kind of cooperative public constitution of concrete universality might be labeled “successful recognition.” Such public recognition comes with an insight into the fallibility of one’s singular and particular judgment. Such a recognitive attitude Hegel calls “forgiveness.” Dewey (1973, p. 80) calls it an “attitude of inquiry,” with a clear reference to the recognitive struggle’s being a process of social problem resolution. It involves an openness and willingness to cope with recognitive problems cooperatively and, correspondingly, as Dewey (ibid., p. 76) puts it,  “to be recognized as an operating component of the larger society.”

 

To Dewey, this sequential unity of the three phases of a struggle for public recognition forms a general pattern of social conflicts, repeatable on ever-higher levels. Concrete universality as its result is not to be understood as merely an achievement or a state, but as an ongoing process of social reconstruction (Dewey 1929, p. 151). Cooperative democracy is this pattern made reflexive by institutionalizing and habituating the recognitive attitude of inquiry. Therefore Dewey does in no way regard evil as a necessary stage of all social conflicts.

 

III

 

I would like to conclude by briefly indicating how such a processualist approach to struggles for recognition might include some of the central recognition-theoretical concepts such as recognitive relations and attitudes (a), norms (b) and values (c). The challenge is to present them as functional distinctions within this process.

 

(a) Such an account distinguishes, obviously, between unproblematic and problematic relations of recognition. Furthermore, both problematic and unproblematic recognitive relations seem to come in two kinds. Firstly, recognitive relations can be unproblematic in the sense of being indeterminate; that is to say, constituted by immediate, habituated everyday attitudes and not being claimed by anyone as problematic. Secondly, recognitive relations can be seen as unproblematic in the sense of being determinate; that is to say, achieved through struggle and constituted by attitudes creatively habituated as a kind of mediated immediacy.

 

There seems to be two types of problematic relations of recognition as well. Firstly a recognitive relation and habitual attitude can become thematized as problematic, because it is experienced as involving domination or wronging or else as bad. These are the kind of claims that mediate between the first and the second phase. Secondly, recognitive attitudes can be seen as problematic in the sense of Hegel’s concepts of “the beautiful soul” and “the hard heart.” Both authors consider such highly problematic attitudes as evil. They might occur in the second phase as the intentional withdrawal from any attempt at cooperative problem resolution.

 

(b) Such a processualist approach regards social norms as means of an enduring direction of recognitive relations. The kind of processual account, I have been reconstructing, presents struggles for recognition as responsive to pre-existing norms in the sense of reacting to failed norms or practices. The struggle for public recognition originates in a disintegrated situation of a community where recognitive norms are experienced as ambivalent and are unmasked as containing relations of domination or wronging. But precisely this negative response to pre-existing norms in the second phase seems to indicate a generation of new recognitive norms. As such, the struggle for public recognition is also generative of norms in the sense of being creative of new ones as intended to resolve the problems of the old ones and bypass the relations of domination or wronging in them. Thus, this approach understands successful recognition processually as mediating between norms-become-problematic and emancipating norms-in-view.

 

It might be worth noting, at this point, that the processualist approach could claim to be able to integrate multidimensional theories of recognition, such as those presented by Charles Taylor (cf. 1992) and Axel Honneth (cf. 2011), as accounts of unproblematic recognition. There seems to me to be good reasons for the processualist to distinguish between diverse dimensions of unproblematic recognition, such as, for instance, being correctly treated according to the best available conceptions of ones particularity, singularity and universality or as being esteemed, loved and respected.

 

(c) As mediating between problematic and unproblematic recognitive attitudes, relations and norms, the struggle for public recognition, furthermore, presents a process of collective valuation, since it marks the formation of new values and projection of them on future recognitive relations. The struggle for public recognition begins in an indeterminate situation characterized by the need of a novel direction of certain relations of recognition. As a consequence the acting party attributes a negative value to the kind of direction of recognitive relations effective, whereas the judging party values it positively. New values emerge, according to Dewey, always as simultaneously negations of existing conditions and affirmation of an intended future situation. As such, values constitute conceptions of good or better direction of recognitive relations. Thus, they seem to give participants reasons how to treat each other. Such reasons constitute norms of recognition, and if followed, they can become social institutions.  

 

Therefore the processualist recognition-theorist seems to be a representative of the branch of value-based recognition theories (cf. Laitinen 2002). According to this branch, values give persons reasons for ways of mutual treatment and such ways can be understood as social norms. This does, however, not commit the processualist to any kind of strong value realism, since he regards values as essentially transitional entities: A novel direction of recognitive relations has “value” according to its resolving a problematic relation of recognition. Or better: Recognitive norms have “value” in so far as they emancipate.

 

A recognitive problem counts, namely, as resolved, if the relata of the recognitive relation and the participants of the recognitive process can act freely. Thus, freedom counts as a kind of ultimate value in the processual account. What freedom in any single case means in concrete, is left relatively open and “problem specific.” But anyhow, every resolution of a problem gives a sense of being at home in the world.

 

 

References

 

Brandom, Robert (2002), Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

 

Dewey, John (1929), The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action, in: John Dewey, The Later Works, Vol. 4, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.

 

Dewey, John (1939), Freedom and Culture, in: John Dewey, The Later Works, Vol. 13, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.

 

Dewey, John (1973), Lectures in China, 1919-1920, Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.

 

Dewey, John and James H. Tufts (1932), Ethics, in: John Dewey, The Later Works, Vol. 7, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.

 

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (2007), Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume III, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Honneth, Axel (2011), Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit, Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.

 

Ikäheimo, Heikki and Arto Laitinen (2007), “Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement, and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons,” in: van den Brink and Owen (eds), Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press.

 

Laitinen, Arto (2002), “Interpersonal Recognition: A Response to Value or a Precondition of Personhood?”, in: Inquiry, vol. 45, no. 4.

 

Taylor, Charles (1992), “The Politics of Recognition,” in: Amy Gutman (ed.), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, Princeton: Princeton University Press.



 

Notes

 

[1] I am grateful to Federica Gregoratto and Arto Laitinen for critical comments and helpful remarks most of which I wish I had been able to elaborate further in this paper.

[2] I read Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen (2007) as putting forward such a dialogical conception of recognition in the contemporary debate.

[3] I read Axel Honneth (2011, Part A, Ch. III) as proposing an institutional conception of recognition somewhat in accordance with this move in the Phenomenology, although he is implementing a very different strategy than the phenomenological one to overcome the conventionalist difficulties of a Sittlichkeitslehre.

[4] I read Robert Brandom (2002, Ch. 7) as suggesting this ”less robust” thesis about processuality.

[5] A.V. Miller (Hegel 1977, § 112) translates ”Doppelsinnigkeit” as ”double significance.”

Where Categorizations of Self and Others Meet. Some Remarks on Erik Allardt’s Theory of Struggles for Recognition between Ethnic Groups

The title of my paper is meant to express what recognition is all about from an Allardtian point of view.[1] In his 1979 book on Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern, Industrialized Society, the sociologist Erik Allardt understands recognition as the process, in which self-categorizations and categorization delivered by relevant others are reconciled (or at least coincide) (Allardt 1979). The subtitle in turn claims two things: firstly, that Allardt indeed does have a theory about struggles for recognition between ethnic groups – a fact that few if any scholars working on recognition have noted. Secondly, that I will deliver some remarks on this circumstance. Allardt has not presented this theory anywhere in great detail, and I will be able to present here a theory about Allardt’s theory to an even lesser degree.  My paper will therefore have the character of some remarks on what I see as the key points underlying Allardt’s approach to recognition as he has presented it in the afore mentioned book on ethnicity.

In a first step, I present the outlines of the Allardtian conception by highlighting five central aspects to it. I argue that Allardt proposes a dialogical, processual, classificatory and maybe even hermeneutical conception of recognition, which furthermore foresees some of the critique that has been directed against contemporary accounts of recognition. Secondly, I very briefly sketch out his typology of different ethnic conflicts of recognition as well as his analysis of the ethnic conflicts of post-1968 Europe in order to underscore the diagnostic power of the Allardtian recognition-theoretical vocabulary. Finally, I will briefly note how Allardt tries to justify his conception of ethnicity recognition-theoretically and developmentally.

I

Before I dwell more systematically into his use of the concept of recognition, I wish to point out a couple peculiarities about Allardt’s book. It is namely important to note that Allardt is a sociologist in a classical Nordic sense: He is not mainly a grand social theorist with a fine taste for abstract philosophical disputes, but an empirically oriented social researcher setting out pragmatically to work out some problems of social science. This concerns Allardt’s approach to recognition as well, and it prepares two difficulties for the contemporary philosophical reader:

Firstly, this empirical approach to recognition, although it at a first glance might seem attractive due to the very theoretical nature of the contemporary recognition discourse in philosophy, makes it hard to see from where Allardt derives his conception of recognition. Allardt himself does not give any clue at all about the sources for his use of the concept. In his book, there is not a single reference to any work, in which the concept of recognition would be elaborated systematically. It seems farfetched to assume a direct Hegelian origin here. Rather, one might speculate about Mead, Parsons or Bourdieu as social-theoretical sources, although Allardt’s conception does not really resemble any of those options.

Secondly, with an overly empirical approach there necessarily arises the question about the theoretical and conceptual validity of the empirical work done. The empirical data as well as the analysis in Allardt’s book are restricted to the linguistic, territorial minorities in Western Europe. Nevertheless, Allardt hopes that “the results and the theoretical discussion will… throw some light on the impact of ethnicity generally and on the political mobilization in terms of ethnic characteristics other than language such as race, culture, and perhaps even religion” (Allardt 1979, p. 9). In today’s Western Europe this restriction to linguistic minorities would obviously be highly problematic, since many parties of significant ethnic conflicts do not constitute linguistic groups and many linguistic groups do not regard themselves as ethnic groups. Allardt, himself a Finland Swede, treats the Swedish speaking Finns as an ethnic group, even if, according to Svenska Finlands Folkting (2005), a vast majority of the Finland Swedes do not regard themselves as an ethnic group, but as a cultural and linguistic minority among the Finns. This treatment seems even stranger considering that according to the conception of ethnicity Allardt wishes to defend in his book, it is constitutive for an ethnic group that “some significant part of it desires to be categorized… as a distinct ethnic entity” (Allardt 1979, p. 10).

These two circumstances make it somewhat difficult to reconstruct the Allardtian theory of recognition philosophically. Accordingly my reconstruction will not consist in a close reading of what is manifest in Allardt’s book. Instead, much of what I will be saying in this paper is to be understood as a conceptual explication of what is philosophically implicit in Allardt’s very empirical approach to the study of struggles for recognition. The shady side of such a procedure is, of course, the distance it creates between the interpretation and the text. The advantage, however, is that the outlines of a not yet considered account may appear before our interpreting eyes and enrich our understanding.

Allardt distinguishes first of all between two different kinds of recognitive relations that may be of relevance for the sociology of ethnicity. First, there is what Allardt calls relations of recognition within ethnic groups: Persons are recognized as members of an ethnic group by other members of the same ethnic group. To Allardt this kind of ethnic recognition is relevant for theories of processes of ethnic identity formation. Allardt’s book, however, does not claim to contain any such theory. Therefore Allardt turns his interest to the second kind of recognitive relation relevant for the sociology of ethnicity: The subject matter of a theory of ethnic conflicts is according to Allardt reducible to the study of recognitive relations between ethnic groups. Allardt’s study is concerned with asymmetrical relations between dominant and dominated ethnic groups (paradigmatically between majorities and minorities). This is the dimension in Allardt, which is of utmost interest and will be exposed further in this paper.

In the following I present in five steps the Allardtian conception of recognition by highlighting five important aspects of his use of it:

1. Allardt’s conception of recognition is, first of all, dialogical. It has become a common place in political theory to refer to any political action concerned with difference or identity as struggle for recognition. In these accounts, recognition is often regarded as a “monological” act directed at persons or groups. Recognition is in such theories conceived monologically since the attitudes, values etc. of the recognizee do not have any effect on the recognitive act of the recognizer.

According to Allardt, by contrast, ethnicity becomes politically salient and sociologically relevant in the moment when ethnic self-categorizations and external categorizations conflict (Allardt 1979, p. 32). This is a case of ethnic misrecognition. At this point, it is for us important to note merely the fact that in Allardtian ethnic conflicts both the dominated and the dominant group claim recognition. Allardt seems to conceive relations of recognition in a manner anticipating what Ikäheimo and Laitinen later have called a “two way complex of recognitive attitudes” (Ikäheimo & Laitinen 2007, 38), meaning that a mere recognitive attitude of one person or group towards another does not suffice to constitute a relation of recognition. On the contrary, according to a dialogical conception of recognition, it takes the attitudes of both parties to constitute a relation of recognition. In other words, in order for a recognitive relation to exist between two groups, one group’s recognitive attitude towards the other group must be recognized by this other group as relevant. The basic structure of recognition in Allardt can thus, at this point of argument, be said to be dialogical: Group A recognizes group B as X, whereas group B recognizes group A as an authoritative recognizer of X’s.

This shows that Allardt, albeit lacking any direct reference to Hegel or Hegelian literature on recognition and preceding recognition theorists such as Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor by more than a decade, may be on this point placed in the same Hegelian tradition of theorizing recognition as these.

It is important to note, however, that this dialogical and mutual character of recognition does not necessarily imply that the relation is symmetrical. One might imagine several constellations, in which a dominated group under some constraint might be in need of recognition by a dominant group and recognizes it as its superior, whereas the latter recognizes the subservient group merely as a competent recognizer of its superiority. If such asymmetrical relations are deemed to fail, is another question of dispute. (This kind of recognitive relation is paradigmatically exposed in Hegel’s story about Master and Bondsman in his Phenomenology.) 

To sum it up: According to the dialogical aspect of the Allardtian conception, recognition is a complex of mutual acts and attitudes.

2. A second aspect of Allardt’s approach – namely, its processuality – also separates it from most non-Hegelian, everyday political jargon accounts of a politics of recognition. Allardt does not describe recognition essentially as an act or a condition. Rather, in Allardt’s story recognition seems to be rendered as a series of mutual acts, or even better, as a complex process of mutual acts and attitudes. Recognition is something that happens in time, has a number of phases, has a certain “logic” or “grammar,” constitutes a sort of achievement and induces change in the shared life-world of both parties.

As a preliminary Allardtian definition of recognition at this point we may thus suggest that recognition is a processually conceived complex of mutual acts and attitudes happening under constraint of time.

3. But what kind of process is recognition? To Allardt it is first of all a classificatory process, and that brings us to the third aspect I wish to emphasize. Allardt describes misrecognition in ethnic conflicts as a qualitative mismatch between the self-categorizations of an ethnic group on the one hand and the external categorization of it by a more dominant group on the other. It often seems that Allardt understands recognition as not much more than a process of intersubjective categorization between groups of persons. It is indeed difficult to find Allardt saying explicitly much more about what recognition is than this:

A classifies B as X, whereas B classifies A as an authoritative classifier of X’s.

At this point, I think, it is relevant to ask: What exactly is recognized here? Classifications of groups?

According to Allardt ethnic conflicts begin in general by some hegemonic group claiming acknowledgment of some standards of public life that involve such categorizations of a dominated ethnic group that the group cannot endorse; in contrast to this, the dominated group claims recognition of its right to self-categorization. On the one hand, the object of recognition seems to be rights, standards, categorizations and classifications. On the other, we have the mutual recognition of groups as authoritative categorizers, classifiers and bearers of rights and duties.

It seems, however, that what is to be recognized in Allardt is the ethnic group as an authoritative classifier/categorizer. To recognize an ethnic group as an authoritative classifier/categorizer would then imply some kind of an acknowledgement of the rights, standards, categorizations and classifications it endorses.

Now, in saying this, it also becomes clear that Allardt is committed to an unusually thick conception of recognition. Because the recognizee is constituted by two different species of classifiers/categorizers (self-categorizers and external categorizers), the “two-way complex” is expanded to a “high-way complex,” in which A does not merely recognize B as a X, whereas B recognizes A as an authoritative recognizer X’s – but also vice versa! Recognition in Allardt seems namely to be constituted by the following complex of attitudes, in which A stands for a dominant group and B for a dominated group:

A recognizes B as an authoritative self-categorizer,

whereas B recognizes A as an authoritative categorizer of self-categorizers;

this, however, commits B to recognize A as an authoritative external categorizer,

whereas A recognizes B as an authoritative categorizer of external categorizers.

However, it remains unclear, whether Allardt conceives this complex of attitudes as a series with a fixed sequence, or simply as those relations, which, in whatever way, constitute the necessary conditions of a recognitive complex.

It might also be worth noting, that to Allardt, the majority group does not stand in need of recognition of it as an authoritative self-categorizer, nor does the minority have any anticipation of recognizing it as such.

To summarize this third point, Allardt understands recognition as a processually conceived complex of classifying mutual acts and attitudes happening under constraint of time.

4. Furthermore Allardt appears to comprehend recognition as a hermeneutical process. The way in which he treats ethnic conflicts seem to open for the interpretation that to him struggles for recognition are interpretive struggles, although the concept of an interpretive struggle does not come up in his book (cf. Allardt 1979, p. 31). To Allardt, in struggles for recognition the issue is not directly about recognition or misrecognition of identity as something external to the process of recognition itself. Following this processual, classificatory and hermeneutical account, the struggle for recognition could therefore be understood as an interpretive process, in which the classifications of ethnicity brought about in external and self-categorizations constitute better or worse interpretations of identity (and Allardt sees these categorizations as at least partly constitutive of identities). Recognition in Allardt would, accordingly, be a processually conceived complex of mutual classifying acts and attitudes happening under constraint of time in a social context of a shared, diverse and (at least partly) interpretation-dependent value horizon.

5. Following the lead of this hermeneutical and processual conception of recognition, Allardt does not have to suppose that legitimate recognition is dependent on some external standard of an authentic identity that should be recognized. To recognize an ethnic group would then not (necessarily) involve recognizing some “true” or “authentic” identity. On the contrary, the normatively important point for Allardt’s recognition policy recommendations seems to be to recognize the dominated group’s right to self-categorization and the duty of the majority or the otherwise dominant group to take such self-categorization into account when dealing with issues that affect the group in question. It is thus important to note that the process of recognition, according to this account, does not, to begin with, necessarily involve regarding the self-categorization of the dominated group as true or as even the best possible categorization. By contrast, it is in the process of recognition itself that the standards are sought for and found.

In this manner, Allardt manages to avoid the standard objection to theories of recognition that recognition in identity politics reifies identities. On the contrary, his theory is internally opposed to such stigmatization and conceives it as the mode of misrecognition, whereby groups are imposed such (external) categorizations that the members cannot endorse. This form of reification of identities is in his theory already internally conceived as a form of misrecognition that is to be overcome by open and fallible conceptions, categorizations and interpretations brought about in the dialogically, processually and hermeneutically comprehended complex sequence of recognition.

Nevertheless, this conception of recognition remains open to the normative relevance of authenticity. That is, authenticity is something that may be rendered relevant in the process of recognition, but it is, however, not a self-evident object of recognition.

Finally, we arrive at the standpoint that recognition is a processually conceived complex of mutual acts and attitudes oriented towards matching self- and external categorizations, happening under constraint of time in a social context of a shared and (at least partly) interpretation-dependent value horizon.

 

II

As we have seen, Allardt regards ethnic misrecognition as the mismatch between self- and external categorizations and recognition as the process, in which such categorizations are brought to reconciliation. On the basis of this conception of ethnic recognition, Allardt now works out a typology of ethnic conflicts. Following what has been said about recognition so far, two kinds of ethnic conflicts can be distinguished: namely, conflicts, in which a dominant group imposes external categorizations on an inferior group, on the one hand, and conflicts, in which the self-categorizations of an inferior group are rejected by the dominant group, on the other (Allardt 1979, p. 43-52).

a) Conflicts of imposing external categorizations: In this first case, we have a hegemonic (paradigmatically majority) group imposing on an inferior (paradigmatically minority) group a categorization that this group cannot endorse (and that may be implicit in some policy, cultural scheme or whatever). Paradigmatic cases for Allardt here include Nazi policy toward Jews and hegemonic North American cultural schemes in their relation to African Americans). This kind of ethnic domination typically is played out as stigmatization and material exclusion of the inferiors to the advantage of safeguarding the material privileges of the hegemonic group. It is as a rule based on a strong hierarchical ethnic division of labor.

b) Conflicts of rejecting self-categorizations: In this second case, we have a hegemonic (paradigmatically majority) group rejecting the self-categorization of a dominated (paradigmatically minority) group. Here the hegemonic group does not dominate the inferiors by imposing external categorizations, but by not taking its self-categorization into account. Domination takes the form not of material exclusion, but of coerced cultural assimilation. Paradigmatic cases for Allardt here include the Basque-Castilian conflict in Spain and Friulian activism in Northern Italy. This kind of ethnic domination typically is played out as hegemonic monopolization of “neutral” standards of public life. Such domination is possible, even expected, in societies with weaker ethnic division of labor.

In a next step, Allardt turns this distinction into what he calls “a historical pattern of majority-minority relations” (Allardt 1979, p. 43). In a vain that anticipates Taylor’s later distinction between a politics of universalism and a politics of recognition (cf. Taylor 1992), Allardt distinguishes between the politics of discrimination and the politics of recognition. These two political schemes are founded on the two types of ethnic conflicts just mentioned. Whereas ethnic conflicts before the Second World War were based on hegemonic nationalist imposition of external categorizations on minority groups, the ethnic conflicts of Allardt’s coeval post 1968 era follow the grammar of struggles for recognition, in which anti-hegemonic nationalist minority groups claim acknowledgement of their self-categorizations. Furthermore, Allardt takes the politics of discrimination to be based on a more “primitive” kind of majority-minority relation, where the criteria of ethnicity were the categorizations performed by the majority; the politics of recognition, by contrast, constitutes a more “refined” majority-minority relation, in which the categorizations and criteria of ethnicity themselves have become a subject-matter of conflict (Allardt 1979, pp. 43-44). Allardt is convinced that the central problems of a politics of discrimination (material exclusion, strong ethnic division of labor, stigmatization etc.) should be solved, in order for the problems of a politics of recognition to appear on the scene at all (Allardt 1979, p. 45).

By the distinction between a politics of discrimination and a politics of recognition it is not meant that the former would be based on a non-recognitive conflict. On the contrary the politics of discrimination is based on stigmatizing misrecognition of minority groups, and in this respect also it represents a kind of politics of recognition. The point that Allardt seems to make, is rather that there are two different grammars of recognitive conflicts, that these are typical of two different phases in the history of majority-minority relations, and finally that they demand distinct policies.

 

 

Politics of discrimination 

 

Politics of recognition 

 

Period 

 

Pre WWII

 

Post 1968

 

Form of conflict 

 

Conflicts of imposing external categorization

 

Conflicts of rejecting self-categorization

 

Form of domination 

 

Material exclusion

 

Cultural assimilation

 

Motivational ground of domination 

 

Safeguarding material privileges, persecution

 

Monopolizing standards of public life

 

Form of resistance 

 

Fight against discrimination

 

Fight for recognition

 

Form of emancipation 

 

Emancipation from coercive determinacy to indeterminacy

 

Emancipation from indeterminacy to non-coerced determinacy

 

Good  

 

Inclusion (basic material needs)

 

Well-being (needs of belonging, esteem, self-realization)

 

Cultural division of labor 

 

Strong

 

Weak

 

Paradigmatic cases 

 

Civil rights movement of African-Americans

 

Basque activism

 

III

 

Allardt further argues, that this historical development, or more precisely the transition from a politics of discrimination to a politics of recognition, comes with a transformation of the nature ethnicity itself: On the basis of the recognitive conflict constituting the politics of recognition also the socially shared understanding of what ethnicity is changes. In the transition from conflicts of imposing external categorizations with their politics of discrimination to conflicts of rejecting self-categorizations with their politics of recognition, primordial elements in the socially effective conception of ethnicity give way for what Allardt calls “subjective” elements.

Whereas in societies, in which the conflicts of imposing external categorizations and the politics of discrimination constitute ethnic policy, distinctive cultural patterns and common ancestry are seen as criteria of ethnicity, the “subjective” conception of ethnicity, by contrast, is recognition- and self-categorization-based. The only constitutive criteria for ethnicity in the post 1968 era are, according to Allardt, collective self-categorization and the existence of some formal social organization, by means of which the group might seek external recognition.

Conception of ethnicity 

 

Primordial 

 

“Subjective” 

 

Criteria of ethnicity 

 

Distinctive cultural patterns

 

Common descent or ancestry

 

Self-categorization & identification

 

(Formal) Social organization

 

Dominating categorization 

 

Coercive external categorization (politics of discrimination)

 

Collective self-categorization (politics of recognition)

 

This development is, to Allardt, to be understood as progress and emancipation since the new “subjective” conception of ethnicity allows many more options for cultural action than the earlier one. The self-categorization-based ethnicity is “functional in modern society as it provides a (more flexible) social bond where old ascriptive structures have eroded. Ethnicity is less divise than integrating in many respects” (Allardt 1979, p. 67). It also pacifies ethnic conflict since it “clearly lessens the importance of ascriptive demands and increases the options open to individuals” (Allardt 1979, p. 67).

In this, Allardt also justifies his own conception of ethnicity recognition-theoretically and developmentally: Struggles for recognition between dominant and dominated ethnic groups, ranging from conflicts of imposing external categorization to conflicts of rejecting self-categorization, have brought about a conception of ethnicity that is more reflexive and aware of its own social foundations than the earlier one, which originated in the coercive external categorization practices of a politics of discrimination. The “subjective” conception of ethnicity has a kind of developmental validity, since not endorsing it would mean returning to some kind of a primordial conception of forcing external standards on dominated groups and therefore falling behind the struggles and learning processes separating the post 1968 generations from pre WW II Europe.

References

Allardt, Erik (1979), Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern, Industrialized Society. A Comparative Study of the Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe, Helsinki: Societas Scientarium Fennica.

Svenska Finlands Folkting (2005), “Folktingets undersökning om finlandssvenskarnas identitet – Identitet och framtid”, Helsinki: Folktinget.

Ikäheimo, Heikki & Laitinen, Arto (2007), „Analyzing Recognition. Identification, Acknowledgement, and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons,” in: van den Brink und Owen (eds), Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press.

Taylor, Charles (1992), “The Politics of Recognition,” in: Amy Gutman (ed.), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

 

Endnotes


[1] I am grateful to the participators at the Winter Session of NSU Study Group in Turku and at the philosophical seminar at University of Jyväskylä both in February 2012 as well as to Federica Gregoratto for challenging and illuminating comments and questions, most of which have found no sufficient further elaboration in the paper. I thank professor Peter Kraus for making me aware of the existence of an Allardtian approach to recognition.