Fortunes of Feminism (34 page)

2
It might be assumed that, from the perspective of the Third World, Westphalian premises would have appeared patently counterfactual. Yet it is worth recalling that the great majority of anti-imperialists sought to achieve independent Westphalian states of their own. In contrast, only a small minority consistently championed justice within a global frame—for reasons that are entirely understandable.

3
This situation is by no means unprecedented. Even the most cursory reflection discloses historical parallels—for example, the period leading up to the Treaty of Westphalia and the period following World War I. In these moments, too, not just the substance of justice but also the frame was up for grabs.

4
On the elision of the problem of the frame in mainstream theories of justice, see Nancy Fraser, “Democratic Justice in a Globalizing Age: Thematizing the Problem of the Frame,” in
Varieties of World-Making: Beyond Globalization
, eds. Nathalie Karagiannis and Peter Wagner, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006, 193–215.

5
See Chapters 6 and 7 of this volume, “Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition” and “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism.” Also, Nancy Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth,
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange
, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram, and C. Wilke, London: Verso Books, 2003.

6
This
status model
of recognition represents an alternative to the standard identity model. For a critique of the latter and a defense of the former, see Chapter 6 of this volume, “Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition.” See also Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition: Overcoming Displacement and Reification in Cultural Politics,”
New Left Review
3, 2000, 107–20.

7
Here I assume quasi-Weberian conceptions of class and status. See Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” in
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
, eds. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.

8
For the full argument, see Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics.”

9
The neglect of the political is especially glaring in the case of theorists of justice who subscribe to liberal or communitarian philosophical premises. In contrast, deliberative democrats, agonistic democrats, and republicans have sought to theorize the political. But most of these theorists have had relatively little to say about the relation between democracy and justice; and none has conceptualized the political as one of three dimensions of justice. Deliberative democratic accounts of the political include Jürgen Habermas,
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996; and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson,
Democracy and Disagreement
, Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1996. Agonistic accounts of the political include William Connolly,
Identity/Difference: Negotiations of Political Paradox
, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991; Bonnie Honig,
Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics
, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993; Chantal Mouffe,
The Return of the Political
, London: Verso Books, 1993; and James Tully,
Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Republican accounts of the political include Quentin Skinner, “The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty,” in
Machiavelli and Republicanism
, eds. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; and Philip Pettit, “Freedom as Antipower,”
Ethics
106:3, 1996, 576–604. In contrast to these thinkers, a handful of others have linked the political directly to justice, although not in the way I do here. See, for example, Michael Walzer,
Spheres of Justice
, New York: Basic Books, 1983; Iris Marion Young,
Justice and the Politics of Difference
, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990; Amartya Sen,
Development as Freedom
, New York: Anchor Books, 1999; and Seyla Benhabib,
The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

10
Classic works on representation have dealt largely with what I am calling the decision-rule aspect, while ignoring the membership aspect. See, for example, Hannah Fenichel Pitkin,
The Concept of Representation
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967; and Bernard Manin,
The Principles of Representative Government
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Works that do treat the membership aspect include Walzer,
Spheres of Justice
, and Benhabib,
The Rights of Others
. However, both Walzer and Benhabib arrive at conclusions that differ from the ones I draw here.

11
Lani Guinier,
The Tyranny of the Majority
, New York: Free Press, 1994. Robert Ritchie and Steven Hill, “The Case for Proportional Representation,” in
Whose Vote Counts?
eds. Robert Ritchie and Steven Hill, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001, 1–33.

12
Anne Phillips,
The Politics of Presence
, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Shirin M. Rai, “Political Representation, Democratic Institutions and Women's Empowerment: The Quota Debate in India,” in
Rethinking Empowerment: Gender and Development in a Global/Local World
, eds. Jane L. Parpart, Shirin M. Rai, and Kathleen Staudt
,
New York: Routledge, 2002, 133–45. T. Gray, “Electoral Gender Quotas: Lessons from Argentina and Chile,”
Bulletin of Latin American Research
21:1, 2003, 52–78. Mala Htun, “Is Gender Like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups,”
Perspectives on Politics
2:3, 2004, 439–58.

13
Hannah Arendt,
The Origins of Totalitarianism
, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973, 269–84. “Political death” is my phrase, not Arendt's.

14
Among the best accounts of the normative force of these struggles are Will Kymlicka,
Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights
, London: Oxford University Press, 1995; and Melissa Williams,
Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation
, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

15
Thomas W. Pogge, “The Influence of the Global Order on the Prospects for Genuine Democracy in the Developing Countries,”
Ratio Juris
14:3, 2001, 326–43, and “Economic Justice and National Borders,”
Revision
22:2, 1999, 27–34. Rainer Forst, “Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice,” in
Global Justice
, ed. Thomas Pogge, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, 169–87, and “Justice, Morality and Power in the Global Context,” in
Real World Justice
, eds. Andreas Follesdal and Thomas Pogge, Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.

16
Richard L. Harris and Melinda J. Seid,
Critical Perspectives on Globalization and Neoliberalism in the Developing Countries
, Boston: Leiden, 2000.

17
Robert W. Cox, “A Perspective on Globalization,” in
Globalization: Critical Reflections
, ed. James H. Mittelman, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996, 21–30; and “Democracy in Hard Times: Economic Globalization and the Limits to Liberal Democracy,” in
The Transformation of Democracy?
ed. Anthony McGrew, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, 49–72. Stephen Gill, “New Constitutionalism, Democratisation and Global Political Economy,”
Pacifica Review
10:1, February 1998, 23–38. Eric Helleiner, “From Bretton Woods to Global Finance: A World Turned Upside Down,” in
Political Economy and the Changing Global Order
, eds. Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R. D. Underhill, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, 163–75. Servaes Storm and J. Mohan Rao, “Market-Led Globalization and World Democracy: Can the Twain Ever Meet?”
Development and Change
35:5, 2004, 567–81. James K. Boyce, “Democratizing Global Economic Governance,”
Development and Change
35:3, 2004, 593–99.

18
John Dryzek, “Transnational Democracy”
Journal of Political Philosophy
7:1, 1999, 30–51. James Bohman, “International Regimes and Democratic Governance,”
International Affairs
75:3, 1999, 499–513. David Held, “Regulating Globalization?”
International Journal of Sociology
15:2, 2000, 394–408;
Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance
, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995, 99–140; “The Transformation of Political Community: Rethinking Democracy in the Context of Globalization,” in
Democracy's Edges
, eds. Ian Shapiro and Cassiano Hacker-Cordón, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 84–111.

19
I do not mean to suggest that the political is the master dimension of justice, more fundamental than the economic and the cultural. Rather, the three dimensions stand in relations of mutual entwinement and reciprocal influence. Just as the ability to make claims for distribution and recognition depends on relations of representation, so the ability to exercise one's political voice depends on the relations of class and status. In other words, the capacity to influence public debate and authoritative decision-making depends not only on formal decision rules but also on power relations rooted in the economic structure and the status order, a fact that is insufficiently stressed in most theories of deliberative democracy. Thus, maldistribution and misrecognition conspire to subvert the principle of equal political voice for every citizen, even in polities that claim to be democratic. But of course the converse is also true. Those who suffer from misrepresentation are vulnerable to injustices of status and class. Lacking political voice, they are unable to articulate and defend their interests with respect to distribution and recognition, which in turn exacerbates their misrepresentation. In such cases, the result is a vicious circle in which the three orders of injustice reinforce one another, denying some people the chance to participate on a par with others in social life. In general, then, the political is not the master dimension. On the contrary, although they are conceptually distinct and mutually irreducible, the three sorts of obstacles to parity of participation are usually intertwined. It follows that efforts to overcome injustice cannot, except in rare cases, address themselves to one such dimension alone. Rather, struggles against maldistribution and misrecognition cannot succeed unless they are joined with struggles against misrepresentation—and vice-versa. Where one puts the emphasis, of course, is both a tactical and strategic decision. Given the current salience of injustices of misframing, my own preference is for the slogan, “No redistribution or recognition without representation.” But even so, the politics of representation appears as one among three interconnected fronts in the struggle for social justice in a globalizing world. For an argument against Rainer Forst's tendency to accord primacy to the political dimension, see Nancy Fraser, “Identity, Exclusion, and Critique: A Response to Four Critics,”
European Journal of Political Theory
6:3, 2007, 305–38; revised and reprinted as “Prioritizing Justice as Participatory Parity: A Rely to Kompridis and Forst,” in
Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics
, ed. Kevin Olson, London: Verso Books, 2008.

20
In distinguishing “affirmative” from “transformative” approaches, I am adapting terminology I have used in the past with respect to redistribution and recognition. See Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Postsocialist' Age,”
New Left Review
212, 1995, 68–93, and “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics.”

21
For the state-territorial principle, see Thomas Baldwin, “The Territorial State,” in
Jurisprudence, Cambridge Essays
, eds. H. Gross and T. R. Harrison, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, 207–30. For doubts about the state-territorial principle (among other principles), see Frederick Whelan, “Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem,” in
Nomos XXV: Liberal Democracy
, eds. J. R. Pennock and R. W. Chapman, New York and London: New York University Press, 1983, 13–47.

22
I borrow this terminology from Manuel Castells,
The Rise of the Network Society
, London: Blackwell Publishers, 1996, 440–60.

23
I owe the idea of a post-territorial “mode of political differentiation” to John G. Ruggie. See his immensely suggestive essay, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,”
International Organization
47, 1993, 139–74. Also suggestive in this regard is Raul C. Pangalangan, “Territorial Sovereignty: Command, Title, and Expanding the Claims of the Commons,” in
Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives
, eds. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001, 164–82.

24
Thinking develops in time, often in unanticipated ways. The present chapter, which dates from 2004–5, reflects my view at that time that the all-affected principle was the most promising candidate on offer for a post-Westphalian mode of frame-setting, even though I also register important worries about that principle in note 26 below. Soon thereafter, however, those worries came to seem insurmountable. In later writings, I rejected the all-affected principle in favor of another possibility, not considered here, which refers disputes about the frame to the “all-subjected principle.” This “subjection” principle now seems to me to better capture the deep internal connection between the concepts of justice and democracy. But I have elected to forego post hoc revision of this chapter. For the all-subjected principle, see Nancy Fraser, “Abnormal Justice,”
Critical Inquiry
34:3, 2008, 393–422; reprinted in Nancy Fraser,
Sclaes of Justice:
Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World
, New York: Columbia University Press and Polity Press, 2008.