Recognition
Recognition
Recognition is a term that has been increasingly employed in the social sciences. In psychology, the term usually refers to identifying external objects or to other mental processes. In other disciplines within the social sciences, recognition has been used rather freely to denote an act of or motivation for acknowledgment of certain demands, goals, values, and identities. It is this latter social and political meaning of recognition that has increasingly become a matter of importance, moral concern, and focus of scholarship.
At the level of the individual, the importance of recognition can be observed when, for example, one person assaults another person due to what is perceived as a lack of respect or recognition. The “code of the streets” emphasizes recognition and “saving-face” as issues of the highest importance. At the collective level, people strive for recognition of group values, identities, and reparations for past wrongs. To recognize, in this sense, means to behave in a manner that satisfies expectations of respect and contributes to a sense of positive self-esteem in those who are recognized.
The psychological motivation for recognition is defined in social psychology as the pursuit, defense, and maintenance of positive self-esteem. In fact, recognition and self-esteem are often used interchangeably because positive self-esteem is intertwined with, and affected by, attitudes of others, such as the granting or withholding of social acknowledgement. Social psychologists assert that positive self-esteem contributes to optimal functioning, higher efficacy, development (self-enhancement), happiness, satisfaction with life, better performance, persistence at tasks, and reduced anxieties. In contrast, low self-esteem is strongly associated with mental disorders, malfunctioning, antisocial behavior, aggression, delinquency, and opposite traits and effects of positive self-esteem. Because recognition enhances positive self-esteem and the lack of recognition tends to produce low self-esteem, it is understandable that people are highly motivated to pursue recognition and may act aggressively if denied recognition.
The notion of recognition has also been examined in philosophy. Plato identified recognition with the thymos, the enthusiastic part of the soul that seeks honor and pride. Thomas Hobbes argued that people are led by a natural human passion for fame and honor, which is a desire to be recognized by others. Many other political philosophers discuss recognition as esteem. G. W. F Hegel, however, was the first to discuss recognition in the context of the relationship between a master and a slave, and to suggest that equal recognition is the key for the development of human freedom over the course of history. Several political philosophers were influenced by Hegel’s conception of recognition, such as Karl Marx, Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968), and Francis Fukuyama (1952–).
Later in the twentieth century, the notion of recognition was discussed in new contexts. John Rawls argued that to acknowledge the moral duty of fair play is to recognize others as human beings with equal aspirations and interests. According to Rawls, this recognition is a necessary element of just societies. Charles Taylor introduced the idea of recognition in the debate on multiculturalism and differential treatment of minority groups. In the opening of his treatise “The Politics of Recognition” (1992), Taylor argues that contemporary politics had become significantly shaped by needs and demands for recognition. Because identity and self-respect are affected by recognition or the lack thereof, and because nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict real harm and serve as a form of oppression, Taylor argues that recognition is not only a matter of a moral obligation to others, it is a vital human need.
The transition from the normative to the descriptive aspect of recognition also characterizes Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992). Following Hegel, Fukuyama argues that the pursuit of recognition is part and parcel of human nature. Fukuyama discusses the moral aspects of recognition and the necessary acceptance of equal recognition as the foundation for liberal democracy, but he continues to suggest that recognition is also the causal engine of democratization. Nondemocratic regimes tend to inflict a sense of low self-esteem in the population, and hence the oppressed become motivated to regain a sense of recognition and human dignity. They can achieve this only through the establishment of a democratic order that entails equal recognition to all citizens.
Given the importance of recognition to self-esteem, and the growing awareness that demands for recognition are often voiced in politics, the pursuit of recognition may become the new frontier of research as an explanatory factor to various social and political phenomena. An array of social change phenomena seems to be associated with the pursuit of recognition, at least as members of social change movements express their ultimate goals. This has been the case for slaves and other oppressed groups, feminist groups, and minority groups. Democratization also appears to be affected by struggles for recognition, as demands for political and civil rights are often demands for recognition. Struggles for recognition are usually expressed as struggles for human dignity and against humiliation, and for restoration of self-esteem and similar concepts that are associated with self-respect and self-esteem. As such, the pursuit of recognition appears to lie at the heart of political life. Recognition, thus, has become not only an important normative concept, but also an overarching explanatory concept.
SEE ALSO Black Power; Civil Rights; Democratization; Feminism; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Hobbes, Thomas; Human Rights; Public Rights; Reparations; Self-Esteem; Subaltern
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crocker, Jennifer, and Wayne Bylsma. 1995. Self-Esteem. In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, ed. A. S. R. Manstead, Miles Hewstone, and Susan T. Fiske, 505-509. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. [1807] 2003. Phenomenology of Mind. New York: Dover.
Taylor, Charles. 1992. The Politics of Recognition. In Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”: An Essay, ed. Amy Gutmann, 25-73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Doron Shultziner