Response to my commentators

Abstract

Before responding to my commentators, I would like to thank each of them for having taken time out of their busy lives to read a long and at times densely argued book. I chose them as my interlocutors because their reflections on selected topics had already served me well in composing my book. I expected quality commentary from them and have not been disappointed. Gottfried Schweiger’s research has pioneered new territory in the field of applied recognition theory, and his comments here and elsewhere have made me more aware of the complications associated with using recognition as one foundational category (along with discourse, which he does not discuss) for theorizing the injustices and pathologies associated with poverty and social marginalization. In prefacing his comments, Schweiger himself notes several features that seem to recommend recognition theory as at least a necessary supplement to standard liberal theories of distributive (in)justice, namely, its attempt to ascertain injustice by appeal to the ordinary experiences of indignation suffered by those who claim to be victims of injustice and its understanding that a part of justice concerns the psychology of human relationships, which is not a good or resource that can be measured and distributed in any straightforward way. All of this stands in stark contrast to liberalism’s concern with distributing basic primary goods, resources, and capabilities that individuals need (taken separately and abstractly as rational agents) according to general principles that have been constructed on the basis of what are taken to be widely (perhaps universally) accepted fixed judgements. The important and difficult challenge for recognition theory, as Schweiger makes clear in his comments, is whether its starting point in experience suffices to generate a theory of injustice and social pathology apart from an elitist theory of objective human development and/or a liberal theory of distributive justice. In other words, does recognition theory’s counter-intuitive approach to framing poverty as a psychological harm really provide an alternative or needed supplement to a liberal theory of distributive justice? Schweiger’s critical engagement with my book centres around two major theoretical claims I make in chapter one, specifically about the contribution recognition theory makes to understanding poverty as a form of injustice, and an example that I use to