Abstract
This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordination social recognition paradox. The variation in question involves women who, refusing to reject the combined socio-economic benefits of patriarchal recognition and empowering microfinance, dissemble their subordination to men. In this situation, women experience a genuine form of divided consciousness which recognition theory frames as an identity crisis. Understanding the pathological nature of deceit as a way of life that blurs the boundaries between rational choice and rationalization, recognition theory shows how dissemblance itself is constrained by conflicting recognition orders in ways that prevent women who live such a life from successfully emancipating themselves. In this respect , recognition theory provides an important—albeit, from the standpoint of recent feminist and intersectional research on identity and autonomy, inadequately qualified—norm of personal integrity and genuine agency requisite for conceptualizing adaptive preferences.
I would like to especially thank Gottfried Schweiger for his copious comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I am also grateful to others who read and commented on the paper, including my wife, Jennifer Parks, the Northwestern University Philosophy Department Ethics Workshop participants, and the participants of the Recognition and Poverty Workshop that was sponsored by the University of Salzburg Centre for Ethics and Poverty.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The concept of adaptive preference has been the topic of extensive scrutiny going back to John Elster’s (1982) discussion referencing Aesop’s fable about the fox who decides to disdain the grapes that are beyond his grasp. Elster and others influenced by him (including Nussbaum) adhere to the idea that the alteration of one’s preferences based on one’s perception of their low probability of fulfillment reflects an unconscious or irrational adaptation to environmental constraints. More recently Serene Khader has challenged this view by arguing that adaptive preferences can be both rational and freely held regardless of whether they are appropriate or inappropriate. She defines inappropriate adaptive preferences (IAPs) as “(1) preferences inconsistent with basic flourishing (2) that are formed under conditions nonconductive to basic flourishing and (3) that we believe people might be persuaded to transform upon normative scrutiny of their preferences and exposure to conditions more conducive to flourishing” (Khader 2011: 42). The difference between this conception of adaptive preference and what I call constrained rational choice is its perfectionist assumption of an objective (albeit relatively undefined), cross-cultural notion of human flourishing. Both Khader and Harriet Baber, who defends the constrained rational choice view, agree that constrained choices do not eo ipso reveal preferences. They also agree that preferring the best among realistic options, none of which is conducive to flourishing, preferring one component of flourishing at the expense of another when confronted with an unavoidable dilemma, or having a cultural conception of flourishing that does not correspond to a liberal (or Western) conception of individual emancipation, can be autonomous and rational without being inappropriately adaptive. By contrast, for Khader, IAPs arise whenever persons exaggerate the degree to which their circumstances and cultural beliefs are incapable of being changed in a way that might allow them to choose a more flourishing life for themselves and for this reason freely (and reasonably) prefer not to choose potentially more fulfilling life options until prompted to do so through some external intervention.
- 2.
Baber presumes that a fully rational chooser possesses complete and perfect knowledge of the entire range of options and their consequences to self and other, is free to attach appropriate weights to consequences in light of an undistorted conception of self, reasons logically in constructing an efficient rank ordering of means and ends, and so forth. Rational moral preferences, then, would be moral preferences chosen by an “ideal spectator” or sympathetic moral reasoner, to use Adam Smith’s language.
- 3.
In an effort to mitigate the elitism implicit in setting forth an authoritative theory of supreme values, Nussbaum concedes that such values, for their part, must find ultimate justification in something like a universal democratic aggregation of subjective preferences, albeit preferences that have been critically modified by on-going, fully inclusive (cross-cultural) discussion, real or imagined, constrained by rational procedure. The circularity of this manner of reasoning, which she compares to John Rawls’s understanding of practical reasoning as a process of achieving reflective equilibrium between settled moral judgements and inventive extrapolation from, generalization upon, and extension of these judgments (Nussbaum 2000, 151), raises more questions than it answers. Settled moral judgments are easier to find within any given particular community at a given point in time than within the human community surveyed over a long stretch of history. Leaving aside the difficulty of establishing a robust set of settled moral judgments that can claim the status of universality, we might at least concede Nussbaum’s conceptual point that any attempt to justify a life of reason, regardless of what procedure one happens to model reason on, will require a substantive account of human nature, or flourishing human functioning (Nussbaum, 118, 130, 132, 136, 150, 154).
- 4.
A study by Robert Sapolsky (Sapolsky 2015), a Stanford neuropsychologist, showed a strong correlation between poverty and higher than average, chronic, stress-induced levels of glucocorticoid hormones, which in young children, especially, can cause neurons to shrink. Children living under chronic stress also develop an atrophied hippocampus, which distorts emotional responses and reduces memory and spatial awareness. The correlation between poverty, stress, adult depression, and foregoing long-term life goals in favor of short-term gratification, is also well documented. Johannes Haushofer (Haushofer 2014), founder of the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, has studied the link between poverty and poor financial planning and concludes that a guaranteed basic income (universal cash transfers) might be more effective in lowering stress and improving financial planning than short term microcredit, which can lead to a spiral of indebtedness. A 2015 study by Ben Fall and Miles Hewstone from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, concludes that those living in poverty lack self-esteem, self-confidence, and often blame themselves for what they perceive to be a personal failure (Fell and Hewstone 2015).
- 5.
The basic idea behind this conception can be articulated in terms of the necessary ontological connection between the subject-object poles of agency : the actor and her action. Action is identified as meaningful only in relationship to an actor’s intention for doing the action, taken together with her possible reasons for having done it, when situated in light of her past actions and character. The intentions, reasons, past actions, and character that serve to identify an action under some intentional description are not reducible to the subjective, or psychological, beliefs of the actor. Rather, whenever the actor’s action occurs within a social context in which she is accountable to others, these others interpret the action from their own perspectives. In other words, what she did is a matter of interpretation by others as well. When there is significant divergence between her account of what she did and the account(s) of her consociates, she and they may have to revise their respective understanding of what she did through an exchange of opinions. Notice, too, that what she did in the past matters in this process. To the extent that what she did in the past expresses her character, personality, and identity, the questioning of her action—and the mutual questioning of every participant’s interpretation of that action—can raise further questions about who, exactly, she is. Do we judge that the action is out of character for her? If so, do we then judge that we have been mistaken about her character all along? Do we now interpret her past conduct differently? Is she the same person we thought she was? Maybe we decide that the question can’t be definitely answered. Her identity—along with her action—remains uncertain.
- 6.
I will not here trace the genealogy of recognition as an ontological and normative category, which extends back to Fichte and Hegel. Nor will I explore its elaboration under different but allied philosophies of action and interpretation developed by Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, and many feminist and intersectional philosophers who write on relational autonomy (Meyers 2004) and narrative identity (Walker 2007; Lindemann 2013; Crenshaw 2017).
- 7.
“In becoming sure of the mother’s love, [children] come to trust themselves, which makes it possible for them to be alone without anxiety” (Honneth 1996: 104).
- 8.
Honneth (2008) distinguishes emotional recognition necessary for forming healthy personal identity from antecedent recognition, or “spontaneous non-rational recognition of others as fellow human beings.” Whereas antecedent recognition identifies persons as selves with unique needs (as opposed to things), emotional or loving recognition nourishes others’ cultivation of their own needs. That said, Honneth observes that autism and other psycho-pathologies associated with failed antecedent recognition also stem from failures or incapacities to emotionally bond with others. Such failures (or incapacities) to identify with (recognize) others as selves have cognitive as well as affective consequences. Although the capacity to assume the perspective of others is essential for grasping an objective world, forgetfulness and/or suppression of our primal emotional bonding with persons, Honneth submits, can lead to reifying ourselves, other human beings, and our natural environment. Of course, the capacity to emotionally bond with others can itself assume healthy or unhealthy, morally acceptable or morally unacceptable, forms; scam artists and torturers are highly capable of “empathizing” with their victims, albeit for purposes of psychological manipulation and coercion. So what Honneth calls ‘primary’ (or precognitive) recognition is normatively neutral; upon this elemental product of infant/mother bonding develops a complicated psycho-sexual network of object-relations involving primary caretakers. Such relations can embody norms of love that engender a learning trajectory culminating in higher levels of care, empathy, and solidarity for others along an expanding arc of concern; but they need not (Honneth 2008: 152). See the concluding comments by Judith Butler, Raymond Geuss, and Jonathan Lear, who question the adequacy of Honneth’s attempt to conceptualize reification as a forgetfulness or suppression of primary recognition.
- 9.
This scheme excludes Honneth’s discussion of “antecedent” recognition (see note 6). Early on Honneth (Honneth 1996) drew almost exclusively from Hegel’s Jena period writings from 1801 to 1806. However, recently Honneth (Honneth 2014) has based his theory of recognition on the Philosophy of Right (1820), where Hegel argues that abstract rights that ground negative (external) freedom from interference and moral duties that ground reflective (inner) freedom presuppose more concrete ethical relations of family, civil society (economic life), and state (political life) for their full social realization. This essay incorporates the ideas of both early and late Honneth without examining their interconnection. For a brief comment on their mutual coherence, see Ingram (2018: 68n25).
- 10.
- 11.
Honneth singles out traits and abilities as markers of esteem in his earlier work on recognition, while emphasizing social (civic, economic, etc.) achievements as markers of esteem in his later work on social freedom.
- 12.
Here I follow Honneth in distinguishing strategic conflicts of material (self-) interest from moral conflicts of self-recognition, wherein one or more parties feel disrespect on the basis of having their legitimate, socially recognized, expectations regarding the value of some aspect of their agency (needs, autonomy, traits, or contributions) ignored or misrecognized. For further clarification of this point, see Zurn (2015: 55–9).
- 13.
A familiar objection to recognition theory as a normative undertaking is that it counsels social conformism. I believe my presentation of Honneth’s account of recognition—which would also apply mutatis mutandis to Hegel’s and Taylor’s accounts—is that individual empowerment, at least within the ambit of complex modern society, is itself one of the recognized aims of socialization. Amy Allen (2016) and others of Foucauldian (or Adornoian) bent have criticized teleological accounts of so-called progressive forms of modern socialization of the sort proposed by Honneth for concealing the implicit power relations conditioning the recognitive dynamics of individuation. However, given that she herself endorses a thin understanding of social progress revolving around individual autonomy, I fail to see the point of her critique. Certainly, Honneth himself has not been remiss in criticizing the power relations that prevent existing social institutions from realizing the emancipatory expectations for recognition they promise. Turning to a different objection, Patchen Markell (2003) and Lois McNay (2008) have argued that the very concept of recognition straddles contradictory aims: that of discovering authentic properties of persons that have been present in them all along, albeit perhaps in repressed form, and that of constituting properties of persons through an original act of second- or third-person attribution. For his part, Honneth acknowledges the unavoidable ambiguity of recognition as straddling these senses. For example, recognizing a former slave’s dignity might be said to simultaneously disclose and further realize a capability for empowerment. Finally, Nancy Fraser (Fraser and Honneth 2003) has famously criticized Honneth for reductively characterizing all injustices and pathologies as primarily symptomatic of distorted or absent recognition. I think Honneth is more charitably understood to be defending a weaker claim, namely, that social, cultural, economic, and political institutions imply recognitive expectations which they often fail to satisfy. Whether it is lack of proper recognition or lack of economic resources or some combination of both that explains why women in developing countries choose to submit to patriarchal norms can only be determined empirically.
- 14.
Honneth (2014: 38–43), however, regards reflexive freedom-- exemplified in three moral modalities of rational self-legislation (of universalizable norms), personal self-realization (of authentic desires), and collective self-actualization (of socio-political identity)—as a higher form of freedom than negative freedom, insofar as it can only be effectively exercised through a social procedure of rational discourse. As he notes, in the writings of Habermas and Apel this ideal of discourse anticipates an ideal, unlimited community, although in practice it presupposes a real, finite community.
- 15.
Honneth argues that moral, legal, economic, and socio-political relationships not only build upon the ethical care that originates in parent-child relationships but also incorporate such care into their underlying norms. Honneth’s thinking here arguably conflicts with the stronger Hegelian structural differentiations in his Parsonian account of social action spheres that inform his late theory of social freedom. I thank Todd Hedrick for this observation (Honneth 2012: 205).
- 16.
In addition to social justice, something similar to the solidarity found among intimates re-emerges here: Duties of civic friendship in a liberal democracy extend beyond duties of reciprocity; like a family whose members are willing to make unreciprocated sacrifices for the most vulnerable among them, the modern state is properly perceived by its members as a collective project of self-determination in which the protection and enhancement of each citizen’s agency ethically requires that those who are privileged contribute more of their income to improving the lives of the worst off in the name of solidarity.
- 17.
Some data show that participation in microfinance can sometimes make women more—not less-- vulnerable to spousal abuse (IWDA 2018; also see note 24).
- 18.
Globalization is an ambivalent force for emancipating and empowering women. Exposure to new ideas about one’s opportunities for self-understanding and self-fulfillment can be the first step toward emancipation and empowerment. The expansion of market economies, in particular the form of market economy associated with global capitalism, might be a factor in this. But global capitalism threatens subsistence farming (the occupation of most women in the developing world) and often “emancipates” them by forcing them into exploitative factory work, where patterns of male domination remain intact.
- 19.
“About 80% of Zambian wives find it acceptable to be beaten by their husbands ‘as a form of chastisement, according to the latest Zambia Demographic Health Survey. Out of 5029 women interviewed countrywide, 79% said they should be beaten if they went out without their husband’s permission. 61% said a beating was acceptable if they denied their husband sex, while 45% said a beating was in order if they cooked ‘bad’ food.” Anonymous staff report, “Wife-beating in Zambia a Natural Consequence,” East African Mail and Guardian, 3 (December 3, 2003:11/37).
- 20.
The socially recognized norms of recognition that a modern society upholds, for example those mandating equal respect as citizens and human beings, on one side, and unequal social esteem as contributors and achievers, on the other, may contradict each other, thereby causing people to doubt who they are (citizens in solidarity or self-promoters in a zero-sum game of competition). Not only may different groups in society appeal to competing norms of recognition embedded, for example, in the action sphere demarcated by economic cooperation—a possibility I noted with respect to how the competitive, status achievement norm of capitalism may contradict the solidaristic egalitarianism of social democracy---but whole societies in process of change, for example, from traditional to modern society, may experience a tension between hierarchical and egalitarian norms of recognition. This tension is most keenly felt in the family, the locus classicus of colliding civil rights and customary duties. Perhaps within modern societies we observe a similar tension that impacts the family, between norms of recognition that interpret conjugal relationships according to either a hierarchy of economic contribution/dependency or a purely formal norm of civil equality and independence; or between this latter norm and a norm of reciprocal care and a sense of duty toward the other.
- 21.
For the iconic treatment of double consciousness in North American race studies, see W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois discusses African Americans’ experience of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes” of a white racist society and “measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looked back in contempt.” More recent race and gender theorists (see, for example Frantz Fanon and Francis M. Beale) emphasize both the self-deprecating and self-empowering potential of a divided (double- or triple-) consciousness, which can achieve a privileged epistemic social distance needed to perceive and criticize racist, ethnic, and patriarchal forms of society.
- 22.
I use the expression “preferring submission to emancipation as their ideal goal” qualifiedly, in the sense that an ideal moral commitment can only be described as one’s highest preference with certain conceptual misgiving. As I note in the introduction, the problem with this formulation is that it cannot make sense of how our moral commitments impose sacrifices on what we would prefer to do. The alternative, however, is to detach morality and higher-order value commitment strivings from preferences as such, thereby turning them into social constraints rather than enabling conditions.
- 23.
Only about a third of households studied prefer micro-finance institutions (MFIs) to other, more flexible, sources of loans, such as local moneylenders and extended family. The vast majority of the more than 137 million who participate globally—an 18-fold increase since 1997-- are women (they compose 97% of Mohammed Yunus’s Grameen Bank’s clientele). MFIs were heralded as an innovative anti-poverty program and driver of development, providing liquid assets to meet a variety of needs and encouraging savings. However, recent studies on the short- and long-term effects of MFIs suggest that MFIs may have little impact on development, as measured by increases in welfare, health, education, consumption and women’s empowerment. These results partly reflect the small size of loans, which on average must be repaid within a year at an APR of 37%, running as high as 100%, mainly due to transaction costs. Very few MFI loans enable the hiring of employees for larger enterprises. Indeed, because loan recipients are often required to begin paying back their loans in weekly installments within a week of taking out their loans, they cannot invest in longer term projects that promise greater returns down the road. Emphasizing efficient small-scale enterprises that offer quick but small returns, micro-financed start-ups face the additional challenge of having to compete in saturated, highly competitive, local markets. The hope that women loan recipients engaged in cooperative ventures will pool their capital to set up more lucrative businesses seems to have been frustrated by a cruel irony: in lieu of front end collateral that is normally needed to take out loans, the entire group stands as guarantor of each member’s loan, so that not only draconian debt collection agents—who have been known to “repossess” everything from houses to eating utensils—but also the entire group of co-guarantors acts as a coercive enforcement arm of the microlender. The result is that most loans are repaid, but individuals in the cooperative sometimes have to pay other’s installments in order to avoid collective default, which can result in recriminations and shame. In general, given the impact of adverse weather and uncertain health, which always impact the poor more than the rich, it is not unusual for loan recipients to take out secondary loans to repay primary loans, thereby locking themselves into a spiral of indebtedness. MFIs, however, encourage positive changes in consumption, from non-essential goods to durable, business-related goods (Banerjee et al. 2015). Furthermore, restructuring microcredit around cooperative savings and lending that dispense with outside creditors, as Oxfam has done, mitigates the problem of indebtedness. For a critical assessment of the potential of microfinance to lift poor people out of poverty, including a controversial accusation of tax fraud and profiteering against Yunus and the Grameen Bank, see Tom Heinemann’s 2010 documentary, The Micro-Debt.
- 24.
Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum 2000) discusses the case of a woman (Vasanti) who participated in a SEWA loan: “Her sense of dignity increased as she paid off her loan” (107) and her self-confidence grew as her “potential to become capable of …human functions” through increased nutrition, education, and support increased (Nussbaum 2000: 110). Other studies (Sarumathi and Mohan 2011; Ali et al. 2016; and Norwood 2015) confirm the positive impact of micro-credit on women’s empowerment. However, in a survey of research studies conducted in Bangladesh, Mohammad Rahman (Rahman 2017) notes that the overall positive impact on women’s empowerment these studies show must be qualified by the lack of control groups and baseline data incorporated into these studies (viz., women who choose micro-credit might already exhibit signs of substantial empowerment). The biggest gain in empowerment concerns decision-making regarding children’s education (especially beyond 2 years after participating in a micro-credit program). Only some groups of women experienced greater freedom to visit relatives, access their own medical treatment and contraception, and decide on the purchase of personal and household items as well as matters relating to recreation. No significant improvement was seen in decisions regarding borrowing, buying assets, freedom of movement, voting, children’s marriage, which are either made jointly with husbands or by husbands alone.
- 25.
Martha Nussbaum (2000: 236-39) mentions the intriguing case of Hamida Khala, an educated Indian woman who autonomously chooses as her life plan—against her husband’s initial enlightened protestations to the contrary—a life of moderate domestic seclusion permitting some outside activities in modest full-body covering. In this instance there is no contradiction between asserting one’s right to autonomy and reflectively accepting restrictive gender- roles. The reflective submission to gender roles (sometimes undertaken as an expression of female empowerment) must be distinguished from uncritical submission to gender roles in deference to patriarchal norms that one has internalized as a function of one’s identity agency .
- 26.
Khader’s conception of freedom-respecting (non-paternalistic) and culturally sensitive development intervention (what she calls deliberative perfectionism) seeks, correctly in my mind, to promote persons’ ability to reflectively reconsider both the degree to which their social reality is as resistant to offering potential for human fulfillment as they perceive it to be and the degree to which their own initial preferences might be reconsidered as inappropriate in light of reconsidering their perception of reality. My own reservations with Khader’s position lie in her conceptual understanding of this intervention. If the main cause of IAPs is a resistant reality that still needs to be changed in order to allow for fulfilling preferences, then the choice to adapt before this change has occurred is simply rational and is not, pace Khader, inappropriate; however, if the reality already permits acting on appropriate preferences, Khader has not convincingly explained why deliberative, dialogical intervention is needed in the first place, unless it forestalls a deficit in self-critical rationality and autonomy, thereby contradicting her view that IAPs do not imply shortfalls in procedural autonomy (due to ignorance of options, unreflective mentality, etc.) or substantive autonomy (due to overvaluing the goodness of dependency, social conformity, submission to authority, self-abnegation, etc.). Likewise, her dismissal of the “adaptive self view of IAP,” held by Nussbaum and others, that links IAPs to lack of self-confidence, self-respect , or self-esteem, while surely correct, downplays the extent to which a preference to submit, even while retaining a healthy sense of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem, can reflect a pathological rationalization. However rational submission might be when done out of necessity and for the short term, when done over an extended period of time under less constraining conditions, dissimulating submission can become indistinguishable from submission even to the dissimulator; in short (to use Sartre’s memorable description of an inauthentic self-understanding that denies the truth of its own action) it can become a form of bad faith that has existential implications for choosing (and preferring) not just this or that action but for choosing (and preferring) this or that self.
- 27.
These socially (mis)recognized statuses and identities are, as one intersectional theorists tells us (Crenshaw 2017), more than the sum of their parts: a poor Bangladeshi woman experiences being a woman, being poor, etc. differently than a poor African American woman does.
- 28.
More research needs to be done exploring the conceptual and empirical links between ontological and empirical forms of distorted or disturbed recognition. However, my discussion of the different ways women can adapt to patriarchy suggests that the relationship between psychological and ontological aspects of recognition as it bears on the question of agency appears to be more complicated than some philosophers of recognition realize. Although it might seem that ontological recognition of agency can be achieved without being accompanied by psychological recognition, as Robert Pippin seems to argue in his account of Hegel’s recognitive ethics (Pippin 2008), I would suggest, in keeping with Honneth and Charles Taylor (1994), that this possibility is rather remote. Conceivably, one can be recognized as a rationally accountable agent in the abstract, with all the rights accorded to one who enjoys equal status as a formal rights holder in both legal and moral senses of the term, and still be denied a sense of psychological integrity that is free from guilt and self-abnegation. A recipient of micro-credit might suddenly find herself catapulted into civil society as an independent, legally empowered contractor with a new-found moral freedom to decide how to invest her capital but still be shunned by her husband and members of her community. She may be relatively certain of herself as a free agent but still suffer the anguish of non-recognition from family members and community. Conversely she could hand over her newly acquired assets to her husband and live the secure identity of an obedient wife to her husband while simultaneously playing a risky game of deception or suffering the shame of having abdicated an opportunity for empowerment that she knows other women have seized.
Both of these scenarios, with their respective uncoupling of ontological and psychological recognition—certainty of who one is, on one side, and feeling (and being) loved, respected, and esteemed, on the other—are conceivable. However, in most cases, a woman who asserts her identity as a fully empowered legal and moral agent will need the psychological support of a community of like-minded women with whom she can share and manage her assets within a cooperative setting. Women living in urban areas avail themselves of this opportunity more than women in rural areas. These women will more likely have access to other supports as well, such as nearby medical and family planning clinics, job-training centers, literacy programs, and schools providing on-going adult education. Given how ideologically entrenched patriarchal subordination is in some areas, permanent, long-term, consciousness-raising education about women’s oppression will also be needed in order for micro-finance to effectively empower women. Politically enlightened women who continue to perform a subordinate domestic role out of practical necessity will be reminded of their suppressed humanity whenever they suffer abuse and indignity at the hands of their husbands, but hopefully this divided consciousness, with the support of other women, will enable them to resist their oppression without affirming it insincerely, in transitioning toward a less conflicted identity and a freer and more fulfilling life.
References
Ali, Sayed Samir, et al. 2016. The Effect of Microfinance on Women’s Empowerment: Evidence from Malaysia. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (3): 318–337.
Allen, Amy. 2016. The End of progress. New York: Columbia University Press.
Babbitt, Susan. 1993. Feminism and Objective Interests: The Role of Transformation Experiences in Rational Deliberation. In Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, 245–264. New York: Routledge.
Baber, Harriet E. 2007. Adaptive Preference. Social Theory and Practice 33 (1): 105–126.
Banerjee, Abhijit, et al. 2015. The Miracle of Microfinance: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation. American Economics Journal: Applied Economics 7 (1): 22–53.
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Cheston, Susy, and Lisa Kuhn. 2002. Empowering Women Through Microfinance. New York: UNIFFEM.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 2017. On Intersectionality: Essential Writings. New York: The New Press.
Davion, Victoria. 1991. Integrity and Radical Change. In Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia Card. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Elster, Jon. 1982. Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Reality. In Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, 219–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fell, Ben, and Miles Hewstone. 2015. Psychological Perspectives on Poverty. Joseph Rowntree Foundation (posted June 4; www.jrf.org.uk).
Fraser, Nancy, and Axel Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange. London: Verso.
Haushofer, J. 2014. The Price of Poverty: Psychology and the Cycle of Need. Foreign Affairs (posted July 14).
Honneth, Axel. 1996. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 2008. Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea. London: Oxford University Press.
———. 2012. The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———. 2014. Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life. New York: Columbia University Press.
Ingram, David. 2018. World Crisis and Underdevelopment: A Critical Theory of Poverty, Agency, and Coercion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA). 2018. Do No Harm Toolkit. https://iwda.org.au/resource/do-no-harm-toolkit/
Kabeer, Naila. 1998. Money Can’t Buy Me Love? Re-evaluating Gender, Credit, and Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh, IDS Discussion Paper 363. Sussex: Institute for Development Studies.
———. 2001. Conflicts Over Credit: Re-evaluating the Empowerment Potential of Loans to Women in Rural Bangladesh. World Development 29 (1): 63–84.
Khader, Serene. 2011. Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2014. Empowerment Through Self-Subordination: Microcredit and Women’s Agency. In Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights, ed. Diana Meyers, 223–248. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Khan, Rana E.A., and Sara Noreen. 2012. Micro-Finance and Women Empowerment: A Case Study of District Bahawalpur (Pakistan). African Journal of Business Management 6 (12): 4514–4521.
Lindemann, Hilde. 2013. Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Markell, Patchen. 2003. Bound by Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McNay, Lois. 2008. Against Recognition. London: Polity Press.
Mehta, Pratap B. 2011. After Colonialism: The Impossibility of Self-Determination. In Colonialism and Its Legacies, ed. Iris M. Young and Jacob T. Levy, 147–169. New York: Lexington Books.
Meyers, Diana T. 2004. Being Yourself: Essays on Identity, Action, and Social Life. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Mullin, Amy. 1995. Selves, Diverse and Divided: Can Feminists Have Diversity Without Multiplicity? Hypatia 10 (4): 1–31.
Narayan, Deepa, Raj Patel, and Kai Schafft. 2000. Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? New York: World Bank Group and Oxford University Press.
Norwood, Carolette. 2015. Women’s Empowerment and Microcredit: A Case Study from Rural Ghana. National Center for Biotechnology Information 4: 1–22.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2001. Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Options. Economics and Philosophy 17: 67–88.
Pippin, Robert. 2008. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency and Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rahman, Mohammad. 2017. The Effects of Microfinance on Women’s Empowerment: New Evidence from Bangladesh. International Journal of Social Economics 44 (12): 1745–1757.
Sapolsky, Robert. 2015. Stress and the Brain: Individual Individual Variability and the Inverted-U. Nature and Neuroscience 18: 1344–1346. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4109.
Sarumathi, S., and K. Mohan. 2011. Role of Microfinance in Women’s Empowerment. Journal of Management and Science 1 (1): 1–10.
Schweiger, Gottfried. 2013. Recognition and Social Exclusion: A Recognition Theoretical Exploration of Poverty in Europe. Ethical Perspectives 20 (4): 529–554.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. The Politics of Recognition. In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. A. Gutmann, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Walker, Margaret U. 2007. Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University.
Zurn, Christopher. 2015. Axel Honneth: A Critical Theory of the Social. London: Polity Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ingram, D. (2020). When Microcredit Doesn’t Empower Poor Women: Recognition Theory’s Contribution to the Debate Over Adaptive Preferences. In: Schweiger, G. (eds) Poverty, Inequality and the Critical Theory of Recognition. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45795-2_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45795-2_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45794-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45795-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)