Theorising Recognition

Abstract

This chapter is structured into two sections. The first section begins by considering the role of ‘recognition’ within social movement and political theory. Since the 1960s, the notion of recognition has been central to social movement struggles for equality across the arenas of social class, race, embodiment, gender and sexuality, and related issues of identity are the drivers of recognition claims. At the same time, recent social and political theory has examined the meaning and significance of ‘recognition’. In this way, scholars have set out differing parameters when considering the relevance of recognition for social justice. This chapter begins, then, by thinking about the academic turn to recognition alongside the fracturing of social democratic ideals, and especially the rise of identity politics and new social movements, in the late 1960s.