Justice As Social Implications Of Nancy Fraser's Social Justice

Nancy Fraser seeks social justice as social arrangements that make it possible for everyone to partake on an equal position in social life. These social justices include the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition. Redistribution claims focus on the redistribution of certain resources and recognition claims focus on the equality of people in terms of culture and respect different views. However, there has been an increasing disassociation between redistributive claims and recognition claims because each disregard the other since advocates of redistribution reject the politics of recognition and vice versa. This disassociation initiated Fraser to stipulate social justice to involve both redistribution and recognition, as

Redistributive claims aim to distribute justly the allocation of resources (Fraser, 1996:3). For example, resources of the rich are justly redistributed to help an economy that receives less. Furthermore, redistributive claims focus on the socio-economical injustices that are embedded within an economic society and are assumed wholly concerned with the injustices of class orientations (Fraser, 1996:6). Essentially, if injustices arise within redistribution, people’s participation is prevented as equals by economic structures and this causes complications since resources are denied. In denying resources, it excludes economic structures that institutionalise poverty, exploitation and inconsistencies in wealth, income and labour (Blunden, 2004). Moreover, injustices with redistributive claims raise issues with class structure. Since, the injustices lie at the heart of the economic structures, the appropriate solution would then be to restructure the economic society and by doing this, the recognition of economic classes should not be recognised and abolished (Fraser,

Firstly, the two claims have contrasting views on the conceptions of injustice (Fraser, 1996:6). This is because the politics of redistribution focuses on the socioeconomic injustices that are grounded within the political-economic structure of society (Fraser, 1996:6). Fraser gives the classic example of the exploited working class identified by Marx where social-differentiation occurs between classes (Fraser, 1996: 11). Thus, it creates the appropriation of labour of the working class under the domination of the capitalist class. This act of appropriation causes an injustice of economic marginalisation, as the working class are confined to undesirable work for the benefit of the capitalist class (Fraser, 1996: 12). In contrast, the politics of recognition focuses on cultural injustices that originate from the social arrangements of representation, interpretation and communication (Fraser, 1996:7). For example, one’s cultural domination’s communications associated with another culture causes injustice because there is a hostility between cultural groups that leads to misrecognition of one’s culture and creates an act of disrespect (Fraser,