Refuting the argument to choose between "the politics of recognition" and the "politics of redistribution," Justice Interruptus integrates the best aspects of both. ********************************************************* ** What does it mean to think critically about politics at a time when inequality is increasing worldwide, when struggles for the recognition of difference are eclipsing struggles for social equality, and when we lack any credible vision of an alternative to the present order? Philosopher Nancy Fraser claims that the key is to overcome the false oppositions of "postsocialist" commonsense. Refuting the view that we must choose between "the politics of recognition" and the "politics of redistribution," Fraser argues for an integrative approach that encompasses the best aspects of both.
Mohawk Interruptus is a bold challenge to dominant thinking in the fields of Native studies and anthropology. Combining political theory with ethnographic research among the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke, a reserve community in what is now southwestern Quebec, Audra Simpson examines their struggles to articulate and maintain political sovereignty through centuries of settler colonialism. The Kahnawà:ke Mohawks are part of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy. Like many Iroquois peoples, they insist on the integrity of Haudenosaunee governance and refuse American or Canadian citizenship. Audra Simpson thinks through this politics of refusal, which stands in stark contrast to the politics of cultural recognition. Tracing the implications of refusal, Simpson argues that one sovereign political order can exist nested within a sovereign state, albeit with enormous tension around issues of jurisdiction and legitimacy. Finally, Simpson critiques anthropologists and political scientists, whom, she argues, have too readily accepted the assumption that the colonial project is complete. Belying that notion, Mohawk Interruptus calls for and demonstrates more robust and evenhanded forms of inquiry into indigenous politics in the teeth of settler governance.
Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to explicit dispute. Today, the scope of justice is hotly contested, as human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the WTO in targeting injustices that cut across borders. Seeking to re-map the bounds of justice on a broader scale, these movements are challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. As their claims collide with those of nationalists and Westphalian democrats, we witness new forms of "meta-political" contestation in which the scale of justice is an object of explicit dispute. Under these conditions, there is no avoiding an issue that had once seemed to go without saying: What is the proper frame for theorizing justice? Faced with a plurality of competing scales, how do we know which scale of justice is truly just? Scales of Justice tackles this issue. Interrogating struggles over globalization, Nancy Fraser reconstructs the theory of justice for a post-Westphalian world. Revising her widely discussed theory of redistribution and recognition, she introduces representation as a third, "political," dimension of justice, which permits us to re-conceive scale and scope as questions of justice. Seeking to re-imagine political space for a globalizing world, she revisits the concepts of democracy, solidarity, and the public sphere; the projects of critical theory, the World Social Forum, and second-wave feminism; and the thought of Habermas, Rawls, Foucault, and Arendt.
Nancy Fraser’s major new book traces the feminist movement’s evolution since the 1970s and anticipates a new—radical and egalitarian—phase of feminist thought and action. During the ferment of the New Left, “Second Wave” feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements that were questioning core features of capitalist society. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a decline in its utopian energies and the rise of neoliberalism. Now, foreseeing a revival in the movement, Fraser argues for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism able to address the global economic crisis. Feminism can be a force working in concert with other egalitarian movements in the struggle to bring the economy under democratic control, while building on the visionary potential of the earlier waves of women’s liberation. This powerful new account is set to become a landmark of feminist thought.
This groundbreaking volume helps readers understand the history, evolution, and significance of this wide-ranging, often misunderstood, and increasingly important field of study.
This collection of original, state-of-the-art essays by prominent international scholars covers the most important issues comprising the sociology of culture. Provides an invaluable reference resource to all interested in the cultural structures and processes that animate contemporary life Contains 27 essays on the most important issues comprising the sociology of culture, including art, science, religions, race, class, gender, collective memory, institutions, and citizenship Reflects and analyzes the “cultural turn” that has transformed scholarship in the social sciences and humanities.
The collapse of communism, the rise of identity politics, and struggles over global governance have combined to create new challenges for the Left: How to do justice to legitimate claims for multiculturalism and democratization without abandoning the Left's historic-and still indispensable-commitment to economic equality? How to broaden the understanding of injustice by adding cultural and political insult to economic injury? Adding Insult to Injury tracks the debate sparked by Nancy Fraser's controversial effort to combine redistribution, recognition, and representation in a new understanding of social justice. The volume showcases Fraser's critical exchanges with leading thinkers, including Judith Butler, Richard Rorty, Iris Marion Young, Anne Phillips, and Rainer Frost. The result is a wide-ranging and at times contentious exploration of varied approaches to rebuilding the Left.
Uncommon Wealths in Postcolonial Fiction engages urgently with wealth, testing current assumptions of inequality in order to push beyond reductive contemporary readings of the gaping abyss between rich and poor. Shifting away from longstanding debates in postcolonial criticism focused on poverty and abjection, the book marshals fresh perspectives on material, spiritual, and cultural prosperity as found in the literatures of formerly colonized spaces. The chapters ‘follow the money’ to illuminate postcolonial fiction’s awareness of the ambiguities of ‘wealth’, acquired under colonial capitalism and transmuted in contemporary neoliberalism. They weigh idealistic projections of individual and collective wellbeing against the stark realities of capital accumulation and excessive consumption. They remain alert to the polysemy suggested by “Uncommon Wealths,” both registering the imperial economic urge to ensure common wealth and referencing the unconventional or non-Western, the unusual, even fictitious and contrasting privately coveted and exclusively owned wealth with visions of a shared good. Arranged into four sections centred on aesthetics, injustice, indigeneity, and cultural location, the individual chapters show how writers of postcolonial fiction, including Aravind Adiga, Amit Chau-dhuri, Anita Desai, Patricia Grace, Mohsin Hamid, Stanley Gazemba, Tomson Highway, Lebogang Matseke, Zakes Mda, Michael Ondaatje, Kim Scott, and Alexis Wright, employ prosperity and affluence as a lens through which to re-examine issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and family, the cultural value of heritage, land, and social cohesion, and such conflicting imperatives as economic growth, individual fulfilment, social and environmental responsibility, and just distribution. CONTRIBUTORS Francesco Cattani, Sheila Collingwood–Whittick, Paola Della Valle, Sneja Gunew, Melissa Kennedy, Neil Lazarus, John McLeod, Eva–Maria Müller, Helga Ramsey–Kurz, Geoff Rodoreda, Sandhya Shetty, Cheryl Stobie, Helen Tiffin, Alex Nelungo Wanjala, David Waterman
