Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power (review)

Recognition Struggles and Social Movements, the result of five years of ongoing meetings and discussions among the authors, addresses the underpinnings of the paradigm shift from claims for redistribution and social justice to demands for recognition of group difference. Through a cornucopia of remarkable essays that draw from multiple perspectives on gender, race/ethnic differences, minority claims, and sexual identities, the authors reflect upon misrecognized social actors' alliances and competitions, as well as upon the forces that empower and marginalize them both cross-nationally and cross-historically.

To what extent are struggles for recognition linked to claims for social justice and redistribution? Who is able (and genuinely authorized) to utter the voice of those fighting for recognition? These questions and others are addressed by about a dozen articles carefully edited by Barbara Hobson, the intellectual mentor of the project, who in the introduction presents the theoretical thesaurus from where the essays (diverse in topics and approaches) are able to develop a common epistemological language across time and space. The predicament of the book is precisely its forte: in-depth theoretical analysis is translated into concrete empirical examples and case studies, some of which strive to convey their historical and sociological specificity albeit the volume's multifaceted aspects.

Nancy Fraser points out the emergence of struggles for recognition as either stripped from discursive claims on social-structural inequalities, or linked to politics of redistribution as a side effect of cultural misrecognition. Concerned about the cultural reification of identity politics, she proposes alternative analytical models that frame identity claims within a social status paradigm, which recognizes group members' struggles to achieve status equality by overcoming social subordination. Fraser's assertion is supported, but also challenged, by those in the volume who question simplistic allegiances between claims for recognition in the political arena and struggles against economic injustices (see Williams in the volume).

The book stresses the fact that struggles for recognition not only take place among marginalized and dominating groups, but actually involve misrepresented actors engaged in conflicting agendas, as in the case of aboriginal women in Australia who confront white feminists' emphasis on male oppression vis-à-vis their claims on economic justice and racial recognition (Lake's essay). Sainsbury relies on an historical case (fights for women's suffrage in the United States) to illustrate intersecting struggles for inclusion in Oklahoma statehood that involve women, Native Americans, and African Americans. Clashing interests among diverse social groups are also exemplified by Szalai's analysis of women's growing participation in the Hungarian labor force in post-socialist Hungary, versus the increasing impoverishment of the Roma people.

To understand the role of agency among social actors who strive for social and political recognition, the volume presents remarkable case studies. Hobson, for example, chooses the analysis of women's political struggles in Sweden and Ireland in order to portray two specific forms of gender misrecognition: one based on familialism and nationalism (Ireland), and the other based on social democratic universalism with emphasis on class differences that renders invisible women's devaluated status.

The transnational and media-related constitution of social identity is developed by essays depicting how actors' struggles are shaped (and constrained) by the media, advocacy groups, and international NGOs. For example, Gal's analysis on the circulation of discourse about women in Hungarian periodicals reveals the importance of translation in reinterpreting feminist texts, exemplified by mainstream attacks to feminist agendas on the basis of equalizing women's claims with pornographic iconography. Ferree and Gamson's comparative analysis on abortion rights in Germany and in the United States, and Williams's conspicuous analysis of the claims of minority ethnic and migrant women in the European Union show that social struggles for recognition are dependent on political agendas and discursive apparatus that exceed the original demands of emerging social actors.

The issue of authorized (or legitimized) representation (e.g., who advocates for whom? Who is rightly represented...