Work, recognition and subjectivity Relocating the connection between work and social pathologies
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a succinct analysis of Axel Honneth's thoughts on the concept of work and propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory.
Abstract: Recently, following the social and subjective consequences of the neoliberal wave, there seems to be a renewed interest in work as occupying a central place in social and subjective life. For the first time in decades, both sociologists and critical theorists once more again regard work as a major constituent of the subject’s identity and thus as an appropriate object of analysis for those engaged in critique of the social pathologies. The aim of this article is to present a succinct analysis of Axel Honneth’s thoughts on the concept of work and to propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory. To this end, this article will embark upon a reappraisal of the importance of the material and psychological dimensions of the subject’s interactions in the world of work. It aims to demonstrate that the normative demands associated with these dimensions are, like the normative demands of recognition, immanent and universal. In other words, it will argue that the normative ideals related ...
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01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The moral grammar of social conflicts as discussed by the authors has been downloaded hundreds of times for their chosen readings like this, but end up in harmful downloads, rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some malicious virus inside their laptop.
Abstract: Thank you for downloading the struggle for recognition the moral grammar of social conflicts. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their chosen readings like this the struggle for recognition the moral grammar of social conflicts, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some malicious virus inside their laptop.
70 citations
TL;DR: The authors conducted a systematic multi-disciplinary literature review and identified 123 peer-reviewed studies on local food systems, with a focus on North America and Europe, and found that the impact of local food system on different social, economic and environmental factors highly depends on the type of supply chain under assessment, with important differences across product types and countries.
51 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the institutional separation between data and AIaaS, and discuss the challenges of data sharing in the context of Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service (AIaaS).
Abstract: Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service (AIaaS) empowers individuals and organisations to access AI on-demand, in either tailored or ‘off-the-shelf’ forms. However, institutional separation between de...
10 citations
TL;DR: This article explored how gig workers solicit and experience recognition at work and identified a process of anthropotropism whereby gig workers turn to human connections where possible in an attempt to pursue traditional social scripts of collegiality and to gain recognition from legitimate human sources.
Abstract: By curtailing workplace socialisation, platform-mediated gig work hinders the development of affective relationships necessary for the experience of recognition. However, extant research into recognition at work has typically only focused on face-to-face interactions, overlooking technologically complex forms of work where recognition might be sought from and via technical intermediaries. Advancing sociological research into the lived experience of contemporary gig workers, this article draws on 41 interviews with Foodora riders in Norway and Sweden to explore how gig workers solicit and experience recognition at work. I identify a process of anthropotropism, whereby gig workers turn to human connections where possible in an attempt to pursue traditional social scripts of collegiality and to gain recognition from legitimate human sources. Further, I identify how platform-mediated communication does not prohibit recognition, but intermittent automation and neoliberal modes of instrumentalising recognition can disrupt the development of individual subjectivities and lead to feelings of mechanistic dehumanisation.
5 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze Axel Honneth's theory against the background of some of the criticisms that Amy Allen levelled against it and conclude that his endeavor seems to partially compromise his ability to id...
Abstract: In this paper, I will analyze Axel Honneth’s theory against the background of some of the criticisms that Amy Allen levelled against it. His endeavor seems to partially compromise his ability to id...
5 citations
Cites background from "Work, recognition and subjectivity ..."
...I made some steps in this direction in Angella (2016)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider a situation where a subject's only appropriate response to an injury to its own person is to defend itself actively against its assailant, which they call a "struggle".
Abstract: ness of law' does not yet have its reality and support in something itself universal'.\" and thus lacks the executive power found in state authority every subject must defend its rights by itself and, hence, each subject's entire identity is threatened by theft.\" The affected subject's only appropriate response to this injury to its own person is to defend itself actively against its assailant. This 'repercussion' of the crime for its perpetrator in the form of the injured person's resistance is the first sequence of actions that Hegel explicitly calls a 'struggle'. What emerges is a struggle of 'person' against 'person', that is, between two rights-bearing subjects, a struggle for the recognition of each party's different claim: on the one hand, the nflict-generating claim to the unrestricted development of that subjcct's subjectivity; on the other hand, the reactive claim to social respect for property rights. Hegel considers the outcome of the struggle un1('OHlwd by the collision of these two claims to be a foregone conclulon, In Ihlll only one of the two divided parties can refer the threat 22 Hegel's Original Idea unconditionally back to itself as a personality, because only the injured subject struggles, in resisting, for the integrity of its whole person, whereas the criminal is actually merely trying to accomplish something in his or her own particular interest. Therefore, as Hegel quickly concludes, it is the first, attacked subject that 'must gain the upper hand' in the struggle, because it 'makes this personal injury a matter of its entire personality'r\" Hegel follows this social conflict, which starts with a theft and ends with the 'coercion' of the criminal, with a third and final stage of negation, namely, the struggle for honour. With regard to its starting conditions alone, this case of conflict represents the most demanding form of intersubjective diremption [Entzweiungj. This conflict is based not on a violation of an individual assertion of rights, but rather on a violation of the integrity of the person as a whole. Admittedly, Hegel once again leaves the particular motives behind this conflict-generating crime indeterminate here. The reasons, in each case, why a person sets about destroying the framework of an existing relationship of recognition by injuring or insulting the integrity of another subject remain unclear. At this point, however, the reference to a totality is presupposed for both participants in the conflict, in the sense that each is fighting for the' entirety' of his or her individual existence. This can be understood to mean that the intention behind the criminal's insulting act is to demonstrate one's own integrity publicly and thereby make an appeal for the recognition of that integrity, but then the criminal's insulting act would, for its part, have its roots in a prior experience of being insufficiently recognized as an individuated personality. In any case, the two opposing parties in the emerging conflict both have the same goal, namely, to provide evidence for the 'integrity' of his or her own person. Following the usage of his day, Hegel traces this mutually pursued intention back to a need for 'honour'. This is initially to be understood as a type of attitude towards oneself, as it is phrased in the text, through which 'the singular detail becomes something personal and whole'.\" 'Honour', then, is the stance I take towards myself when I identify positively with all my traits and peculiarities. Apparently, then, the only reason that a struggle for 'honour' would occur is because the possibility of such an affirmative relationto-self is dependent, for its part, on the confirming recognition of other subjects. Individuals can only identify completely with themselves to the degree to which their peculiarities and traits meet with the approval and support of their partners to interaction. 'Honour' is thus used to characterize an affirmative relation-to-self thol hi flll'll('ll/rally tied to the presupposition that each individunl jlllI'lklllililly l'I'I'!·!vt'/\"l Crime and Ethical Life 23 intersubjective recognition. For this reason, both subjects in the struggle are pursuing the same goal, namely, the re-establishment of their honour which has been injured for different reasons in each case by attempting to convince the other that their own personality deserves recognition. But they are only able to do this, Hegel further asserts, by demonstrating to each other that they are prepared to risk their lives. Only by being prepared to die do I publicly show that my individual goals and characteristics are more significant to me than my physical survival. In this way, Hegel lets the social conflict resulting from insult turn into a life-and-death struggle, a struggle which always occurs outside the sphere of legally backed claims, since 'the whole [of a person] is at stake' .36 However unclear this account may be on the whole, it offers, for the first time, a more precise overview of Hegel's theoretical aims in the intermediate chapter on 'crime'. The fact that, in the progression of the three stages of social conflict, the identity claims of the subjects involved gradually expand rules out the possibility of granting a merely negative significance to the acts of destruction that Hegel describes. Taken together, the various different conflicts seem rather to comprise precisely the process that prepares the way for the transition from natural to absolute ethical life by equipping individuals with the necessary characteristics and insights. Hegel not only wants to describe how social structures of elementary recognition are' destroyed by the negative manifestation of freedom; he also wants to show, beyond this, that it is only via such acts of destruction that ethically more mature relations of recognition can be formed at all, relations that represent a precondition for the actual development of a 'community of free citizens' .37 Here, one can analytically distinguish two aspects of intersubjective action as the dimensions along which Hegel ascribes to social conflicts something like a moral-practical potential for learning. On the one hand, it is apparently via each new provocation thrust upon them by various crimes that subjects corne to know more about their own, distinctive identity. This is the developmental dimension that Hegel seeks to mark linguistically with the transition from 'person' to 'whole person'. As in the earlier section on 'natural ethical life', the term 'person' here designates individuals who draw their identity primarily from the intersubjective recognition of their status as legally -ompetent agents, whereas the term 'whole person', by contrast, refers io individuals who gain their identity above all from the intersubjective I'\\'l'ognit:ion of their 'particularity'. On the other hand, however, the 1'11111(' hy which subjects gain greater autonomy is also supposed to 111'11\\\\· jlllih 10 1;I'1'111t·1' knowledge of their mutual dependence. This is 24 Hegel's Original Idea the developmental dimension that Hegel seeks to make clear by letting the struggle for honour, in the end, change imperceptibly from a conflict between single subjects into a confrontation between social communities. Ultimately, after they have taken on the challenges posed by different crimes, individuals no longer oppose each other as egocentric actors, but as 'members of a whole'.\" When these two dimensions are considered together and as a unity, then one begins to see the formative process with which Hegel aims to explain the transition from natural to absolute ethical life. His model is guided by the conviction that it is only with the destruction of legal forms of recognition that a consciousness emerges of the moment within intersubjective relationships that can serve as the foundation for an ethical community. For, by violating first the rights and then the honour of persons, the criminal makes the dependence of individuals on the community a matter of common knowledge. To this extent, the social conflicts that shattered natural ethical life prepare subjects to mutually recognize one another as persons who are dependent on each other and yet also completely individuated. In the course of his argument, however, Hegel continues to treat this third stage of social interaction, which is supposed to lead to relations of qualitative recognition among the members of a society, merely as an implicit presupposition. In his account of 'absolute ethical life', which follows the crime chapter, the intersubjective foundation of a future community is said to be a specific relationship among subjects, for which the category of 'mutual intuition' emerges here. The individual 'intuits himself as himself in every other individual' .39 As the appropriation of Schelling's term 'intuition' [Anschauung] suggests, Hegel surely intends this formulation to designate a form of reciprocal relations between subjects that goes beyond merely cognitive recognition. Such patterns of recognition, extending even into the sphere of the affective (for which the category of 'solidarity' would seem to be the most likely label),\" are apparently supposed to provide the communicative basis upon which individuals, who have been isolated from each other by legal relations, can be reunited within the context of an ethical community. In the remaining parts of the System of Ethical Life, however, Hegel does not pursue the fruitful line of thought thus outlined. At this point, in fact, the thread of the argument drawing specifically on a theory of recognition breaks off entirely, and the text limits itself, from here on, to an account of the organizational elements that are supposed to characterize political relations in 'absolute ethical life'. As a result, however, the difficulties and pl'Obll'\"1H 1'11111 flegel's reconstructive analysis had already failed 10 ndd\"I'1I11 III 1111'IlI'('vioUfl slages rornain open nt Ih(, ('1
2,813 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this article, Fraser and Honneth set out to advance the discussion in political philosophy regarding the increasingly polarized political positions of redistribution or recognition, or more simply, class politics versus identity politics.
Abstract: In this debate political philosophers Fraser and Honneth set out to advance the discussion in political philosophy regarding the increasingly polarized political positions of redistribution or recognition, or more simply, class politics versus identity politics.
1,966 citations
"Work, recognition and subjectivity ..." refers background in this paper
...For the notion of ‘surplus’ of recognition, see Honneth (1995), and Fraser and Honneth (2003)....
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TL;DR: Dejours et al. as discussed by the authors present a discussion on the statut de la souffrance and du plaisir au travail in sociologues, based on the perspective psychodynamique adoptee par l'auteur and les theses fortes.
Abstract: Le dernier livre de Christophe Dejours sert de support au present symposium. La perspective psychodynamique adoptee par l’auteur et les theses fortes sur lesquelles debouche son ouvrage fournissent matiere a un debat qui interesse directement les sociologues. En privilegiant chacun a leur maniere des angles d’attaques et des questionnements tires de leur experience de chercheur, J.‑P. Durand et I. Baszanger engagent une discussion sur le statut de la souffrance et du plaisir au travail. Comme...
287 citations
"Work, recognition and subjectivity ..." refers background in this paper
...…in subjectivity, acceptance of domination, insensitivity to his or her own suffering as well as others’, violence (both at work and beyond) (Dejours, 1998; 2011b; Deranty, 2010: 186–90, 213–16), reduced vitality, a sense of humiliation and of inability to adapt, and dynamics that may in…...
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Book•
11 Feb 2014
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory of justice as an analysis of society is presented, with a focus on negative freedom and the social contract and its relation to the right to freedom in general.
Abstract: ForewordIntroduction: A Theory of Justice as an Analysis of SocietyPart I. Historical Background: The Right to Freedom1. Negative Freedom and the Social Contract2. Reflexive Freedom and Its Conception of Justice3. Social Freedom and the Doctrine of Ethical LifeTransition: The Idea of Democratic Ethical LifePart II. The Possibility of Freedom4. Legal Freedom5. Moral FreedomPart III. The Reality of Freedom6. Social FreedomNotesIndex
250 citations
"Work, recognition and subjectivity ..." refers background in this paper
...It should indicate and analyze social pathologies through normative reconstruction, as Honneth does with his concept of recognition (Honneth, 2014)....
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...…a form of social progress we can interpret as a process of (inter)subjective emancipation (Honneth, 1995).4 With normative reconstruction of the intersubjective expectations regarding the market sphere, we can measure the scope of both social progress and regression within it (Honneth, 2014)....
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Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: In this article, Honneth's Critique of Power is a rich interpretation of the history of critical theory, which clarifies its central problems and emphasizes the "social" factors that should provide that theory with a normative and practical orientation.
Abstract: In this rich interpretation of the history of critical theory, Axel Hormeth clarifies critical theory's central problems and emphasizes the social factors that should provide it with a normative and practical orientation. Axel Honneth's Critique of Power is a rich interpretation of the history of critical theory, which clarifies its central problems and emphasizes the "social" factors that should provide that theory with a normative and practical orientation. Honneth focuses on the dialog between French and German social theory that was beginning at the time of Michel Foucault's death. It traces the common roots of the work of Foucault and Jurgen Habermas to a basic text of the last generation of critical theorists-Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment-and draws from this connection the outline of a program that might unite and surpass their seemingly irreconcilable methods of critiquing power structures. In doing so, Honneth provides a constructive and nonpolemical framework for comparisons between the two theorists. And he presents a novel interpretation of Foucault's analysis of social systems. Honneth traces the internal contradictions in critical theory through an analysis of Horkheimer's early programmatic writings, the Dialectic of Enlightenment, and Adorno's later social-theoretical writings. He shows how Habermas and Foucault in their distinctive ways reinserted the social world into critical theory but argues that neither operation has been wholly successful. His cogent analysis redirects critical social theory in ways that can draw on the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of the two approaches.
238 citations