Mikael Carleheden

Recognition, social invisibility, and disrespect

This is the horror of being socially invisible. If you can’t love me, then at least detest and despise me! To make people disappear by refusing to take notice of them, by demonstratively seeing through them, is a form of disrespect to be distinguished from outright disrespect in the form of being the object of stigmatizing and devaluating attitudes, gestures, or actions. This distinction was clear already to Adam Smith when he wrote: ‘To be overlooked, and to be disapproved, are things entirely different’ (quoted in Todorov [1995] 2001, 82). Thus, we have two distinct forms of disrespect. The positive counterpart to disrespect is the kind of affirmation that a person receives by being recognized by someone as someone, in the form of being loved or cared about, as being granted equal rights and being treated as an equal, or as being approved of and appreciated for whom one is or what one does. The contemporary discussion of recognition and disrespect, with important forerunners, took off in the early 1990s. Key discussants were at the time Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor. There were also other important contributors to these debates, such as Nancy Fraser and Tzvetan Todorov. Within a decade the topic had entered and become prominent generally in the social sciences, and now discussions of recognition and disrespect are to be found within a broad spectrum of disciplines. From a social science perspective there are at least five dimensions from which issues of recognition, social invisibility, and disrespect can be addressed. Firstly, the topic of recognition has an action-theoretical dimension. To recognize someone is to behave in a certain way towards him or her, by way of attitudes, gestures, or actions. The question is: What exactly does ego do when recognizing an alter? What are the genus and species of recognition (and of disrespect)? Furthermore, in what sense can we recognize specific groups or categories of people? Secondly, there is a dimension that can be described as interaction-theoretical. Here the focus is on interpersonal relationships, comprising two or more individuals, stretching out over time. In this case recognition and disrespect are qualities of unfolding interpersonal relationships. How is it possible to theorize the dynamics, the ups and downs, of such relationships? Thirdly, we have a dimension relating to figurations of recognition. Here the actors are not only individuals, but also different forms of collectives: groups, organizations, and social movements. The more complex a figuration of recognition Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory Vol. 13, No. 1, April 2012, 1–3

Introduction: thematic section on social pathologies of contemporary modernity

Social pathology was once a mainstream concern of the social sciences, but over the years it has become associated with conventional, ‘old fashioned’, or normatively conservative standpoints. For instance, the social science focus on social pathologies of the early and mid-twentieth century was on specific topics, such as alcoholism, crime and delinquency and (what was seen at that time as) sexual deviance. Conscious of this problematic antecedence and its narrowly ideological and moralistic legacy, this Social Pathologies of Contemporary Modernity thematic section of Distinktion breaks decisively from this anachronistic context, as indicated by its three distinct emphases: the focus on the Social – i.e. historical and cultural as opposed to reductive psychological and biomedical – sources of Contemporary epidemic pathologies; and, extending beyond the urgency of the new pathologies and beyond the immediate and particular context(s) of the present societ(ies) in which they occur, the analysis extends to encompass principles and processes of global Western modernity as a whole. Our central hypothesis is that the characteristic malaises and disorders of our times are related to cultural pathologies of the social body and disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Hence, our focus is on understanding contemporary problems of health and well-being in the light of radical changes of social structures and institutions, extending to deep crises in our civilization as a whole in the wake of two recent and ongoing ‘revolutions’, namely the conditions of post-modernity and the hegemony of neo-liberalism. The social pathologies of contemporary modernity – depression, stress-related illnesses, eating disorders, suicide and deliberate self-harm, to name just a few – are the subject of much discussion today, and they are the problems recognized and targeted by mental health professionals and in public health campaigns promoting mindfulness and well-being. While sympathetic to these problems and while aware of these developments in public mental health promotion and appreciative of them insofar as they are well-intentioned, this thematic section of Distinktion is concerned with understanding more widespread social pathologies than fall within the conventional remit of mental health and well-being.

Book Review: The Art of Social Theory

motivations for doing their research, but the goal of research (as a specialized activity) is not subordinate to these motivations. In this view scientific research has its own values, and the principle of valueneutrality basically states that the epistemic values of research should not be overrun by other considerations. On the other hand, the integrity of this position also implies that social scientists should not overreach: as they do not have any special authority of the validity of values, they should abstain from misleading their audience by presenting value statements as consequences of their studies. The next two chapters discuss ways in which social scientists might overreach their epistemic authority. Chapter 4 shows by a competent argumentation analysis how the attempts by critical realists to bypass the fact-value distinction fail. While this chapter is mostly of interest to people who have been influenced by critical realism, Chapter 5 is of more general interest. It illustrates the principle of valueneutrality by discussing in which sense social scientists can answer the question: Is Britain a meritocracy? According to Hammersley, the Weberian position sets important limits for answering questions like this. Most importantly, the notion of meritocracy is contested and value-laden, and social scientists cannot say which of the many conflicting notions of meritocracy is the right one. Thus, social scientists can only answer the question when the audience has some sort of agreement about the notion. This implies that social scientists should be explicit about the notion of merit they are employing. While this does not limit the validity of any particular study, it limits its relevance to audiences that wish to operate with a different notion of merit. It also implies that social scientists should abstain from claims that they have captured the ‘‘essence’’ of merit, as this claim might not hold for alternative conceptualizations. Chapter 6 focuses on another kind of overreach of epistemic authority. Hammersley challenges the assumption that social scientific explanations are intrinsically different from explanations provided by lay actors. He uses as material various public explanations provided for the 2011 youth riots in England to show that while social scientific commentators presented their explanations for the riots as superior to the accounts presented by others, they were actually not that different. The healthy message of the chapter is that one should not automatically assume that social scientists have epistemic authority. The authority of science is based on research and systematic evaluation of evidence and when these are not available – for example, when providing commentary on ongoing social events – one should not assume that social scientists are that different from any other social commentators in terms of their sophistication or explanatory resources. There are without doubt many people who do not accept Hammersley’s views described above. These people should read this book. I do not expect instant conversion, but I wish this book to trigger articulate and argumentative defenses of the alternative positions. If the critics do not just dismiss the book’s argument as the ‘‘old Weberian’’ position but actually make an attempt to show where it goes wrong, Hammersley’s book has been successful and primed a significant improvement in the self-understanding of the social sciences.