“Identity or Status?”
7/17/03
Page 8
between them have been equalized. But in contrast to Weber, there are no theoretical
requirements in Fraser’s model that the members of a status group share any sense or
feeling of belonging together, that they undertake collective action on the basis of that
shared feeling of solidarity, or that they establish and maintain themselves as a group
through differential judgements of comparative worth or honor between themselves and
outsiders. What is left of Weber’s model with respect to power is only the requirement
that members of status groups are in fact unequally placed in social institutions, whether
or not they notice this and whether or not they perceive themselves to form a group at all.
In short, Fraser has expunged all internalist elements from Weber’s account of status
groups.
(4) Normative Standard of Parity of Participation
The fourth major development in Fraser’s position is her ongoing specification
and clarification of the general justificatory framework of justice she believes required
for social theory. This revolves around a capacious norm of justice—parity of
participation—that can be sensitively applied to issues of justice concerning both
maldistribution and misrecognition. From her 1997 Tanner Lectures on, she has worked
to come up with one normative framework within which both distributive and recognition
claims can be accommodated, without reducing one kind of claim to the other. Her 2001
essay puts forth the most precise formulation:
The normative core of my conception is the notion of parity of
participation. According to this norm, justice requires social
arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with
one another as peers. For participatory parity to be possible, I claim, at
least two conditions must be satisfied. First, the distribution of material
resources must be such as to ensure participants’ independence and voice.
… The second condition requires that institutionalized patterns of cultural
Convention