Recognition Theory

55

incomplete belonging, in combination with Colombo et al’s (2009) study suggests that confusing experiences of belonging could lead to an ambiguous SofB. However, the emotions and experiences related to SofB are often captured through binary and dichotomous terms, for example:

security/insecurity, acceptance/non-acceptance, comfort/discomfort, home/displacement, similar/different, etc. These findings inspire empirical exploration of the presence of negative experiences or emotions in relation to the concept of SofB. This scholarship particularly raises questions about how individuals actively or purposefully navigate these experiences of

“non-belonging,” including how they regain or attempt to regain SofB in the process. Because some scholars (e.g. Kumsa, 2006; Marshall, 2002; Probyn, 2006; Yuval-Davis, 2006) have argued that belonging entails desires for belonging and the longing to belong, examining the active coping strategies that 1.5GUY employ to regain SofB are not only important elements of this study, but also phenomenon that can potentially contribute to the existing understanding of the production of SofB in everyday life.

56

value, care, affirmation, love, approval, and appreciation—all emotions relevant to consider in relation to the 1.5GUY’s everyday SofB.

3.3.2.1 Mutual Recognition

Scholars of recognition have developed various nuances which can potentially assist in pushing the theoretical boundaries of SofB. For example, in his translation of Honneth’s theories, Anderson (1996) has written about the concept of “mutual recognition:”

The possibility for sensing, interpreting, and realizing one’s needs and desires as a fully autonomous and individuated person—in short, the very possibility of identity-formation—

depends crucially on the development of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem.

These three modes of relating practically to oneself can only be acquired and maintained intersubjectively, through being granted recognition by others who one also recognizes. As a result, the conditions for self-realization turn out to be depending on the establishment of mutual recognition (p. xi).

Thus, mutual recognition captures the importance not only of being socially recognized, but being valued and accepted by those one also values and accepts. To achieve mutual recognition, one’s construction of self needs to be mirrored back by those one also recognizes. This concept inspires questions about if and how a 1.5GUY’s SofB is necessarily challenged by individuals whom they neither know nor mutually recognize.

3.3.2.2 Reciprocal Recognition & Participation Parity

While seemingly similar, the concept of “reciprocal recognition” differs from mutual recognition, as it has been defined as the capability “of participating on a par with one another in social life” (Fraser &

Honneth, 2003, p. 29; see also Fraser, 2001). Fraser (2001) has developed the concept of “participation parity” to demonstrate the importance of having equal opportunities for participation in everyday life and has furthermore clarified that participation parity entails an objective and subjective condition.

The objective condition requires material resources to be distributed equally, whereby guaranteeing an individual’s independence and voice and eliminating inequality, dependence, deprivation, exploitation, and disparity. In this regard, the objective condition captures how external structures promote or

57

prohibit participation, such as policies or resources. The intersubjective condition necessitates equal respect to achieve equal opportunity and esteem—and thus incorporates the social sphere.

Fraser (2001) has argued that if individuals are depreciated, denied full partnership, ascribed with difference, denied acknowledgement of their uniqueness, or burdened, they do not achieve participation parity. Notably, Fraser (2001) has use the concept of participation parity to capture how the

experiences of subordination are not the result of psychological issues or weakness, but rather the manifestation of social injustices created through institutionalized norms. The concept of participation parity can likely capture how structural limitations influence 1.5GUY’s SofB in everyday life. For example, as the 1.5GUY are known to encounter challenges as they attempt to transition through rites of passage and into adulthood, and furthermore move from protection to non-protection, inclusion to exclusion, and de facto legality to “illegality,” the concept can likely help capture the relationship between the structural limitations of ULS on SofB. In conjunction with the concept of social location, which can capture how social interactions influence SofB, the concept of participation parity can shed light on how external factors that promote or prohibit participation in everyday life influences the 1.5GUY’s SofB.

3.3.2.2.1 Mis- & Non-Recognition

Fraser (2001) and Fraser and Honneth (2003) have claimed that if an individual does not experience participation parity, but rather the inability to participate equally due to structural impairment,

“misrecognition” is the result. Fraser (2001) has defined misrecognition as the denial of full partnership and participation in social interactions as a result of institutionalized subordination,

capturing both the structural and social. Fraser and Honneth (2003) have argued that misrecognition is the purposeful, institutionalized inferiority, exclusion, or subordination of individuals. Theorists have also taken care to conceptualize “non-recognition” as separate from misrecognition. For example, social psychologists Hopkins and Blackwood (2011) defined non-recognition as compromised or constrained sense of self due to social positioning, while social theorists Carleheden, Heidegren and Willig (2012) argued non-recognition is “to make people disappear by refusing to take notice of them, by demonstratively seeing through them” (p.1). Carleheden et al (2012) have added that

non-recognition is worse than misnon-recognition and explained that non-non-recognition is “the horror of being socially invisible…if you can’t love me, then at least detest and despise me” (p. 1). In this sense,

non-58

recognition is the purposeful and deliberate action to overlook, ignore, invalidate, or deny the existence of individuals, their rights, or their identities. Carleheden et al’s (2012) discussion about

misrecognition provides inspiration for the empirical exploration of experiences of invalidation, which could indicate places where 1.5GUY’s SofB is challenged, if not negated.

Taylor (1994) has written about the consequences of both misrecognition and non-recognition, and claimed that these experiences “can inflict a grievous wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-hatred” (p. 26). He continued that:

A person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people of society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of

oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being (p. 25).

From this conceptualization, there appears to be a strong link between experiences of recognition and SofB, especially as the consequences of both misrecognition and non-recognition suggest consequences similar to those that have been described to occur when SofB is absent. For example, various scholars (e.g. Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Fraser, 2001; Renault, 2007; Smith, Allen & Danley, 2007; Taylor, 1994) have argued that lack of recognition results in physical and psychological ailments including diminished self-worth, anxiety, anger, desperation, stress, isolation, alienation, depression, and beyond.

When studying the experiences of 1.5GUY, Cebulko (2014) found that youth began to internalize stigmatization from not being seen as “an actual person,” but rather as “monsters,” which suggests that there could be a link between experiences of non-recognition and negated SofB that are worthy of explicit exploration. These nuances of recognition theory can likely help capture the relationship between exclusion, non-protection, and “illegality” and SofB.

3.3.2.3 The Struggle for Recognition: Social Movements

Scholars have used the concept of “social movements” to capture how individuals take purposeful action to raise awareness of and redress social injustices, including those that are the result of social or structural non-recognition. While a number of social movement scholars have acknowledged that there is no universal definition or example of a social movement, they have nonetheless agreed to a basic framework that requires collective social actors with a similar or shared identity, a perceived injustice,

59

the will to right a particular wrong, and the goal to enact change (e.g. Diani, 1992, 2003; Escobar, 2008; Johnston & Klandermans, 1995; McAdam, McCarthy & Zald; 1996; Tilly, 1998). For example, McAdam et al (1996) have written that at a minimum, individuals “need to feel both aggrieved about some aspect of their lives and optimistic that, acting collectively, they can redress the problem” (p. 5).

Goldstone and Tilly (2001) claimed that social movement participation requires a calculation of opportunities—hope, belief in change, and probability assessment of success—versus threat, which goes before mere costs and risks. Aminzade and McAdam (2002) and Tilly (1998) have observed that a sense of solidarity, shared identities, “weness” and mobilization of emotion are critical. In this regard, the concept can potentially help capture the intersection between 1.5GUY’s shared identities, grievances, and performances.

Social movement scholars (e.g. McAdam, 2003; McAdam et al., 1996; McAdam & Paulsen, 1993;

Tarrow, 2001) have observed the importance of sentiments in their social movement research, but have also argued that scholarship has focused on external mobilizing structures and framing processes instead of personal, social, and psychological processes. While my aim is not to contribute to social moment research, I note the relatively underexplored relationship between emotions and movement participation, especially in relation to how the 1.5GUY’s social movement participation influences everyday SofB (for an exception, see Benedict Christensen 2015).