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ABSTRACT
The idea of recognition is often taken to support the notion of ‘pluralist accommodation’ between nationalists and unionists. This relies on a distinctive ‘cultural’ model of recognition as requiring identity affirmation as essential to conflict resolution. It is argued that the cultural model relies on a weak analysis of social recognition and is, consequently, a poor guide to understanding the politics of recognition in Northern Ireland. Firstly, it does not give sufficient weight to struggles for equal recognition. Secondly, the vague notion of ‘affirming’ identities does not capture the way recognition struggles arise over social positioning in wider status hierarchies. An alternative, ‘recognition struggle’ account is developed which focuses on conflicts over authority and which explains why recognition politics in Northern Ireland often centers on defying the other. Finally, the cultural model fails to see that cultural groups are themselves the product of internal struggles for recognition and wrongly assumes the politics of recognition must resist attempts to transform group identities. Taking recognition seriously requires us to move beyond ‘cultural recognition’ and ‘pluralist accommodation’ in Northern Ireland.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the participants in the Political Theory/Philosophy workshop, QUB for their extremely helpful comments on this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Honneth (Citation1995, p. 129) distinguishes love, respect and esteem. His account of particular recognition is focused on individuals rather than on ethnic/cultural groups. Darwall prefers a contrast between ‘recognition respect’ and ‘appraisal respect’ (Citation1977, p. 38).
2 Allan and Keller (Citation2006) distinguish between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ recognition but, surprisingly, include particularizing features in both.
3 Fraser’s categorical distinction between recognition and redistribution overlooks the way that recognition claims ground claims to economic redistribution (Citation2003).
4 The unequal power to take and give insult is a key form of social power (Patterson, Citation1982; Appiah).
5 ‘Accordingly we would advocate that there should be three types of education, which we think of as the secondary Grammar, the secondary Technical, the secondary Modern, that each type should have such parity as amenities and conditions can bestow; parity of esteem in our view cannot be conferred by administrative decree nor by equality of cost per pupil; it can only be won by the school itself.’ Norwood Report (Citation1943, p. 14).
6 ‘That any new political arrangements must be based on full respect for, and protection and expression of, the rights and identities of both traditions in Ireland and even-handedly afford both communities in Northern Ireland parity of esteem and treatment, including equality of opportunity and advantage.’ ‘Parity’ here is simply a synonym for equality but Paragraph 38 suggests something more like ‘cultural’ recognition: ‘Both Governments envisage that this new framework should serve to help heal the divisions among the communities on the island of Ireland; provide a forum for acknowledging the respective identities and requirements of the two major traditions; express and enlarge the mutual acceptance of the validity of those traditions; and promote understanding and agreement among the people and institutions in both parts of the island. A New Framework (Citation1995), 10.iv.
7 Porter talks about parity of esteem as expressing a demand for rectification, and distinguishes individual, cultural, and political applications (Citation1996, pp. 45–8). Group based patterns of discrimination and disadvantage are, however, evident across all three spheres, economic, cultural, and political.
8 Consider the civil rights era demand that it should not be illegal to ‘advocate or work within the law for the establishment of one Parliament for the whole of Ireland.’ (NICRA, Citation1973, p. 16). Others have suggested that recognition of legitimacy may suggest the recognition of substantive validity (English, Citation1995, p. 138). One may affirm the former while denying the latter, however.
9 The notion of parity esteem lends itself to being employed as a political weapon in struggles in which ethnic honor are at stake (Aughey, Citation1997, p. 10; MacGinty & du Toit, Citation2007, p. 15).
10 See Adams’ reference to using equality to ‘break the bastards’ (BBCNI, Citation2014b).
11 According to Honneth contemporary struggles for social esteem typically focus on the labor market as the chief arena in which social contributions are gauged (Citation1995, Citation2003). Denying access to employment also denies people the opportunity to earn esteem.
12 In the case of equal respect, we are equally dependent on the recognition of one another and claim only the same authority that everyone else has. It is otherwise with esteem recognition however.
13 Gardner interprets the Ulster Scots movement as a response to this loss of status aimed at shoring up ‘ethnic dignity’ (Citation2020). Weber notes the significance of compensatory strategies for ‘pariah’ groups (Citation1978, p. 934).
14 Long discusses how loyalists stung by the attacks of the Loyalists Against Democracy (LAD) group responded not by appealing to the wider community to act as an impartial judge of their positive social contributions (Citation2018).
15 Mervyn Gibson praises the flag protestors in this vein, for example, in language reminiscent of Burke’s view of intergenerational obligation (McAuley, Citation2016, p. 132).
16 The Romantic critique of simply abstracts in a different way. The way out of this dualism is to reject the idea that we must choose one or the other.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Cillian McBride
Cillian McBride teaches political theory at Queen’s University Belfast. He works on the ethics and politics of recognition and on contemporary republican political theory. He is the author of Recognition (Cambridge: Polity, 2013).