Illuminating the vernacular of inequity: recognition, interaction ritual theory, and microaggressions

ABSTRACT

While it would seem that the framework of “the politics of recognition” is perfectly primed to enable contributions to the necessary discussion about why and how mundane interactions are politically important, the most prominent recognition theories have defaulted on this promise. In this dialogue contribution, I explain how the inability of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth’s influential recognition theories to illuminate the role of “the vernacular” in the reproduction of inequity and in the transformation of society – aspects that recognition can and should illuminate – is tied to the theories’ sociological weaknesses. Recognition theory needs better sociological grounding, and I nominate interaction ritual theory as a potentially productive complement. Informed by contemporary work on interaction ritual, future recognition theory can contribute to public and academic debates about microaggressions and other aspects of the vernacular of inequity that are still often unjustly dismissed.

KEYWORDS:

• Misrecognition
• microaggressions
• interaction ritual theory
• identity politics
• the politics of recognition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is not to say that we should see the domain of high civics as unrelated to the vernacular. They are both important, and we need theories that illuminate both of these domains (as we find in this very dialogue, with Schick (–) and Beausoleil’s (–) contributions implicitly centering micro-encounters and O’Sullivan (–) and Spencer’s (–) contributions centering law and policy), as well as theories that demonstrate the domains’ interaction.

2 By this, I mean efforts to theorize mis/recognition and the politics that responds to the problem (mis- or non-recognition) or is animated by the normative standard (recognition). “Recognition theory” thus has descriptive, diagnostic, and normative elements.

3 Hence thinkers like Audra Simpson (2014) counsel refusal rather than demanding recognition.

4 King (2000) finds more nuance, and value, in other parts of Bourdieu’s corpus. But it is worth noting that McNay touts the value of Bourdieu’s work on habitus specifically.

5 Collins, sociologist Gary Allan Fine (2005, 1287) notes in a review of Interaction Ritual Chains, “stands athwart the cognitive turn … and indeed valuably devotes a chapter to demonstrating the various ways in which thinking must be linked to emotional entrainment.”

6 Note that I am not arguing here that microaggressions and their importance can’t be conveyed or understood without recognition/interaction ritual theory. Just that these provide additional rhetorical resources and an additional mode of justification that may be persuasive to some who are not persuaded by other resources and modes.