Recognition and ideology: assessing justice and injustice in the case of child domestic labor

Abstract

This article aims to add a new layer to the debate on ideology, work and recognition. It argues that Honneth’s concept of ‘ideological form of recognition’ has great theoretical strength to explain oppression, in a way that avoids adding subjugation to disadvantaged individuals. Still, Honneth’s account needs clarification to explain how oppressed individuals can overcome ideological recognition. To address these issues, this study draws on data from (i) news articles on child domestic labor (CDL), in Belém, Brazil, and (ii) focus groups with women who were housemaids in their childhood. Findings show contradictory logics in the spheres of love and work in CDL and advance understanding of the role played by justice advocators to overcome ideological forms of recognition.

Keywords:

• recognition
• Honneth
• ideology
• work
• child domestic labor

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous referees for their insightful comments and we thank the Brazilian higher education agencies Capes, CNPq, Fapemig and Fidesa for the financial support that allowed us to conduct this research.

Notes

1. The original meaning of ideology in Marx as a ‘false consciousness’ of class-specific conditions of domination has been modified, corrected and altered by several scholars. The concept of ideology has varied connotations that involve debates in politics and economics, as well as in other sociological traditions, such as the Weberian, Durkheimian and structuralist sociologies. Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, Louis Althusser’s concept of the State’s ideological apparatus and Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony are important developments.

2. A PNAD (national home sampling survey) 2011 Survey, made public by IBGE (Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute) in 2012, revealed that 257,691 children and adolescents are domestic workers in Brazil. However, it is quite possible that this number is underestimated, given the survey’s nature (by sampling) and the difficulty in defining just what ‘labour’ is.