March 25, 2009
Cultural identities are by their nature complex and ever-shifting in interaction with other cultural identities, and therefore are politicized only at the cost of reducing them to restrictive stereotypes.
There are many cultural identities; each culture possesses characteristics that define its uniqueness. However, each cultural identity consists of multiple individuals. Although each individual may identify with a cultural identity, each person possesses unique characteristics that define who they are as an individual within their cultural identity.
These identities, when in interaction with cultural identities, influence the individual; however, through the politicization of cultural identities, individuals are placed into categories, restricting them to stereotypes that are associated with the cultural identity to which they associate.
As cultural identities are politicized, a generalization of who they are, their values and beliefs, and certain characteristics, are compiled, developing a definition base for the culture. It is through this definition that cultural identities achieve group rights and recognition. However, this definition also creates limitations for cultural identities through the way in which it reduces cultures to restrictive stereotypes.
Culture is valued as a definition of self, as the element that differentiates one group from another and a contribution to a person’s understanding of who they are as an individual. Placing cultural identities in the light of the public realm by politicizing them does condense them to restrictive stereotypes.
As a result of politicizing cultural identities, cultures begin to be viewed as existing in whole blocks. Likewise, it becomes an assumption that cultural identities can be dealt with in whole blocks. The issue with this is that they are not and they cannot. Cultural identities are made up of many aspects; tradition, values, beliefs, language, and origin.
Cultural groups identify with cultural identities but they do not restrict themselves solely to these aspects of their culture. An individual’s self is influenced by their cultural identity, while extending beyond their cultural identity and towards other contributing factors; personal experience, education, likes and dislikes, personality, and character traits.
Nancy Fraser looks at the different dilemmas that are posed by the struggle of cultural identities for recognition in From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age. In this article, Fraser assumes that “justice today requires both redistribution and recognition” (Fraser, 69). She proposes that the relation between redistribution and recognition be examined with the objective of gaining a clearer understanding of these two concepts and how they can interact with one another in different political arrangements.
Fraser presents the opinion that cultural and economic injustice is an issue that needs both recognition and redistribution (Fraser, 74). She explains that cultural and economic injustice “are usually interimbricated so as to reinforce one another dialectically” (Fraser, 72). In saying this, Fraser is explaining when both concepts are present in a society, cultural injustice and economic injustice conduct an exchange that overlaps and arrange the issues in a way that adds force to them as injustices rather than weakening either of their presence.
Cultural norms that may be biased against individuals and other cultures are sometimes institutionalized in the state and the economy. Fraser explains that “economic disadvantage impedes equal participation in the making of culture, in public spheres and in everyday life” (Fraser, 74). The presence of cultural injustice and economic injustice has the potential to result in “a vicious circle of cultural and economic subordination” (Fraser, 74). According to Fraser, recognition and redistribution are of value to those who are subject to both injustices, allowing them to both “claim and to deny their specificity” (Fraser, 74).
Fraser poses the question: “What combinations of remedies work best to minimize, if not altogether to eliminate, the mutual interferences that can arise when both redistribution and recognition are pursued simultaneously?” (86). By conducting an examination of different political arrangements, Liberal welfare state, Socialism, mainstream multiculturalism, and deconstruction, one can gain a better perspective as to under what political situation recognition and redistribution can work cooperatively to produce beneficial outcomes for the struggle for recognition of cultural identities.
The struggle of cultural identities for recognition is one that needs to be approached with sensitivity, recognizing that the application of cultural identities to legal norms recognizes cultures as subjects rather than consisting of individuals. Fraser suggests that we “figure out how to finesse the redistribution-recognition dilemma when we situate the problem in this larger field of multiple, intersecting struggles against multiple, intersecting injustices” (92). Fraser recognizes that such issues, for example cultural injustice and economic injustice, are a smaller part of a larger picture, all of which needs to be re-examined in order to reconstruct a structure that will better facilitate different entities with a lesser chance for injustice to arise.
Restricting cultural identities to stereotypes that have been drawn from a generalization of characteristics and other descriptors becomes an even larger issue for those individuals who posses multiple cultures, and identities. An example touched upon by Fraser is the implications that the politicization of cultural identities has in combination with class, race, gender, and sexuality (93). This addresses the complications of creating one overbearing conception of a culture that is meant to define all of those whom lie within that culture. Although an individual may identify as being African, the individual may also identify as being a gay, middle class, woman. These other characteristics of individuals place them within other identity stereotypes.
This relates to when Fraser spoke on the presence of both economic and cultural injustices. She explained that people need to be able “to claim and to deny their specificity” (Fraser, 74). Without this ability, individuals can be categorized into groups that they do not personally identify with as strongly. They may feel that by subscribing to one group they are undermining those other descriptors that define who they are as an individual. Overall, this is a potentially disastrous mistake to be made.
Fraser proposes that the task of coalition building is promoted by the combination of recognition-redistribution; “the project of transforming the deep structures of both political economy and culture appears to be the one over-arching programmatic orientation capable of doing justice to all current struggles against injustice” (93). She explains that in order to achieve justice for all groups, allowing each group to achieve fair and unbiased recognition, it is necessary to consider the potential of alternative outsets of redistribution and recognition (93).
The politicization of cultural identities restricts cultural identities to stereotypes that are created of generalizations that define a culture and cultural group. The possession of multiple identities, whether they the combination of culture, sexual orientation, gender, class, or race, can pose the issue of treating identities as one whole block. Although there are many different individuals within this definition, the identity is treated as one unit, not giving the appropriate recognition to individuals within cultural or identity groups as individuals possessing unique traits and characteristics.
Fraser, N. (1995). “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age”. New Left Review. July-August 1995, p. 68-93
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