Análisis y discusión de los resultados.

Young (1990) criticises the standardised model of political theory that reduces “the political subjects to a unity” and overrides “commonness or sameness over specifity and difference” (p. 3). She argues that neutral and universal distributive account of justice ignores the philosophical critique from specific cultural-political positions on the specific nature of “domination and oppression” in societies. Young claims that conditions of oppression have never been the same for each group; therefore, the universal language of rights and freedom in standardised liberal theory falls short of enunciating justice particularity (Young, 1990; pp. 40-41). She categorises the universal “difference blind” hierarchies of justice into two sets:

There are at least two versions of a politics of difference, which I call a politics of positional difference and a politics of cultural difference. They share a critical attitude toward a difference- blind approach to politics and policy (Young, 2007; p. 79).

Young considers that the power privileges and un-privileges are regulated in the public sphere by means of repeatedly relaying established cultural and positional hierarchies to construct the practice of “dominance and oppression” in societies (Young, 1989; 1990).

I argue that Young’s above categorisation on the practice of structural injustice in terms of negation of ‘cultural difference’ and ‘positional difference’ suggest structural

misrecognition practice from her works. Below, I discuss Young’s ideas of the politics of ‘cultural difference’ and ‘positional difference’ to interpret misrecognition from her works.

5.4.1 Misrecognition as the denial of “cultural difference”

While discussing cultural difference; Young (1990) develops a critique of the

assimilationist modes of dominance in terms of identities enunciation and belonging. She thinks that the assimilationist kind of integration is problematic in three ways. Firstly, it asks its new citizens to play the game in which rules have already been written and in this way normalises the privileges for majorities in societies:

So assimilation always implies coming into the game after it is already begun, after the rules and standards have already been set, and having to prove oneself according to those rules and standards. In the assimilationist strategy, the privileged groups implicitly define the standards according to which all will be measured (Young, 1990; p. 164).

Secondly, Young (1990) argues that the dominant group exercises assimilative cultural dominance by means of direct and implicit power control in widely spreading and normalising their ‘cultural expressions’ in the society. In this sense, it gives the

dominant groups the power to construct difference of values, behaviours and practices in the garb for ‘universalism’. The assimilative cultural dominance rejects the cultural expressions of non-dominant groups as abnormal:

Since only the dominant group's cultural expressions receive wide dissemination, their cultural expressions become the normal, or the universal, and thereby the unremarkable. Given the normality of its own cultural expressions and identity, the dominant group constructs the differences which some groups exhibit as lack and negation. These groups become marked as Other (Young, 1990; p. 59).

Thirdly, Young (1990) says that assimilative cultural domination limits the sense of groupness and creative cultural definitions for individuals from marginal positions. In doing so, universalism based assimilative institutional modes and social practices deny and suppress the specific nature of oppression, struggle and contribution of individuals from the marginal groups (Young, 1986; 1989). According to Young (1990), the demand of recognition for ‘positive’ sense of identity by individuals from marginal positions is therefore a necessary condition for existentially creating ‘cultural images’ and actively fighting ‘cultural imperialism’:

There is a step in politicizing culture prior to the therapeutic, namely, the affirmation of a positive identity by those experiencing cultural imperialism. Assumptions of the universality of the perspective and experience of the privileged are dislodged when the oppressed themselves expose those assumptions by expressing the positive difference of their experience. By creating their own cultural images, they shake up received stereotypes about them (Young, 1990; p.155).

So, Young explains misrecognition of cultural difference (non-recognition) as the assimilationist strategy. According to her the purpose of this strategy is to inscribe rules, standards, norms, creativity and respectability from the position of more established and ‘privileged groups’ in society.

5.4.2 Misrecognition as non-recognition of “positional difference”

Young sees misrecognition as a case of non-recognition of positional differences of marginal political groups in society. According to her the social and institutional processes of regulating and mobilising positional differences inscribe both privileges and un-privileges of decision making, division of the labour market, and the structuring of social relations (Young, 1990; 2006). However, the language of positional

differences cannot be understood in terms of universal condition of marginality, but as situated, contextual and historical understanding of oppression. For example, Young (1990) argues that the positional difference of the working class explains some common grounds of marginality across all social groups, however, it differs when studied; how

majority/minority, colour, situated ethnic gender and other factors are accounted. In this sense, experiences of marginality, privilege and struggle for agency become far more specific along the positional power axis (Young, 1990). So, even within marginal positions; some positions will be further marginal because of their historical, situated and multiple intersections of marginality.

Young argues that universalism based positional blind justice creates “five faced” nature of structural ‘oppression’ i.e., marginalisation, exploitation, powerlessness, violence and cultural imperialism (Young, 1990; pp. 39-63).

She refers to marginalisation as the condition of imperial structural governance where modes of participation make the “capacities” of individuals coming from less powerful groups as useless, non-creative and demeaning for them. In this sense, individuals from marginal positions are deprived “of cultural, practical, and institutionalized conditions for exercising capacities in a context of recognition and interaction” (Young, 1990; p.55).

In the exploitative mode, Young (1990) argues that the fruits of the labour of less powerful social groups are appropriated for the benefit of more organised and

established social groups. The structural inequalities of privileges and disadvantages are systematically “produced and reproduced” to maintain and increase the power balance in favour of “haves”:

The central insight expressed in the concept of exploitation, then, is that this oppression occurs through a steady process of the transfer of their results of the labour of one social group to benefit another… Exploitation enacts a structural relation between social groups. Social rules about what work is, who does what for whom, how work is compensated, and the social process by which the results of work are appropriated operate to enact relations of power and inequality. These relations are produced and reproduced through a systematic process in which the energies of the have-nots are continuously expended to maintain and augment the power, status, and wealth of the haves (Young, 1990; pp. 49-50).

The dominant social group by producing and reproducing exploitation create excluding structures of powerlessness for the marginalised Other. According to Young (1990), the processes of powerlessness demand the individuals from marginal group to prove their “respectability”. By boundaries of respectability, Young (1990) means that dominant groups in society create boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable recognition of belonging from their dominating privileged position. The marginalised groups are

constantly asked to prove the worth of their personhood in terms of their intelligence, cultural expressions, behaviour, and professional practice. In other words, marginal groups are denied the institutional and societal listening of “what they have to say or to do” (p. 57). The proving of worth and denial of listening culture allows privileged groups to regulate power and create systematic institutional and social modes of devaluing and ‘disrespectful treatment’ for the marginalised social groups (p. 58).

In addition, the ‘systematic’ aspect of positional exploitation also links it with Young’s (1990) notion of positional ‘violence’. She considers violence as widespread

normalisation of wrong doing and usurpation in creating social structures of positional injustices. According to her violence makes the lives of individuals as precarious and bare against all kinds of threats, and ‘needlessly expends’ their energy in preserving their freedom (p. 62). Coupled with the systematic practice of violence, cultural imperialism creates further demeaning structures of disrespect, stereotyping and aberrance in positioning the marginalised other in society. As a result, she argues that the authentic voices and concrete experiences of marginalised groups are suppressed and made invisible. Young (1990) in this sense goes beyond the recognition politics of fighting misrepresentation. She considers struggle for mere recognition of self-injury a cultural-imperialist trap whose measuring is defined by the dominant recognition structuration. In contrast, Young (1990) argues that the misrecognition politicisation of the marginality demands the social recognition of “human status” that is “capable of activity, full of hope and possibility” (pp. 59-60).

I think the above misrecognition ideas of Charles Taylor, Axel Honneth, and Iris Marion Young are highly important in understanding the misrecognition case of British Pakistani Muslim consciousness. These authors have rejected groupness invoked through mobilisation of religion. I see it as unfair because I believe that all groups have the right to register peaceful and political struggle. Furthermore, other misrecognition theorists have mobilised race in its dynamic sense creating an epistemic niche in articulating misrecognition of ethno-religious diversities (Meer et al., 2012). Below, I discuss some of Parekh’s ideas of moral pluralism in situating the misrecognition of non-European moral diversities in Western multicultural societies. This helps me to further displace the western notion of individuality and groupness in terms of what is normatively acceptable and unacceptable.