Square peg, round hole: Why the EU can’t fix identity politics. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 128/2018 January 2018

Isiksel, Turkuler (2018) Square peg, round hole: Why the EU can’t fix identity politics. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 128/2018 January 2018. [Discussion Paper]

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Abstract

The 1990s witnessed a heated debate among political theorists regarding the extent to which social justice requires the fair distribution of resources versus the recognition of group differences.1 While scholars advocating for a politics of recognition never underestimated the need for an equitable distribution of wealth, they pointed out that unjust social hierarchies do not always track socioeconomic ones. Symbolic, cultural, and identitarian dimensions of social value can also produce patterns of exclusion. Reducing social justice to a matter of wealth redistribution, they argued, makes liberal political philosophy insensitive to racial, gendered, cultural, and ableist dimensions of privilege and privation.

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