Nancy Fraser 's Theory Of Justice

Nancy Fraser is a representative figure of the Anglo-American critical theory, whose justice theory combines with critical theory, feminism and destructuralism, etc. so that it includes multi-perspectives. It provides a persuasive frame for analyzing the political and moral dilemmas in the era of globalization. Critical theory and theories of feminism and justice are promoted by the exchange between Fraser and Habermas, Richard Rorty, Judith Bulter, Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor, Iris Young.The development of Fraser’s theory is a dynamic process:from the dual perspectives including redistribution and recognition to the three dimensions including redistribution, recognition and representation. She realizes the importance of representation after her studies of redistribution and recognition. Representation is the meta-question of justice, which determines the boundaries and procedures of redistribution and recognition. Thus, Fraser insets it to her justice theory as a third dimension. These thress dimensions respectively represent the main concerns of justice in economic, culferal and political spheres in post-capitalist society. Three kinds of injustice correspond to them, namely maldistribution, misrecognition and misrepresentation. The principle of participatory parity is the normative foundation of Fraser’s justice theory to integrate these dimensions, which constitute her unique frame of "monopole-tridimensions".Redistributive justice demands to remedy the gap of wealth caused by primary distribution in order to achieve fairness. There are three main normative orientations of redistribution:egalitarianism, libertarianism and need principle. Rawls and Robert Nozick is respectively the representative of egalitarianism and libertarianism. Fraser is the proponent of need principle. According to her, there are three main need talks-"oppositional","reprivatization" and "expert" forms-in late capitalist societies. She attempts to combine oppositional form and expert form in order to create a broader new comprehensive public for the struggles for need interpretation and redistributive justice.The politics of recognition is a recent social movement, the most typical form of which is the politics of identity by fringe groups. It includes multiculturalism, strategies of liberation and struggles of activists outside parliament in new social movements. Recognition is conceptualized to respond to this movement. In this process, the struggles for recognition are grouped into two camps:cultural pluralism and destructualism. The former is called "identity mode", which affirms the previously stigmatized identities. Its proponents are Honneth, Taylor and Young. Fraser belongs to the later named "status mode", which deconstructs the differences of identities. Its aim is to let all people interact with others as peers.Representation is a meta-question injustice theory whose topic is "who should be the agents in the spheres of redistribution and recognition". Representation could be divided into two horizons. One is "intra-representation" related to the construction of decision making rules of public arguments. The other is "the politics of framing" refered to judicial authority. Meanwhile, there are two types of the politics of framing. The affirmative politics accepts Westphalian principle of state territory. The transformative politics strives to remedy the first-order injustice, such as malredistribution, recognition and ordinary misrepresentation, and the meta-injustice of misframing by the means of reconstructing the question of "who". In Fraser’s opinion, justice theory in abnormal times should meet the demands of reflexivity and discriminacy. Reflexivity requires the reflection of "who" and decision making rules. Discriminacy means the way new boundaries are setted. Fraser proposes "all-subjected principle" to complement the principle of state territory. According to the former principle, all that subjected to the given dominative structures have the relative moral standings as the subjects of justice. That making someone the subject of justice is not their citizenship or nationality, not the share of abstract humanity or the pure fact of causal relation, but the subjection to dominative structures that regulate their rules of interaction.Fraser conceives a participative democratic justice to achieve her frame of "monopole-tridimensions". The principle of participatory parity provides a normative criterion for evulating justice claims in different dimensions, which can reduce the tensions and conflicts among different justice claims and lessen the costs of remedying injustice. It is also the normative basis for alliance of the suffered. As a resulting concept, participatory parity requires at least three prerequisites:objective, intersubjective and procedural. As a procedural concept, it aims to ensure everyone has equal voice in the decision making process, which is the guarantee of fair deliberations. Fraser emphasizes the democratic justicial approach of policy making. From her perspective, it shows circulatory relationship between justice and democracy. In order to break the vicious circle between injustice and nondemocracy, the principle of participatory parity should have an independent influence on democratic deliberations, by which bad decisions can not be made. Although Fraser does not propose a concrete plan, she to some extent points out the future tendency of democracy. Habermas adopts her differentiation between "strong public" and "weak public", which promotes the theory of deliberative democracy. Fraser’s justice theory is realistic, critical, historical, pioneering and open. It prints a comprehensive and clear picture of post-capitalist societies, and then proposes the most promising strategy for social advancement. It should be given a lot of credits for the renovation of critical theory.