Equality and Well-being:
Distribution, Recognition and
Contribution
Andrew Sayer
Lancaster University
UCD Equality Studies 20th Anniversary
Conference, 5-7th May 2010, Dublin
Beyond distribution . . .
• Recognition – equality of standing
• Capabilities approach – about what people are able
to have and do or be
• Both suffer from disregard of the processes which
produce inequality – of all kinds
• Divorce of normative political philosophy from social
science
• >> Political philosophy focuses on symptoms and
how to remove/alleviate them – e.g. redistribution
Basics: Recognition is . . .
1. important for well-being;
2. can be unconditional or conditional;
3. is of some person/group, and can be more or
less appropriate to them;
4. is a matter of deeds and circumstances as
well as words.
Relations Between Recognition
and Distribution
• Recognition confirmed or contradicted
through distribution
• Struggles over distribution often about
recognition
• But - In capitalism, distribution is largely
independent of recognition – yet income
and wealth often taken as a reflection of
worth
‘Structural’ condescension and
disrespect
• Attempts at equal recognition and treatment
of others in the context of structural
inequalities risk being seen as condescending
downwards and disrespectful upwards
• Misrecognition and spurious egalitarianism
• Equal recognition requires equality of standing
– in what people are able to do and be
Beyond Recognition and
Distributive Justice
• ‘Contributive justice’*: What we are
able/required/expected to contribute
• Work as a source of fulfilment, identity,
satisfaction, recognition (or not!)
*after Paul Gomberg (2007) How to Make Opportunity Equal, Blackwell
Contributive Justice
• What we are allowed/required to do, rather than
what we get
• Teams – everyone pulling their weight, no-one
hogging the nice work (quantitative and
qualitative)
• Housework: lacking in gendered division of
domestic labour (and labour market)
• Not noticed in wider division of labour in
employment except in terms of gender
dimension
Contributive Justice
• Quantitative - everyone should contribute
what they can, without unwarranted freeriding on others’ labour (unearned income)
• Qualitative – good and bad kinds of work
should be shared out equally – no-one should
be allowed to hog all the best work
Contributive Injustice (qualitative)
• Product of unequal division of labour
• Naturalised, or legitimised as economically
efficient, or as response to inequalities of
intelligence and ability
• The unequal division of labour itself frames
how people (mis)judge contributive justice
The ‘Contributive Justice’ Argument
1. Many job seekers, few ‘good’ jobs . . . +
2. Intergenerational transmission of inequalities
>>habitus, adaptive aspirations
3. >>No genuine equality of opportunity>> for many,
not worth competing for good jobs.
4. Good and bad quality tasks/jobs have to be shared
by all to achieve equality of opportunity and
contributive justice.
Popular attitudes to class inequality
• Need
• Desert
• Pro- greater equality but concern about
contributive justice (while seeing unequal
division of labour as natural)
• Naturalization/legitimation of unequal division
of labour leads to support for unequal
distribution
The return of the rentier class
• Able to draw unearned income on the basis of
position or ownership without a contribution or
function - from rent, interest, dividends – and capital
• ’functionless investor’ (Keynes), ‘class of parasites’
(Marx), ‘improperty’ (Tawney), ‘value-skimming’
(Williams et al)
• Value extraction by rentiers expanded under
neoliberalism
• i.e. yet presented as ‘investment’ and ‘wealth
creation’ >> i.e. undeserved distribution and
undeserved recognition
Distributive justice again
• Arguments for distributive equality in the
absence of contributive justice (I.e. unequal
job quality) are unconvincing - invite
objections of unfairness on desert grounds the more skilled and responsible occupations
should get more . . .
• The unequal division of labour as an engine of
inequality – implications too idealistic?
Conclusions
• Equality of recognition (equal chances of conditional
recognition, no structural supports for misrecognition)
requires not only distributive justice, but contributive justice.
• Contributive injustice is a major source of inequality –
legitimizes unequal distribution and recognition
• Neoliberal rentier as beneficiary of quantitative contributive
injustice
• Idealised? Yes and no - contributive justice already a criterion
in some spheres
• Important part of explanation of economic inequalities
Recognition
• Recognition important in relation to class as
well as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.
• Subtext of many distributional struggles
• Recognition, especially conditional recognition
(i.e. for performance, contributions, skill, etc),
as a class/gender/etc mediated response to
the actual qualities of performance, etc.
• i.e. response to objective differences but
distorted by social field
The Unequal Social Division of
Labour*
1. ‘Technical division of labour’ - Division of tasks
within particular kinds of work producing goods,
providing services
2. ‘Social division of labour’ allocation of workers to
tasks
3. ‘Unequal social division of labour’ - good and bad
tasks unequally distributed among workers
* James B. Murphy 1993 The Moral Economy of Labour, Yale UP
Equality, Distribution and
Recognition
• “equality is not, in the first instance, a
distributive ideal [...] It is, instead, a moral
ideal governing the relations in which people
stand to one another.” (Scheffler, S.)
Gomberg’s basic argument (cont’d)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Many job seekers, few ‘good’ jobs >> complex work only
possible for a minority
>>No genuine equality of opportunity, only ‘competitive
equality of opportunity’
Responses to this: For many, not worth competing for good
jobs. Not worth training many for them. Intergenerational
transmission of inequalities >>habitus, adaptive aspirations
Persistent class inequalities partly a product of scarcity of
good jobs
Good, middling and poor quality work has to be shared by
all to achieve equality of opportunity and contributive
justice.