Lynch, Kathleen, Professor

By Gunnel Karlsson on 15 Mar | 0 comments

Professor of Equality Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland

GEXCEL PROJECT

Affective Equality: Love, Care and Solidarity as Productive Forces

Mainstream egalitarian theory, whether generated in the disciplines of politics, economics, law or sociology, pays little attention to the affective sphere of social relations as sites of injustice and generative forces in political life (Lynch, Baker, Cantillon and Walsh, 2009a: 12-34). All branches of egalitarian thinking have been concerned with the ‘public’ sphere of life, namely the political relations of the state, the economic relations of the market, and the cultural relations governing social recognition. The preoccupation has been with inequalities of income and wealth, status and power. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, which has been the dominant work in Anglophone political theory since its publication in 1971, is a clear example of a text that gives primacy to the public sphere.

Even critical theorists such as Fraser, (1995, 1997) have not paid attention to the affective domain as an independent site of injustice. Fraser has argued for a perspectival dualism, a two-dimensional conception of justice, arguing that redistribution and recognition co-exist as the two fundamental and mutually irreducible dimensions of social justice. Honneth (1996) in response, claims that recognition is the fundamental and overarching moral category and that the distribution of material goods is a derivative category. Fraser’s retort is that Honneth has psychologised the problem of injustice, and is treating social justice as primarily an issue of self-realization, a subjective identity problem (via loss of self confidence, self respect, self esteem), thereby ignoring the deeply structural aspects to this type of injustice (Fraser and Honneth, 2004). In neither case are care relations, nurturing and dependencies, deriving from the inevitable vulnerability of the human condition, entertained as a site of injustice, except in a derivative or secondary sense.

Yet, humans are fundamentally relational beings and their relationality is intricately bound to their dependencies and interdependencies (Gilligan, 1995; Kittay, 1999). All people have urgent needs for care at times of infancy, illness, old age, impairment or other vulnerabilities. And being cared for is a fundamental prerequisite for human development (Nussbaum, 2001). Moreover, relations of love, care and solidarity help to establish a basic sense of importance, value and belonging, a sense of being appreciated, wanted and cared about and being deprived of love and care is experienced as a loss and deprivation (Lynch, Baker and Lyons, 2009).

Despite its neglect in egalitarian and political theory, love is productive both emotionally and materially (Hardt and Negri, 2009). In this paper I will argue the love, care and solidarity are important political concepts, not only for what they can produce personally but for what they might generate politically in terms of heralding different ways of relating beyond competition and aggrandisement. Grounding politics in love, care and solidarity rather than competition and greed has the potential to help generate the type of egalitarian-driven societies that would be so beneficial to the well-being of humanity (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009)

The Normative and the positive and the Neglect of the Affective
To move beyond the narrow definition of the human person as a public actor, one needs to address a major tension in contemporary sociological theory, namely the tension between the normative and the analytical within positivism. While maintaining the separation between the positive and the normative is vital to avoid representing a priori assumptions and values as empirically valid ‘facts’, the dichotomy also presents us with unique problems of analysis. One of the issues is that it generates disinterest in the role of the normative, and relatedly that of affective relations in social life. Yet, as observed by Sayer in his analysis of social class and related inequalities (2005, 2006), human beings are not emotionally and morally detached entities. Lives are governed by ‘lay normativity’ (Sayer, 2005). Social actors are not only interest-led, power-led or status-led. They can and do make moral choices that are driven by their relationality.

Humans are not objects devoid of feeling or moral capacity as they are never totally autonomous; there is always a vulnerability and a susceptibility to loss or injury (Fineman, 2008). We are affectively driven by concerns or orientation to others (Tronto, 2001, Held, 1995) and in that relationality lies a political space for new modes of political engagement, redefining the public from the inside out.

Selected References
Baker, J. Lynch, K., Cantillon, S.and Walsh, J. (2006) ‘Equality: Putting Theory into
Action’  Res Publica. Vol. 12, (4): 411-433.
Baker, J. Lynch, K., Cantillon, S.and Walsh, J. (2004, 2009b)  Equality: From Theory     to Action, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fineman, Martha (2008) ‘The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the
Human Condition’ Yale Journal of Law and Feminism,  Vol. 20, No. 1: 1-    23.
Fraser, N., (1995) “ From Redistribution to Recognition: Dilemmas of Justice in a     ‘Post-    Socialist’ Age”, New Left Review, No. 212; 68-93.
Fraser, Nancy and Linda Gordon (1997) ‘A Genealogy of “Dependency”’ in Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the 'Postsocialist' Condition (New York: Routledge).
Fraser, Nancy and Honneth, Axel (2004) Redistribution or Recognition? A     Political-Philosophical Exchange. New York: Verso.
Gilligan, Carol (1995) 'Hearing the difference: theorizing connection', Hypatia 10 (2), 120-127.
Hardt, Michael And Negri, Antonio (2009) ‘Of Love Possessed’, Artforum
International, Vol 48, no. 2: 180=264
Held, Virginia (1995) 'The Meshing of Care and Justice', Hypatia 10(2 Spring), 128-132.
Honneth, Axel (1996) Struggles for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social     Conflicts. Oxford: Polity Press.
Kittay, Eva Feder (1999) Love's Labour (New York: Routledge).
Lynch, Kathleen, Baker, John, and Lyons, Maureen (2009) Affective Equality:
Love, Care and Injustice.  London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lynch, Kathleen, Baker, John, Cantillon, Sara and Walsh, Judy (2009a) ‘Which     Equalities Matter: The Place of Affective Equality in Egalitarian Thinking’,     in Lynch, Kathleen et al., Affective Equality: Love, Care and Injustice.     Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nussbaum, Martha (2001) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Phillips, Anne (1999) Which Equalities Matter? Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rawls, John (1971) A Theory of Justice Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Sayer, Andrew (2005) The Moral Significance of Class.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sayer, A. (2006) ‘Language and Significance or the Importance of Import’
Journal of Language and Politics, Vol. 5, 3: 449-471.
Tronto, Joan C. (2001) 'Who Cares? Public and Private Caring and the Rethinking of Citizenship' in Nancy J. Hirschmann and Ulrike Liebert, eds, Women and Welfare: Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
Wilkinson, Richard and Pickett, Kate (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better. London: Penguin.