Accumulating Social Recognition: Reproduction of Social Inequality in Late-Modern Societies

Abstract

The article analyses social invisibility as a systemic ill of contemporary societies. For this purpose, we interpret Andreas Reckwitz's analysis of late modernity by combining Pierre Bourdieu's and Axel Honneth's accounts. Reckwitz argues that late-modern societies must be understood as ‘societies of singularities’, while their social reality is increasingly oriented towards the exceptional. This paradigm shift from industrial to late modernity results from socio-cultural and economic transformations. The article introduces the concept of ‘recognitive capital’ to analyse how these paradigm shifts give rise to new forms of social inequality and invisibility. We argue that late-modern individuals are increasingly engaged in attempts to accumulate social recognition, which fuels their projects of individual self-realisation. Correspondingly, we suggest that forms of social inequality can be analysed following a similar model: socially underprivileged individuals suffer from social invisibility and thus lack recognitive capital.