Recognition (sociology)

Recognition is the public acknowledgment of a person's social status or merits (achievements, virtues, service, etc.).¹ Another example is when some person is accorded some special status, such as title or classification.²

According to philosopher Charles Taylor, recognition of one's identity is both a fundamental need and a right, and non- or misrecognition is a form of oppression.³

In the workplace, recognition has been suggested to increase employee engagement, continuous improvement behaviour, trust in the organization, intention to stay, and satisfaction with management.⁴⁵ Others, like Alfie Kohn in Punished by Rewards, point out the dangers of using praise to show recognition, since it may induce compliance in the short-term, but negatively impact quality in the workplace long-term.⁶

In psychology, excessively seeking for recognition is regarded as one of the defining traits of a narcissistic personality disorder.⁷

Recognition justice is a theory of social justice that emphasizes the recognition of human dignity and of difference between subaltern groups and the dominant society.⁸⁹ Social philosophers Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser point to a 21st-century shift in theories of justice away from distributive justice (which emphasises the elimination of economic inequalities) toward recognition justice and the eliminating of humiliation and disrespect.⁸ The shift is associated with the rise of identity politics.¹⁰

The political implications of recognition justice are more ambiguous than distributive justice, because recognition is not a resource then can be redistributed, but is rather a phenomenological experience of people and groups.⁸¹¹ Honneth takes up the Hegelian idea that subjectivity is only fully constituted through intersubjective relationships, structured in different spheres of recognition—love, rights, and solidarity.¹²