Recognition as Normative Orientation: Structure, Mediation, and Repair

Abstract This paper develops an account of recognition as a normative orientation to others’ evaluative features. Against strong attribution models, I argue that recognition does not generate value or normative reasons but orients agents to evaluative features that already ground responsibilities. I analyze recognitional competence into five interdependent dimensions and show how recognition may succeed or fail at distinct loci. I then examine how institutionalized cultural value patterns mediate these dimensions, producing patterned forms of misrecognition. Drawing on Fraser’s criterion of participatory parity as a heuristic for diagnosing structural distortion, I argue that repair must operate across intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional levels. The result is a framework that connects an agent-centered account of recognitional competence with an account of the socio-structural conditions under which that competence succeeds or fails.