Nancy Fraser

Nancy Fraser is an American critical theorist and philosopher at the New School for Social Research in New York. Justice Interruptus (1997) argued that struggles for justice in the 'postsocialist' age had split between demands for economic redistribution and demands for cultural recognition, and that a critical theory must combine both. She also criticised Habermas's account of the public sphere, highlighting the 'subaltern counterpublics' formed by excluded groups. Later books such as Cannibal Capitalism (2022) analyse how capitalism depends on unpaid care work, nature and racialised expropriation.

Key ideas

• Justice has two dimensions: redistribution of economic goods and recognition of social status.
• Justice requires 'participatory parity', so that everyone can take part in social life as a peer.
• Excluded groups form 'subaltern counterpublics' where they develop their own accounts of their needs and identities.
• Capitalism depends on background conditions, such as unpaid care work and nature, that it also depletes.

Major works

• Justice Interruptus (1997)
• Unruly Practices (1989)
• Redistribution or Recognition? (2003, with Axel Honneth)
• Scales of Justice (2009)
• Fortunes of Feminism (2013)
• Cannibal Capitalism (2022)

In the Book corner

• Justice Interruptus 1997 · Advanced
  A collection of essays, subtitled Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition, written as the end of the Cold War seemed to leave…

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