Resources Versus Capabilities: Social Endowments in Egalitarian Theory

Equality of Resources and the Problem of Recognition

“…According to Nancy Fraser, for instance, status inequality or misrecognition is a question of injustice: 'it is unjust that some individuals and groups are denied the status of full partners in social interaction simply as a consequence of institutionalized patters of cultural value in whose construction they have not equally participated and which disparage their distinctive characteristics or the distinctive characteristics assigned to them' (Fraser 2003, p. 29). Moreover, writers more sympathetic to liberal egalitarianism, such as Andrew Mason, Roland Pierik and Ingrid Robeyns, also think that liberal egalitarians should pay more attention to the effects of social structure and socialization (Mason 2000;Pierik and Robeyns 2007;Robeyns 2003). In this paper, I will be concerned with whether this critique is applicable to one particular liberal egalitarian theory: Ronald Dworkin's 'equality of resources.'…”