Recognising ‘Recognition’: Social Justice and the Place of the Cultural in Social Exclusion Policy and Practice

In this paper, I contest the claim that cultural geography is ‘irrelevant’ to policy addressing major social justice issues. Engaging both with the ‘relevance’ and the ‘culture–economy’ debates in human geography, and with wider feminist political theory, I argue that the recognition of issues of ‘cultural justice’ is crucial to an effective engagement with social justice issues. I suggest a new approach to the cultural economy debate that neither forces a choice between culture and economy, nor only ‘transcends’ their division. Instead, the concept of ‘revaluing’ is introduced, which encompasses both the cultural and the economic but allows one or the other, or both, to be asserted—depending on the spatial and political context. These points are developed through a qualitative case study of the Single Regeneration Budget, a policy which attempts to address social exclusion, inequality, and deprivation. This case study suggests that a lack of attention to cultural justice issues, such as recognition and respect, leads to a policy that fails to remedy, and even perpetuates, the exclusionary mechanisms it seeks to address. Instead, a more fundamental revaluing of socially excluded people and places needs to be carried out in order to achieve greater inclusion. Indeed, reflecting on these issues through cultural and feminist lenses, I suggest a wider remit than policy for human geographers to engage effectively with major social justice issues.