Recognition, Prestige, Exclusion, Social Capital

Reflecting on the theoretical initiative by Axel Honneth introducing the term of recognition and discussions of it involving Nancy Fraser and others, bearing most emphatically on the philosophical discourse so far, the paper seeks to contribute to a sociological embedding of the topic, by pointing to its adjacencies in the conceptual field of the discipline. The terms prestige, exclusion and social capital are explicated thereby in related contexts, making use of a conceptual scheme based on a typological distinction of instrumental/expressive aspects on the one hand and an array of substantive references from every-day interactions to theoretical concepts, not the least of social structure and stratification, on the other. Also reflecting on the suggestions by Ákos Huszár to apply a normative-functional approach for this problem area, the paper makes a review of relevant social research, in particular, some carried out by the author with Róbert Angelusz in recent decades.