of social groups, while the politics of redistribution frequently works to
undermine such speciWcity (for example, by trying to ‘‘abolish the gender
division of labour’’); thus, social groups that have both cultural and political-
economic dimensions—such as those deWned in terms of gender and race—
Wnd themselves caught between the competing imperatives of these two
modes of politics (Fraser 1995 a, 74 ). Fraser’s response to this dilemma was
to introduce a cross-cutting distinction between two types of remedy for
injustice, whether cultural or political-economic. ‘‘AYrmative’’ remedies—
such as mainstream multiculturalism or liberal welfare politics—address
unjust outcomes, conferring respect upon misrecognized groups or transfer-
ring resources to the underprivileged. ‘‘Transformative’’ remedies, by con-
trast—such as queer politics or socialism—address the ‘‘underlying
generative framework’’ that gives rise to unjust conditions in theWrst place,
destabilizing hierarchies of identity and fundamentally altering relations of
production (Fraser 1995 a, 82 ). Fraser concluded that the best way to negotiate
the recognition–redistribution dilemma would be to pursue transformative
solutions in both domains, since these would be least likely to interfere with
each other, to reinforce the underlying structures that give rise to injustice, or
to generate resentful political backlash.
Fraser’s essays provoked immediate and sometimes acrimonious debate.
Although even in these early interventions Fraser had been careful to criticize
economic as well as cultural reductionism, some of her readers charged that
her approach eVectively resubordinated the politics of culture and identity to
economic concerns. That reaction may not have done justice to Fraser’s
intentions, but it was not groundless: because her initial description of the
recognition–redistribution dilemma assumed that the typical form of recog-
nition politics was aYrmative, while the typical form of redistributive politics
was transformative, Fraser’s concluding endorsement of an across-the-board
transformative approach did seem to imply that it was cultural politics, not
redistributive politics, that was going to have to change its tune. Her critics
also took issue with her placement of various groups on a spectrum from
purely cultural to purely economic; objected to her reduction of justice to two
and only two dimensions, which seemed to foreclose consideration of the
distinctive problem of political exclusion and inclusion; and, perhaps most
recognition and redistribution 457