Nancy Fraser (; born May 20, 1947) is an American philosopher, critical theorist, feminist, and the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor Emerita of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City. Widely known for her critique of identity politics and her philosophical work on the concept of justice, Fraser is also a staunch critic of contemporary liberal feminism and its abandonment of social justice issues. Fraser holds honorary doctoral degrees from four universities in three countries, and won the 2010 Alfred Schutz Prize in Social Philosophy from the American Philosophical Association. She was President of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division for the 2017–2018 term.

Early life and education

Fraser came from a mixed second generation immigrant family, with a Jewish father and a mother of Irish Catholic and Jewish heritage. Her father's parents were Eastern European immigrants of primarily Lithuanian and Polish descent. Her maternal grandmother's family was of Irish Catholic descent. Her grandmother's father was a Jewish peddler. She describes her parents as "Jewish and very Jewish-identified", but not religious. She had a bat mitzvah and attended High Holiday services at synagogue. She earned her bachelor's degree in philosophy at Bryn Mawr College in 1969, and a PhD in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center in 1980.

Career

She taught in the philosophy department at Northwestern University for many years before moving to the New School in 1995. She has been a visiting professor at universities in Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In addition to her many publications and lectures, Fraser is a former co-editor of Constellations, an international journal of critical and democratic theory, where she remains an active member of the Editorial Council. In 2024, a job offer to give lectures at the University of Cologne was rescinded after it was discovered that Fraser had signed a letter "Philosophy for Palestine". Fraser called the decision to disinvite her "philosemitic McCarthyism".

Research

Fraser has written on a wide variety of issues, but she is primarily known for her work on the philosophical conceptions of justice and injustice. Fraser argues that justice can be understood in two separate but interrelated ways: distributive justice (in terms of a more equitable distribution of resources), and recognition justice (the recognition of difference between social identities and groups). There are two corresponding forms of injustice: maldistribution and misrecognition. In other words, Fraser asserts that too much of a focus on identity politics diverts attention from the deleterious effects of neoliberal capitalism and the growing wealth inequality that characterizes many societies.

In more recent work, Fraser goes even further in linking the narrow focus of identity politics with the widening gap between the rich and poor, particularly with regard to liberal feminism, which Fraser calls the "handmaiden" of capitalism.

Books

Fortunes of Feminism

Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis is a collection of essays written from 1985 to 2010 that aims at dissecting the "drama in three acts" that according to the author is the thread of second-wave feminism. Act one represents the moment when the feminist movement joined radical movements to transform society through uncovering gender injustice and capitalism's androcentrism, while act two, Fraser highlights with regret, is a switch from redistribution to recognition and difference and a shift to identity politics that risk to support neoliberalism through efforts to build a free-market society. Feminism must be a force working in concert with other egalitarian movements in the struggle to bring the economy under democratic control, while building on the visionary potential of the earlier waves of women's liberation. Fraser's use of theoretical schemas has been criticized as dense and baffling at times—it is unclear, for example, why there are three types of needs discourses, four registers of dependency, or seven principles of gender justice. M. E. Mitchell, writer for Marx & Philosophy, writes "This [complexity] is, perhaps, owing to her propensity to avail herself of whatever terms best encapsulate processes of institutionalized oppression. Thinking thus, from the ground up, gives her work a complexity that at times compromises the systematic quality and coherence of her theoretical categories."

Unruly Practices

Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory is a collection of essays written between 1980 and 1989. The book examines the theories of power and source in Foucault, the politics of French deconstruction and Richard Rorty, the politics of gender in Habermas, and the politics of need interpretation in two concluding essays which delineate her own position within contemporary socialist-feminist critical theory. Contemporaries such as Douglas Kellner have praised Fraser's writings as "seasoned with social hope"

Awards and honors

  • Doctor Honoris Causa, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication and Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2014.
  • Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2014.
  • International Research Chair in Social Justice, Collège d'études mondiales, Paris, 2011-2016
  • Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies "Justitia Amplificata," Frankfurt, 2013.
  • Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Fellow, November–December 2012.
  • Einstein Visiting Fellow, JFK Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin, 2010–2012.
  • Humanitas Visiting Professor in Women's Rights, University of Cambridge, UK, March 2011
  • Doctor Honoris Causa, Roskilde University, Denmark, 2011.
  • Donald Gordon Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa, 2011.
  • Alfred Schutz Prize in Social Philosophy, American Philosophical Association, 2010.
  • Chaire Blaise Pascal, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 2008-2010
  • Awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa, by the National University of Cordoba (Argentina), 2006.
  • American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow, 2019.
  • Karl Polanyi Visiting Professorship, 2021.
  • Knight of the Legion of Honor of France
  • Nessim Habif World Prize, University of Geneva, 12 October 2018<!-- https://web.archive.org/web/20201030144653/https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/story/Nancy-Fraser-Receives-Frances-Highest-Honor/ -->
  • Nonino Prize 2022 "Master of Our Time", Italy, 2022.
  • Rudolf Andorka Medal, Rajk College for Advanced Studies, Budapest, 2025
  • Omnis Scientia Omne Ius, Law School National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, 04 March 2026

Writings

Books

Edited books and select contributions to edited volumes

Journal articles

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Pdf.
  • (Review of Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis.)
  • Pdf (in Spanish).
  • Essay "Rethinking Recognition", New Left Review 3, May–June 2000.
  • Essay "On Justice: Lessons from Plato, Rawls and Ishiguro", New Left Review 74, March–April 2012.
  • Essay "Transnationalizing the Public Sphere", March 2005.
  • "The New School For Social Research"
  • Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History, lecture by Nancy Fraser (video, 55:33 min.), French Sociology Association Congress, Paris, April 17, 2009.
  • Interview with Nancy Fraser: Justice as Redistribution, Recognition and Representation, in Barcelona Metropolis, March 2009.
  • Interview with Nancy Fraser: Global Justice and the Renewal of Critical Theory
  • Critical Governance Conference - Prof Nancy Fraser Interview, University of Warwick, 2011
  • A 2019 Theorypleeb interview series focusing on Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory