Minority Influence and the Struggle for Recognition

Abstract

In a broader social context where the social divisions have increasingly come to be seen through cultural or ethnic lenses, one-sided concern with identity dynamics runs the risk of defining social categories in essential terms, emphasize issues of cultural incompatibility, and reduce social influence phenomena to ingroups allegiances. Mugny and his colleagues argued that minority influence and social identifications processes interacted in such a way as producing conditions allowing outgroups to exert a genuine influence. Adopting an interactionnist approach to the study of racism and xenophobia, which in turn builds on Axel Honneth’s (1996) philosophical theory of recognition, it will be argued that assuming the very possibility of outgoup influence emphasizes the role of the "voice", in particular of minorities, as chance to enter into processes of persuasion. This voice can be seen as a bulwark against the ethnic and cultural divisions that undermine contemporary societies’ democratic purpose.

Keywords

• Minority influence, struggle for recognition, outgroups, prejudice, racism, xenophobia.