ABSTRACT
In this first chapter we set out a programmatic statement for rethinking cultures of equality that commences by reframing conventional questions about in/equality. Those questions are frequently posed in terms of asking about how inequalities and social divisions – of age, class, disability, gender, race, religion, sexuality – are produced, recognised, measured and redressed and the processes through which greater equality is achieved, including the transformations required to change people’s perceptions about and attitudes towards, for example, racism and sexism. The recognition versus rights debate may be seen as one example of that; that is, of whether inequalities are best regarded as a consequence of misrecognition or of the withholding of legal status and political and economic resource. The questions we ask are more fundamentally about the processes through which lin/equalities have come to be regarded as issues of public concern in the first place, the various ways that equalities have been historically defined and how those ideas and imaginings of equalities are produced, embodied, objectified, recognised and contested in and through a variety of cultural practices and sites.
