Katy Wells (2021) argued that when the state supports or encourages gentrification that imposes non-trivial costs on badly off original residents, or fails to benefit them in certain ways, it disrespects those residents and threatens their recognition self-respect; she further argued that downstream state investment in gentrifying areas can threaten self-respect by making historical neglect salient. Her defense against the objection built on Christian Schemmel's account of 'robust' self-respect depends on a gap Schemmel himself left open: no one has specified the social conditions under which individuals subjected to injustice cannot reasonably be expected to maintain self-respect. The open problem asks for (i) such a specification — how widely available effective opportunities for protest, solidarity, and resistance, and resilience-cultivating education, must be before losing self-respect becomes inappropriate — and (ii) its application to state-led gentrification and downstream state investment in contemporary non-ideal societies, including whether Wells's proposed resolution of the downstream-investment tension (universal provision of basic goods) is sound.

Background

Gentrification is the process by which wealthier residents and capital flow into a previously low-income neighborhood, upgrading its housing stock and services while often raising living costs for incumbent residents; it is called state-led gentrification when public authorities actively promote or support this process, for instance through rezoning, tax incentives, or redevelopment programs, rather than merely permitting it. A long empirical debate — famously opened by Freeman and Braconi's study of 1990s New York, which found little displacement of original residents — continues over whether and over what time horizons gentrification actually displaces the poor, and this empirical uncertainty matters to normative assessments because it fixes the costs a state can foreseeably be held responsible for.

A first wave of normative work on gentrification in political philosophy grounded residents' complaints in occupancy rights: Huber and Wolkenstein (2018) argued that city dwellers have plan-based rights to remain in the neighborhoods where their social, cultural, and economic practices are embedded. Later authors have offered rival framings — Jenkins (2022) understands gentrification as a relationship of domination, in the sense of subjection to arbitrarily exercised power; Hoover (2023) as an encompassing urban injustice rooted in inequalities of political power; Lloyd (2023) as a threat to relational equality — the ideal of a society whose members relate as equals rather than through domination, oppression, or hierarchy — via the erosion of thriving local communities; Dawkins (2023) surveys and criticizes the whole family of arguments.

Wells (2021) developed a distinct, dignity-based account. Its key concept is recognition self-respect: a person's conviction of their equal moral worth and of having an equal place in social cooperation, which Bird (2010) and Schemmel (2019) distinguish from appraisal self-respect, the earned satisfaction in one's own achievements. On this tradition's 'social bases' view, self-respect depends on how institutions and fellow citizens actually treat a person. Wells argues that where the state supports gentrification that (a) imposes non-trivial costs on badly off original residents — displacement, housing precarity, loss of service provision — or (b) fails to secure that these residents genuinely benefit, the state expresses disregard for their interests and thereby threatens their recognition self-respect. A third prong concerns downstream state investment: when improvements to streets, policing, and services arrive only after gentrifiers do, original residents can reasonably infer that the state never considered them deserving of these basic goods — Wells's term for goods of fundamental importance to forming and pursuing one's conception of the good, such as decent housing and safe, well-serviced surroundings — which makes the earlier neglect salient as injustice and so also threatens self-respect.

Schemmel (2019) poses the main challenge to this whole line of argument. He holds that liberals should value 'robust' self-respect — the capacity to remain convinced of one's equal worth even when others disregard it — and that it is appropriate to lose self-respect only when one 'cannot reasonably be expected to maintain' it, paradigmatically when powerful others dominate the 'space of reasons' a person can draw on for their self-conception (for example, in a society where everyone believes women are subordinate). Crucially, Schemmel offers no full account of when a person cannot reasonably be expected to maintain self-respect; he notes that it is often inappropriate to lose it where effective opportunities for protest, solidarity, and resistance exist, and that robust self-respect normally presupposes an upbringing and education with a special focus on cultivating resilience. Wells replies that the state is a uniquely powerful voice, that contemporary non-ideal societies — actual societies that fall short of full justice and so lack the background conditions, such as resilience-cultivating education, that just institutions would supply — lack such education, and that badly off residents are already self-respect-vulnerable through stigmatizing poverty narratives — but she concedes that, absent an account of the appropriate-loss conditions, 'it becomes less clear when it is appropriate and when it is not appropriate for individuals to lose self-respect.' The downstream-investment prong faces a further tension she flags herself: since the threat works by making real injustices salient, it cannot be right for the state to remedy the harm by hiding those injustices; her proposed way out is that the state should rather ensure that everyone has the relevant basic goods in the first place.

Problem Statement

Within the self-respect framework for evaluating state-led gentrification, two jointly linked questions remain open and together complete the account Wells (2021) left unfinished. (1) The conditions question: specify the social conditions under which individuals subjected to injustice cannot reasonably be expected to maintain their self-respect — that is, under which losing self-respect is appropriate. An answer must state how widely available effective opportunities for protest, solidarity, and resistance must be; what role resilience-cultivating upbringing and education play, and what follows in non-ideal societies (actual societies falling short of just institutions, and so lacking the background conditions just institutions would supply) that lack them; and how the account treats cases where powerful others dominate the 'space of reasons' a person can draw on for their self-conception. The account must deliver determinate verdicts on the fixed test cases from the literature — Schemmel's fully hierarchical society, his case of lesser-worth political liberties with ample protest opportunities, and Wells's gentrification cases — and must respond to the Bird-style worry that tying self-respect closely to others' treatment makes it objectionably fragile. (2) The application question: applying the completed conditions account, determine whether state support for gentrification that imposes non-trivial costs on, or fails to genuinely benefit, badly off original residents threatens their recognition self-respect — their conviction of their equal moral worth and equal standing in social cooperation — in contemporary non-ideal societies, or whether the availability of anti-gentrification movements and public criticism renders loss of self-respect inappropriate there; and settle whether Wells's proposed resolution of the downstream-investment tension — that the state should ensure universal provision of the relevant basic goods rather than withhold or re-time remedial investment — follows from the account, or whether some other resolution (including rejecting the tension) is required. Both components serve one objective: a complete, defensible normative account of when state action around gentrification expresses disrespect toward, and threatens the self-respect of, badly off original residents.

References

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