Citizenship and Identity PDF
Preview Citizenship and Identity
Citizenship and Identity Politics and Culture A Theory, Culture & Society series Politics and Culture analyses the complex relationships between civil society, identities and contemporary states. Individual books will draw on the major theoretical paradigms in politics, international relations, history and philosophy within which citizenship, rights and social justice can be understood. The series will focus attention on the implications of globalization, the information revolution and postmodernism for the study of politics and society. It will relate these advanced theoretical issues to conventional approaches to welfare, participation and democracy. SERIES EDITOR: Bryan S. Turner, University of Cambridge EDITORIAL BOARD J. M. Barbalet, Australian National University Mike Featherstone, The Nottingham University Stephen Kalberg, Boston University Carole Pateman, University of California, Los Angeles Also in this series Welfare and Citizenship Beyond the Crisis of the Welfare State? Ian Culpitt Citizenship and Social Theory edited by Bryan S. Turner Citizenship and Social Rights The Interdependence of Self and Society Fred Twine The Condition of Citizenship edited by Bart van Steenbergen Nation Formation Towards a Theory of Abstract Community Paul James Virtual Politics Identity and Community in Cyberspace edited by David Holmes Gender and Nation Nira Yuval-Davis Feminism and Citizenship Rian Voet Citizenship and Identity Engin F. Isin and Patricia K. Wood ® SAGE Publications London · Thousand Oaks · New Delhi © Engin F. Isin and Patricia K. Wood 1999 First published 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash -1 New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 5828 2 ISBN 0 7619 5829 0 (pbk) Library of Congress catalog card record available Typeset by Engin F. Isin CONTENTS PREFACE vii 1 REDISTRIBUTION, RECOGNITION, REPRESENTATION 1 Introduction 1 Citizenship: Status, Rights, Redistribution 4 Identity: Belonging, Solidarity, Recognition 14 Citizenship and Identity 19 2 MODERN CITIZENSHIP: CIVIL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL 25 Introduction 25 Constituting Modern Citizenship 25 Group Rights: A Third form of Liberty? 32 Classification Struggles and Group Rights 36 3 DlASPORIC AND ABORIGINAL CITIZENSHIP: POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITIES 47 Introduction 47 Global Diasporas: Geographies of Postcolonialism 50 Politics of Resistance and Inclusion: Reinventing National Identity 56 Decentring the Nation-State: First Nations and Aboriginal Rights 64 The Postnational State and Group Rights 67 4 SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP: IDENTITIES OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY 71 Introduction 71 Gender and Modernity: Moving from the National to the International 72 Space, Identity and Women 78 Gay and Lesbian Rights 81 Space, Identity and Gays 85 Sexual Citizenship and Transgendered Identities 89 5 COSMOPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP: CONTESTED SOVEREIGNTIES 91 Introduction 91 Advanced Capitalism, Class, Globalism 92 Urban Citizenship: Rights to the City 97 Technological Citizenship 105 Ecological Citizenship 113 Cosmopolitan Democracy 118 6 CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP: CONSUMING IDENTITIES 123 Introduction 123 Cultural Capital, Citizenship and Identity 123 Classification Struggles: From the Power Elite to Cultural Intermediaries 125 Consumption as Identity 138 Class and Consumption: Distinction 140 Liberalism, Advanced Liberalism and Governing Consumers 143 Identities as Commodities: Consumer Culture or Citizenship? 148 Cultural Citizenship 151 7 RADICAL CITIZENSHIP: FRAGMENTATION VERSUS PLURALIZATION 153 Introduction 153 Limits of Modern Citizenship 155 Globalization and Cosmopolitan Citizenship 156 Postmodernization and Cultural Citizenship 157 Consumer Citizenship and the End of History 157 New Ethics of Care and Ecological Citizenship 158 New Social Movements and Sexual Citizenship 158 Computers and Technological Citizenship 159 Postcolonial Identities and Diasporic Citizenship 159 Global Cities and Urban Citizenship 160 Coda 160 REFERENCES 163 INDEX 185 PREFACE ...to see differently, and to want to see differently to that degree, is no small discipline and preparation of the intellect for its future 'objectivity'—the latter is understood not as 'contemplation without interest' (which is, as such, a non- concept and absurdity), but as having in our power our 'pros' and 'cons': so as to be able to engage and disengage them so that we can use th edifference in perspectives and affective interpretations for knowledge....There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing; the more affects we allow to speak about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to speak about the same thing, the more complete will be our 'concept' of the thing, our 'objectivity'. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III, 12 Although this book draws upon theoretical studies on citizenship and identity, it is neither theoretical nor normative, but diagnostic and reflexive. It is diagnostic because we take theoretical and normative attempts to transcend the conflict between citizenship and identity and work out their possibilities and dangers in specific forms of citizenship. What happens when we take the ethos of pluralization seriously in specific fields of politics today against a fear of fragmentation? What would an ethos of pluralization look like when we examine citizenship from multiple, intersecting and overlapping perspectives? Those who address the issue of group-differentiated or overlapping citizenship make their arguments still from a singular perspective without taking into account plural perspectives and challenges. What happens when we take seriously the ideas of multiple subject-positions and the necessity of developing a multilayered conception? Our response was to delineate further forms of citizenship. In the end, we raise more questions than answers for each form of citizenship and its relationship to others. But this diagnostic approach allows us to accomplish two goals: first, to introduce our readers into debates across disciplines over different forms of citizenship and group-rights; and, second, to confront conceptual difficulties without raising false hopes for a promised land where citizenship and identity are forever reconciled. We are considering one of the most fundamental and challenging questions: group rights and their just distribution. We might argue that liberal democracy has brought Western nation-states closer to justice than previous polities through its emphasis on equality, its commitment to the participation of the citizen, its appeal to due process and rule of law. But we also believe that these ideals have served as masks to disguise forms of discrimination, oppression and misrecognition based on class, gender, race, ethnicity, age and ability. Unpacking the relationship between citizenship and identity under advanced capitalism challenged us to find an analytical framework. Liberals insist on the supremacy of the individual a la Bill of Rights and dismiss the possibility of viii CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY assigning any legal or political meaning to group rights; communitarians assert the group as the defining centre of identity that all individuals imagine themselves only in relation to the larger 'community' as the basis of a common ground. Meanwhile, 'republican liberals', 'civic republicans' and 'radical democrats' claim to synthesize or transcend the vexing tension between group and individual identities, and between the polity and the person, while still succumbing to binary oppositions. Politics, culture and philosophy get tangled up in our definitions of ourselves and our position in the world in which we live The views created by an either/or construction of identity have clearly become inadequate to reflect upon ourselves and our subject-positions. Taking the idea of multiple subject-positions seriously pushed us to carry the ethos of pluralization to its limits and thus to expose its promises and dangers. It also demanded a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary study. The conceptual difficulties of the relationship between citizenship and identity reverberate across different fields such as social and political theory, international relations theory, ecological theory, feminist theory, cultural theory, urban theory and postcolonial theory. For example, the debate over essentialism versus constructivism in cultural studies has affinities with the debate over structure versus agency in social theory, or liberalism versus communitarianism in political theory. In our negotiation of these concepts and diverse fields, we found ourselves returning to T.H. Marshall, to his Citizenship and Social Class (1950), but also to his lesser known works. Marshall's concept of citizenship described its development in terms of hierarchies of power and his framework resonates in our circumstances. But Marshall's work does not go far enough: we want to build on Marshall's analysis, in order to address new political struggles and bring ourselves to the present day. We are encouraged by the fact that feminist theorists have also critically returned to Marshall (Lister, 1997a; Marston, 1990), as have others (Bulmer and Rees, 1996; Manning, 1993). What does it mean to say that we are building on the work of T.H. Marshall? We are building a deeper conception of citizenship. Marshall delineates the evolution of civil, political and social rights, and illustrates how that evolution was shaped by the development of modern capitalism. We want to go beyond the forms of citizenship he mentions and advocate ethnic, sexual, technological, ecological and cultural forms. At first glance, it may appear that we are merely endorsing the extension of civil, political and social rights to marginalized groups of ethnicity, race and gender. But this is only the first step. We argue that the initial forms of citizenship, due to their connection to capitalism, were articulated in such a way as to oppress and silence such groups that interfered with the relentless pursuit of accumulation. The focus of early citizenship was the specificity of particular rights and freedoms, which were to reside in the individual. The actual practice and process of these rights were only ever conceived in the abstract. Moreover, they were not conceived with any recognition of the relevance of space, that is, the locations from which people exercise their citizenship rights. As advanced liberalism continues its socio- economic reorganization, there is a renewed attempt, often in the language of PREFACE ix new technologies, to obliterate (in word, if not in fact) the difference space makes. Our examination of the importance—indeed, the centrality—of space to questions of identity and citizenship is a further way in which we build on, but go far beyond, Marshall. Our exploration of ethnic, sexual, cultural, cosmopolitan and technological forms of citizenship is underlined by a belief in the necessity of taking group rights seriously. This evolves parallel to the citizenship needs developed by Marshall; that is, new concepts of citizenship are emerging as modern capitalism is transformed in new ways and thereby dislocates us as producers and consumers. But to understand citizenship rights in terms of the right to an identity (i.e., the right to have rights), as opposed (or in addition) to the passive right of status, involves, first, a reconception of the meaning of citizenship, and, second, a reconception of the means of allocating citizenship rights and the polities from which such rights draw legitimacy, from polis to cosmopolis. This is where our emphasis on the process of rights-claims , rather than the rights themselves, becomes crucial. What we hope to achieve here is to emphasize the process of citizenship, in the sense of allocation of rights rather than the actual substance of those rights. The several forms of rights we examine here are only the beginning of the list. With more skill, time and space, we might also have considered religious citizenship, ability citizenship, children's citizenship, senior citizenship, and so on. Citizenship is a legal status and practice that progressively widens its sphere to include various rights. It is a contested field and democracy ensures that it will remain thus. Again, by focusing on the process, we aim to avoid becoming preoccupied with the specifics of any particular form of cultural politics and to resist the temptation to declare any rights as 'universal' and somehow immune to the contingencies of era and place. We could not have started the list we have built here without the support of others. We are thankful for our fine research assistant, Charlene Fell, whose services were acquired with the financial assistance of the Faculty of Arts and the Division of Social Science at York University. We are grateful to Robert Rojek at Sage Publications for his encouragement and facilitation of the book every step of the way. We would also like to thank our spouses, Evelyn Ruppert and Steve McKinney, for their respect, recognition and extraordinary support. We dedicate this book to them.
The list of books you might like
