A Weberian approach to citizenship in a divided community

Abstract

In the British Isles, traditional accounts surrounding the concept of citizenship usually develop along liberal or neo-liberal pathways. That is to say the study of citizenship in these Isles derives from the work of the late T.H. Marshall. While the importance of his work deserves its time-honoured acknowledgement in the literature, various writers such as Giddens, Heater, and Turner have taken issue with his argument that citizenship rights were handed down or that they ‘re-evolved’ over the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, their main differences with Marshall are not along theoretical lines but rather the applicability, or otherwise, of his model to other societies. Roger Brubaker points out that the nation state is the final arbiter of who is, or is not, a citizen which in the modern world is an act of social closure. This paper will discuss the efficacy of a sociological approach, based on social closure theory, as a means of understanding the struggle that has accompanied the granting of citizenship rights. Northern Ireland will be used as a case study to assess the effectiveness of social closure theory as a sociological explanation for the expansion of citizenship rights in a divided community.