Citizenship from the Couch: Public Engagement and Private Norms in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Abstract

The tension between the public and the private spheres is not new: while feminists (among others) have long called for public protection to be extended to the private sphere, liberals argue for the need for the ‘defence of the “private sphere” from encroachment by the public’ (Geuss 2001: 114). Although we acknowledge the problematic nature of the distinction, we nevertheless recognize its utility in delineating who we are engaging with and what, therefore, we owe them. Traditionally, citizenship, when seen as a role (rather than a status), belongs to the public sphere. We are citizens when we walk into the voting booth, when we attend a ward council meeting, or write to the paper. At home, we might think, we are not citizens but, stripped of our roles in society, we assume the most fundamental roles in our lives—as family and friends—with freedom to pursue and express our interests and desires. It may appear then, that the citizen and the person, or the public and the private, co-exist only insofar as they are understood to be enacted in different spaces, each with their own norms and rules. Drawing upon Christine Hobden’s account of citizenship, we challenge this stark divide between the public citizen and private person. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to retreat (physically) to the private sphere, yet the rise of social media has provided us with greater opportunities to engage (virtually) with public challenges; this article analyses this reality through the lens of Hobden’s account of citizenship, exploring our civic responsibilities within the blurry public-private realm of social media. We examine some of the implications of this ‘citizenship from the couch’ and suggest that one possibly fruitful way to navigate the blurry line between these roles is to return to the fundamentals of political society: the social contract—the project of living together.