PLURAL SOCIETIES AND THE POSSIBILITY OF SHARED CITIZENSHIP

Abstract

Michael S. MerryFaculty of Social and Behavioral SciencesUniversity of AmsterdamAs we push headlong into the twenty-first century, increasingly stringentdemandsforcitizenshipissueforthfromgovernmentsaroundtheworldfacedwitha formidable assortment of challenges. Shrinking budgets, weakening currencies,andworseningunemploymenttopthelist.Migrationandpopulationmobilityalsocontinue to reshape and redefine how governments and their citizens understandand respond to the demands of citizenship. Long-established markers of nationalidentity seem anachronistic, as do attempts to restore time-honored ‘‘norms andvalues’’ with a view to promoting social cohesion. In Europe one witnesses aswelling elderly population and correspondingly low birthrate from groups aroundwhoseidentitiessharednotionsofcitizenshipwerefirstestablished.Meanwhile,asthis article goes to press, a pall hangs like a dark cloud over the Eurozone and othernations tremble at the thought of partners defaulting on their loans. Structuredto benefit some (for example, large corporations and banks) while disadvantagingor excluding many others, the indiscriminate ebb and flow of investment capitalthreatens further political and economic instability. Hardly anyone is unaffected,though of course some are affected far more than others.To try and cope with these challenges, alliances are forged and fortified.International cooperation augurs strength in numbers, on the one hand, but anever-increasing fiscal vulnerability on the other, as trade alliances are forced towrestle with the present economic uncertainties. Standards of living have risento unprecedented levels in the last sixty years, though massive inequities inwealth distribution remain and continue to widen. An inverse relation betweenthe number of persons seeking work and the actual number of spaces available isnow the norm. Meanwhile, new freedoms are experienced at the same time thatincreasingly intrusive forms of technology and terrorist threats circumscribe whatis permissible. As social and cultural fabrics stretch to the breaking point andpolitical distrust spreads like a virus, a crisis of citizenship looms.Faced with these challenges, states are exploring ways to elicit civicattachmentsfromtheirheterogeneouspopulations,butdoingsoisprovingdifficultgiven that former ways of belonging fail to resonate with a large portion of thecitizenry. Modes of belonging pull in conflicting directions and the absence of ashared civic vision in particular is salient. While the reasons for the discordanceare complex — there are economic, social, and cultural causes and effects — theycertainly are aggravated by the very presence of different cultures, religions, andpolitical views existing side by side without a shared civic vision. In the historyof the world this is not new, of course. Minorities have always been pressured to