Abstract
We reinterpret citizenship using Mannheim’s classical sociology of knowledge and through a more recent variant on them in Latour’s argument that “we have never been modern” (Latour, 1991). On that basis, we understand citizenship as a recursive effect of disputes over belonging and membership (Isin, 2002), where those disputes entail the three forms of political rationality or “thought styles” which Mannheim and Latour variously suggested: the linearly individual rationality of liberalism; dialectically collective socialism; and culturally collective conservatism. Marshall defines citizenship as a “status bestowed on those who are full members of a community” (Marshall, 1973). He presents an image of evolutionary progress, from civil to political rights and finally to the social form, in Britain. We argue that Marshall was entangled in evolutionary and teleological images of citizenship. We reinterpret citizenship using Mannheim’s classical sociology of knowledge. We suggest that sociologies of knowledge allow a re-reading of “citizenship” that can accommodate conceptual difficulties. Mannheim called into question the “progress” implied or stated in theories of “stages”. He stressed instead the continuing interaction between different ways of knowing social reality, or between what he called “thought styles”. We apply Mannheim to “citizenship” in order to lift two “purifications”, so that humanity is both natural and political.
Highlights
We reinterpret citizenship using Mannheim’s classical sociology of knowledge and through a more recent variant on them in Latour’s argument that “we have never been modern” (Latour, 1991)
We suggest that Marshall was tangled in evolutionary and teleological images of citizenship
As Turner argued it is “conceptually parsimonious to think of three types of resource: economic, cultural and political” (Turner, 1997), instead we suggest three types of “thought style” or political rationality to explain the dynamics of citizenship (Donoghue & White, 2003)
Summary
We reinterpret citizenship using Mannheim’s classical sociology of knowledge and through a more recent variant on them in Latour’s argument that “we have never been modern” (Latour, 1991). It is impossible to avoid the teleological strain in the result but few writers have noted Marshall’s assumptions of a stable human nature and the analytical rationality of political/economic man that appears to be characteristic of the modern (Donoghue & White, 2003) In his later work Marshall wrote of “value problems” in welfare-capitalism, in which he stressed the tensions between the democracy, welfare and capitalism of the “hyphenated society” (Marshall, 1981). He imbued citizenship with a cultural sense and suggested the interpenetration of its civil/ capitalist, political/democratic and social/welfare moments. Both models entail intractable difficulties, which lead to the return and prioritization of rational political/economic man who is separate from human nature but is applied to an evolutionary political process
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