Discourses Of Citizenship Research Articles

Voluntary participation and poor women's work: a critical examination of a community health improvement initiative in a Kolkata slum

Voluntary participation is a development practice that incorporates and ‘empowers’ marginalized populations by recruiting them as volunteers in community improvement programs in the global south. In India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) commonly recruit female volunteers in urban slums to ‘participate’ in the improvement of reproductive and child health care needs in the community. In the volunteering literature, the practice is examined as one which uses the unpaid labor of women and legitimizes it within discourses of citizenship and solidarity in declining welfare states in the global north. The dynamics of female volunteering in countries such as India has received little attention in this literature. With a focus on a reproductive and child health care program run by Hope, an Indian NGO, my article undertakes the following. First, I argue that in the Indian context, volunteering needs to be situated within a broader project of decentralizing the traditional authority of the development expert in top-down initiatives. Second, I demonstrate that female volunteering is practiced through stereotypical images of economically marginalized women's work. The article suggests that the volunteering strategy needs to be rethought as it fails to address the social and material realities within which urban poor women work and live in the global south.

Citizenship acts and immigrant voting rights movements in the US

What happens to notions of national belonging in the US when non-citizen immigrants claim the right to vote at the local level for school boards and city councils? Is this a fundamental challenge to US citizenship norms, or an extension of the force of liberal discipline onto new citizen-subjects-in-formation? While academic literature has focused on historical, legal and normative ethical arguments about non-citizen voting, this article focuses on the vernaculars of citizenship discourses advocates and opponents invoke in order to win over local and state officials to their cause and how they both integrate and challenge official responses to their claims. Such attention to particularities is necessary to appreciate the ways in which citizenship practice is contingent on local political culture and history but also potentially transformative of larger institutions and discussions over national membership. Advocates put into practice arguments from the academic literature and borrowed through trans-local exchanges of information amongst advocates, tailored to suit local political culture and traditions. They simultaneously invoke and undermine notions of scales and levels of citizenship that would disaggregate local discourse from national politics and policies. Attention to the particular dynamics and challenges these actors face in their political work reveals both the utility and limitations of political theory for understanding the issue of non-citizen voting in the US as a particular example of citizenship as practice.

Theorizing Citizenship in Late Modern ICT Societies

In this paper I discuss a definition of citizenship for better understanding and analyses of political participations in ICT societies. To achieve this I approach the topic from a comprehensive understanding of developments in society and technology and how they mutually reinforce each other. Discussions of citizenship are concerned with macro-perspectives, combining empirical studies of how society and political participation is changing, connected to normative visions of the good society and how it should be structured; hence citizenship studies are already transdisciplinary. In the article I propose and understanding of citizenship as the participation and action upon shared meanings on issues of the organization of society. Citizenship is enacted in political communities; ensembles of people addressing the organization of society and making sense of this address in a similar way, and at the same time constructing and renegotiating values and norms out of which the authority of the community streams. And it is in relation to this authority that citizens are made. The paper ends with a proposal of how to categorize online participation and citizenship(s) in ICT societies.

Theorizing Citizenship in Late Modern ICT Societies

In this paper I discuss a definition of citizenship for better understanding and analyses of political participations in ICT societies. To achieve this I approach the topic from a comprehensive understanding of developments in society and technology and how they mutually reinforce each other. Discussions of citizenship are concerned with macro-perspectives, combining empirical studies of how society and political participation is changing, connected to normative visions of the good society and how it should be structured; hence citizenship studies are already transdisciplinary. In the article I propose and understanding of citizenship as the participation and action upon shared meanings on issues of the organization of society. Citizenship is enacted in political communities; ensembles of people addressing the organization of society and making sense of this address in a similar way, and at the same time constructing and renegotiating values and norms out of which the authority of the community streams. And it is in relation to this authority that citizens are made. The paper ends with a proposal of how to categorize online participation and citizenship(s) in ICT societies.

Nation‐freezing: images of the nation and the migrant in citizenship packages

ABSTRACT.New nationalism differs from classical nationalism in terms of its content and focus. Whereas classical nationalism distinguishes itself from other nation‐states in defining its national identity, new nationalism distinguishes the ‘native’ national identity from that of its current and prospective citizens of migrant origin. The terms of integration thus become conditions of membership in the national community. Citizenship and integration policies emerge as central arenas where the discourse of new nationalism unfolds. This study looks into the discourses of cultural citizenship by studying the content of the official ‘citizenship packages’ – materials designed to welcome newcomers and assist them in their integration – in three Western European countries: The Netherlands, France and the UK. What images are depicted of the nation‐state and the migrant in citizenship packages, and (how) do these images freeze the nation?

Canadian multicultural citizenship: constraints on immigrants’ leisure pursuits

The proliferation of empirical research on immigrants’ leisure constraints as restrictive and negative, which is implicitly based on discourses that present particular leisure forms and practices as positive and desirable, has provided scholars with a limited understanding of constraints. In contrast, Foucault's understanding of constraints as necessary for any social practice suggests that power acts as a constraint on action in a way that is never wholly inhibiting. Indeed, from a Foucauldian perspective, constraints make many leisure actions and experiences possible. Thus constraints must be seen as both inhibiting and enabling individuals’ actions. This paper offers a critical Foucauldian review of constraints research to demonstrate how multicultural citizenship discourses in Canada both inhibit and enable immigrants’ leisure pursuits.

Bollywood and neonationalism: The emergence of nativism as the norm in Indian conventional cinema

This article utilizes a transnational feminist perspective to examine the genre of Bollywood cinema and the representation of Indian citizens in the national narrative that it promotes. The author analyzes the resurgence of nationalisms among South Asians on diasporic shores and the role played by Indian and Pakistani cinema in stoking patriotic flames in its discourse of citizenship among the citizens of the postcolonial nation state. In particular it focuses on the questions, what kinds of imagined communities does Bollywood cinema as a whole promote? And to what extent does Hindutva play a central role in the construction of the imagined community?

A Passport to Trouble

IntroductionAccess to government issued identity documentation (ID) is not readily available for all Canadians. Trans- identified Canadians1 are one particular group that has a significant amount of difficultly accessing ID. The ramifications of barriers to obtaining ID are significant and far reaching; and for transidentified people, can function as a justification for other forms of exclusion and violence based in transphobia. Transphobia consists of actions, behaviors or beliefs that are driven by an understanding (consciously or not) of trans-body as less real than non- trans body (Prosser, 1998). These actions, behaviors and beliefs function as forms of violence, whether explicit or implicit, intentional or otherwise, that are often thought to stem from fear. Common sense assumptions about gender-that everyone identifies as sex they were assigned at birth and that norms of masculinity and femininity naturally follow these birth assignments-are used to justify transphobia in form of stigmatization, discrimination, and various types of violence (Spade, 2008). Thinking about transphobia in this way, it is easy to see that policies that enact barriers to ID access for trans- people are an excellent example of institutional transphobia.Barriers to ID access for trans- people in Canada occur in a myriad of ways, and this article will look specifically at access issues in relation to passports. As trans legal scholar Dean Spade (2008, p. 749) notes: the literature has thus far failed to look at range of administrative gender reclassification policies and practices-including birth certificates, DMV policies, policies of sex- segregated facilities, and federal identity document policies-side by side, which has meant that significance of incoherence of these policies as a group has been obscured. This article will not go so far as to attempt such a lofty endeavor; however, through an examination of barriers to information regarding gender reclassification, this article offers a different trajectory towards a similar goal. While significance of these incoherencies is incredibly important, so too are erasures of gender reclassification policies that occur through lack of access to information regarding them, and impact these erasures have on interconnected government policies that affect trans- people (such as access to ID, placement in sex- segregated facilities, and access to healthcare). Moreover, these erasures perform a significantly more important function than simply an extension of institutional transphobia; they also function to naturalize and reify common sense assumptions about gender that underpin both policies and transphobia, as well as various forms of misogyny.Through a consideration of relationship between legal discourses and citizenship discourses as they relate to transsexed body and passport, this article undermines commonsensical assumptions that underpin social justice and human rights issues. By explicitly considering how a lack of access to information functions to produce certain bodies as possible and others as impossible, while simultaneously producing different forms of citizenship for these (im)possible bodies, government issued ID becomes ground from which horizon of institutional transphobia and naturalization of gender difference becomes obvious. Exposing this institutionally imbedded transphobia is merely an initial step in much larger project suggested by Spade, as significance of incoherencies between policies is also obscured by barriers to access of very information contained in these policies. Moving through a critical and rigorous examination of a single Passport Canada form, this article uses formal and informal archive produced by this form, ethnographic stories, and mandate and understanding expressed by Passport Canada to expose inaccessibility of information regarding gender reclassification. …

Rights Beyond Borders: Everyday Politics of Citizenship in the Israeli Diaspora

This article examines the process by which Israeli migrants define, perceive and negotiate their diasporic citizenship rights and duties as regards their home state. Rights are a bundle of symbolic and material services conferred by the state upon citizens abroad and include among other things ceremonies marking national holidays, language enrichment classes for the 1.5 and second generations, and homeland art and literature fairs. Recognition of the entitlement of nationals residing abroad to these rights is accompanied by a demand for symmetry manifested by the fulfillment of cultural duties. I focus in this article on the case of the Israeli community in Los Angeles and its members' quest to be recognised as diasporic citizens. By analysing narratives of state officials and local activists in the context of Israel's Independence Day Festival, I show how a discourse of citizenship beyond borders is framed within different articulations of rights and duties.

The Challenges of Advocacy in Anthropological Research on Intimate Partner Violence

In the year 2001, I began researching the relationship between domestic violence, family relations, and women's rights awareness in rural Northwest Ecuador. I have also been involved in the development of a community-based health project in the region, as well as other local initiatives for health and social justice. Over a ten-year period, violence has come unexpectedly in and out of focus in my work due to shifting perceptions of its legitimacy in the eyes of community members. While intimate partner violence has long been accepted as a private and generally unremarkable affair, newly circulating discourses of human rights and citizenship are prompting people to increasingly question this view. Some forms of intimate partner violence are now intentionally labeled violencia doméstica (domestic violence) and contested as such. For this reason, many Las Cruces inhabitants now hold the state accountable for protecting women and children, even though legal and judicial resources remain scant. In this paper, I discuss the ways that the politicization of violence as a violation of women's rights has rendered certain forms of violence more visible and contestable, while obscuring others.

Triple Bottom Lines, Standards and Balanced Scorecards: The Making of Private Firms Commensurable with the Public Good

How can we talk of private enterprise as (good) citizens? This short paper originates from the attempt to answer this question and tries to explore some of its consequences. The answer normally makes reference to the notion of accountability and to its ability to mobilize the concepts of legitimacy and identity. Accountability has to do with the giving and taking of accounts on the activity conducted by economic and social agents (Mouritsen and Munro, 1996). Based on such a broad definition, relationships of accountability can be established and analyzed at multiple levels but the one of interest here is the one between private firms and their social and natural environment. The construction, re-construction and maintenance of a relationship of accountability require the use of a language that allows for communication between those that produce the account and its recipients. Discussions and discourses can develop once such language is made available and its rules shared by the interested parties. There is therefore a linguistic issue at the hearth of the transformation of private firms into public actors: the managerial discourse of corporate citizenship is to a significant extent dependent on the possibility of representing the firm as capable of expressing the ways in which it contributes to society and the environment (Sahlin Andersson, 2006). Thanks to these specific types of representations the firm is in the position of enhancing its social and political legitimacy (Meyer, 1994). But the availability of such language and the development of a discursive potential for corporate citizenship is in itself problematic. It is not only a question of inventing a new language but also to come to terms with the one that firms normally use to account for their results. The private firm has indeed traditionally used a language – the financial one – to affirm its identity and communicate its performances to interested parties. In doing so the corporation has established a specific type of legitimacy on purely economic grounds and constructed a relationship of accountability with those parties that are solely interested in the financial returns it generates. Throughout the history of capitalism these characteristics of the language of business have rarely been seen as fundamental limitations and the role of the firm within society was seen as accurately represented by its ability to generate financial profits. This attitude has been radically challenged by the advent of corporate social responsibility, which has invited to a fundamental redefinition in the language of business. The discourse of corporate citizenship has drawn attention to the limits of the mainstream business language and evoked the existence of more appropriate ways of narrating the identity and the functioning of the private enterprise. Corporate citizenship is to a significant extent constituted by the demand and supply of new forms of corporate accountability that should supplement the existing mainstream ones. But what does this call for new, improved accountability imply? What it is precisely that has to be redefined in order for private firms to be made more “transparent” to the public scrutiny? The critique of traditional forms of accountability invites us to take into consideration the role of the accounting language. Although in an indirect manner, discourses of corporate citizenship criticize accounting for its inability to account for those aspects that manifest the identity and action of the firm as a good citizen. What is seen a problematic is the technical language that is conventionally used to report on the functioning and performance of the corporation. It comes therefore as no surprise that the development of new forms of corporate accountability is paralled by corresponding calls for transformation of the tools and principles of accounting.

Is the state social or the computer inhuman? Claims for state support and citizenship in post-socialist Georgia

In the discussions of citizenship in post-socialist Georgia, the topic of social entitlements predominates. Soviet social citizenship, which granted the full range of social rights, significantly shaped the people's current expectations of social rights in Georgia. In order to address the external and internal pressure for poverty alleviation, the Georgian government started reforming the social support system of the country. The cornerstone of Georgia's current social policy is a new social assistance programme, the main principle of which is to provide social benefits to the poorest families as identified by an evaluation system. This paper explores the enactment of the ‘targeted social assistance’ (TSA) programme in a village in north-western Georgia. By participating in the TSA programme, Georgian citizens exercise social citizenship as a practice of bargaining for universal social rights that at present are not achievable for all as the state provides social security only to extremely needy families. The category of social citizenship described by T.H. Marshall helps us to understand the claims of Georgian citizens for state support. The discrepancy between social security and social citizenship causes people to misunderstand the goals of the TSA programme and this ultimately leads to dissatisfaction among Georgia's citizenry.

How many histories of labour? Towards a theory of postcolonial capitalism

At the beginning of Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty explains that the Europe he seeks to provincialize or de-centre is an 'imaginary figure‘ that remains deeply embedded in 'clichés and shorthand forms‘. Both social sciences and political discourses of development and citizenship continue to be shaped by these. Among these clichés a certain idea of labour plays a crucial epistemic and political role. Both social and economic theory and the theory and politics of citizenship have taken for granted that wage labour is the 'normal labour relation‘ within capitalism, the homogeneous legal scheme that articulates social conflict and integration as well as access to real citizenship. The situation has radically changed nowadays: while wage labour is declining as a standard relation even in Europe and in the 'West‘, the heterogeneity of labour relations that has characterized and characterizes colonial and postcolonial societies paradoxically seems to be more adequate to grasp the history and present of global capitalism. Drawing on a discussion of the second chapter of Provincializing Europe (‘The Two Histories of Capital‘) and on recent developments in postcolonial studies and 'global labour history‘, this article will attempt to outline a theory of postcolonial capitalism and of the lines of conflict and antagonism that crisscross it.

Pitfalls of consensus-orientated dialogue: the German Islam Conference (Deutsche Islam Konferenz)

This article discusses one deliberative approach to dialogue as conceptualized by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas and brings this into a conversation with the current dialogue practice of the Deutsche Islam Konferenz (DIK) in Germany. This ongoing dialogue forum was initiated by the Ministry of the Interior in the autumn of 2006 in order to enact a structured conversation with Muslims and as a means of recognising them as ‘German Muslims’. My main argument is twofold. Focusing on Habermas’s ideal of dialogue as a consensus oriented rational discourse of equal citizens in non-hegemonic structures, I will argue, on the one hand, that much of the promise of the DIK to enact a dialogue with Muslims at eyelevel and to recognise them as equal citizens on the basis of the liberal-democratic order has not been fulfilled. With its top-down approach to Muslims as mere re-actors the DIK has so far turned out to be much more a governmental technique which aims at reshaping Muslims according to liberal/secular norms. On the other hand, I claim that although the DIK obviously runs counter to Habermas’s principles in many ways, it also shares and simultaneously lays bare the difficulties entailed in his consensus orientation, and, more importantly, in the secular bias of his approach.Schirin Amir-Moazai is Assistant Professor for Islam in Europe in the Department of Islamic Studies at Free University Berlin. Website: http://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/islamwiss/mitarbeiterinnen/professorinnen/Amir-Moazami/index.html.

Agonism and the Reconception of European Citizenship

Viewed either as a limited undertaking or a process in the making, European citizenship appears to be caught at an impasse. While the dominant approaches fail to break from the confines of the demos/no demos thesis, the challenges confronting Union citizenship ironically converge with those posed to citizenship discourse. Can European citizenship escape from this impasse? To address this question the article shows how the agonistic emphasis on contestation opens the way for a different reading of European citizenship. On this reading, Union citizenship is not simply taken as a means to participation, but as a channel for political mobilisation. Constructed out of an affective identification with the negative, with that we oppose rather than endorse, the agonistic conception, argues the article, insightfully shifts the terms of debating Union citizenship.

Toward a Rhetorical Cosmopolitanism: Stoics, Kant, and the Challenges of European Integration

In this article, I present a mode of cosmopolitanism that builds on Stoic and Kantian views toward not just rational cosmopolitan agents but rhetorical ones. I outline a new rhetorical approach to cosmopolitanism that addresses the challenge of “otherness.” This rhetorical cosmopolitanism focuses on the conditions for deliberative and participatory practices that bring us before others; it seeks to help us recognize that the way we develop actual—and not just abstract—political relationships to others is fundamentally rhetorical, not just rational or emotional. I explore the debates over the inclusion of minorities in the European Union, particularly focusing on the Muslim population, in order to outline a rhetorical cosmopolitanism that accounts for the place of emotions in discourses of citizenship.

Global Subjects or Objects of Globalisation? The promotion of global citizenship in organisations offering sport for development and/or peace programmes

Sport for Development and Peace (sdp) has been adopted as a ‘development tool’ by Western development practitioners and a growing number of development organisations. Sport is frequently referred to as a ‘global language’ and used to promote international awareness and cross-cultural understanding—two key themes in global citizenship literature. In this paper I examine the language adopted by organisations promoting sdp—specifically, what sdp organisations say they do as well as the nature and implications of their discourses. Drawing on a large and growing body of literature on global citizenship and post-structuralism, and on post-colonial critiques, I argue that sdp narratives have the potential to reinforce the ‘Othering’ of community members in developing countries and may contribute to paternalistic conceptions of development assistance. In so doing, they weaken the potential for more inclusive and egalitarian forms of global citizenship. The article examines the discourse of sdp organisational material found online and analyses it in the context of broader sport and colonialism literature. The work of SDP organisations is further examined in relation to global citizenship discourse with a focus on the production— and projection—of global subjects, or objects of globalisation, and what this means for development ‘beneficiaries’.

Discourses of environmental citizenship: How television teaches us to be green

This article explores the discursive construction of environmental citizenship in German and British public service television. We ask whether television discourse describes environmental protection as a matter of citizen duties or a question of individual rights, and we explore the extent to which the role of a global civil society is highlighted. While the themes of responsibility and civil society have a clear presence in our sample, they often appear in conjunction with the dominant themes of the free market and the autonomy of consumers. Placing television discourse in its sociopolitical context, the main argument of this article is that television discourse sustains a liberal approach to environmental politics, currently favoured by governments in Germany and Britain.

David Luis‐Brown . Waves of Decolonization: Discourses of Race and Hemispheric Citizenship in Cuba, Mexico, and the United States . (New Americanists.) Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press . 2008 . Pp. ix, 340. Cloth $89.95, paper $24.95.

David Luis‐Brown . Waves of Decolonization: Discourses of Race and Hemispheric Citizenship in Cuba, Mexico, and the United States . (New Americanists.) Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press . 2008 . Pp. ix, 340. Cloth $89.95, paper $24.95.

‘Where were you when the monster hit?’ Media convergence, branded security citizenship, and the trans-media phenomenon of Cloverfield

This article uses the concept of media convergence to examine several aspects of the successful 2008 motion picture Cloverfield. I discuss implications of the film’s interaction in an increasingly convergent media landscape, such as its internet marketing campaigns, and interface with technological discourses of citizenship and surveillance. I explore the extent to which movies produced with digital technology, marketed through the internet, and increasingly viewed in private homes are best considered through media convergence literature. I investigate the extent to which this multi-platform, trans-media phenomenon, synergizing with numerous cross-promotional product marketing initiatives, constructs citizen-spectators through narratives of security, post-9/11 citizenship, and surveillance, and the extent to which consumer activity (such as purchasing cell phones) is implicated in this process. Lastly, I discuss concerns of labour and subjectivity pertinent to this media phenomenon, specifically how this film utilized unpaid audience labour in its construction, circulation, and construction of a trans-media presence.