Constitution Of Political Community Research Articles

Privatization and Citizenship: Local politics of water in the Philippines

Nai Rui Chng explores the different ways in which water privatization has impacted on the constitution of political community in the context of local politics. Based on recent fieldwork on small-scale water providers in an urban poor community in Taguig City, Metro Manila, in the Philippines, he describes collective action by the Taguig urban poor in response to water privatization. He outlines how Taguig's experience informs the wider debate on water privatization and citizenship.

Universality, singularity, and sexual difference

Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship raises the problem of the tension between universality and singularity in the constitution of political community. Politics for Derrida refers to demands for universal justice, while friendship stands in for demands to recognize the incomparable uniqueness of each person. Derrida develops the incompatibility between these demands to its furthest extreme while arguing that democracy paradoxically requires meeting the demands of both claims. The result is a democracy that is never achieved but always present only in the form of a desire for democracy. This article evaluates Derrida’s position that political community is simultaneously impossible and necessary in light of similar proposals by Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray. It also asks whether the political community Derrida imagines is one in which women’s desires are represented.