Enactment Of Citizenship Research Articles

Rats claiming rights? More‐than‐human acts of denizenship in Amsterdam

AbstractThe anthropology of citizenship has sought to understand citizenship beyond formal‐legal definitions, including a focus on how those who are legally without citizenship rights also engage in everyday acts of political claims‐making. While this emphasis on the enactment of citizenship has expanded our understanding of who counts as a political being, it has also been obviously human centered. Might we also understand animals’ acts, their presence and movements, as having the potential to constitute political constituents? This article develops a more‐than‐human perspective on political claims‐making by connecting insights from human‐animal studies to the anthropology of citizenship. We draw on research on rats in Amsterdam to propose an understanding of these animals’ interventions in the urban built environment as more‐than‐human “acts of denizenship.” Focusing on different forms of rat behavior, we analyze rats’ mundane interactions and relations with the city's residents, infrastructure, and other animals as forms of claims‐making. We see the behavior as efforts that are partially recognized by humans and that, as such, can be understood as enacting a relation of denizenship. Such attention to how rats act in and on urban space, we suggest, can help us conceptualize political agency and the formation of political belonging in ways that extend beyond the human.

Media-centric and Politics-centric Views of Media and Democracy: A Longitudinal Analysis of Political Communication and the International Journal of Press/Politics

ABSTRACT Political communication is a dynamic, interdisciplinary field that has grown in stature and reach in recent decades, becoming more international in scope and orientation while gaining respect in political science as a legitimate area of inquiry. In the evolving and participatory media-politics landscape, it becomes important to ask how the cross-disciplinary project of political communication research is keeping pace with changing conditions that provide a greater structural role for the press in politics and new technology in the enactment of citizenship. To track these trends in research, this paper reports the results of a longitudinal content analysis of research articles published in the journals Political Communication and the International Journal of Press/Politics for the period 1996-2016. For each year, we selected one issue at random and examined all research articles in that issue, excluding reviews, invited theme essays, and commentaries. Altogether, 229 articles were included in the analysis. Results indicate a noticeable increase in the internationalization of political communication research over the 20-year analysis period, a slight decrease in research expressing a negative evaluative tone toward the media over time, and consistent growth in the percentage of articles with a media-centric focus, defined as positioning the press as a central consideration in the study and regarding news media as central to democratic life. In light of these findings, the unique interpretive lenses that researchers adopt depending on discipline are explored in relation to ongoing developments in political communication research.

Black lesbian women in South Africa: Citizenship and the coloniality of power

Current conceptualisations of citizenship in South Africa are embedded in the egalitarian discourse of the Constitution, lauded for its recognition of historically marginalised groups, including sexually and gender diverse people. Within the paradox of progressive legal advancements and the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, we use a decolonial feminist lens to critically engage with the notion of citizenship for black lesbian women in contemporary South Africa. We adopt a social-psychological perspective of citizenship as an active practice, embedded within the dynamic intersections of historical, structural and discursive patterns of power-knowledge relations in everyday life. We draw from five focus group discussions that were part of a study that explored the intersections of identity, power and violence in the lives of black lesbian women in South Africa. Focusing on the enactments of citizenship in public spaces, we contend that black lesbian women’s lived experiences of citizenship point to the enduring manifestations of the coloniality of power, in which the centrality of race underpins the intersections of class, gender and sexuality. We conclude by arguing that current conceptualisations of full citizenship in contemporary South Africa require a reframing that recognises the coloniality of power and the heterogeneity of marginalised and invisibilised subjectivities.

Claiming the ‘right to a happy Soviet childhood’: discursive enactment of memory citizenship among Russian-speakers in Estonia

ABSTRACTDrawing on the concept of memory citizenship, this study examines the discursive enactment of citizenship evoked by social contention around memories of the Soviet past among the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia. It scrutinizes the rhetorical strategies and argumentative practices applied by Estonian Russian-speakers in social media discourse to defy the perceived politicization of Soviet childhood and the claim for recognition and inclusion both as mnemonic actors and political subjects. The paper demonstrates the potential of digital and performative modes of citizenship for minority publics to exercise their civic agency beyond conventional realms and forms of political participation.

The enactment of the neoliberal citizen: evidence from a case study in Bogota, Colombia

ABSTRACT This article looks comparatively at the enactments of citizenship in two schools in Bogota, Colombia: a private elite institution and a public-private partnership school from the outskirts of the city. Data was collected through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews Enactments of students were conceptualised so as to identify the discourses of citizenship that were at play. I argue that both schools are under the influence of a strong neoliberal project that places emphasis on educating productive citizens. However, this conceptualisation of citizenship might not work for contemporary Colombia as it continues to reproduce a highly stratified society that carries within itself colonialities that do not allow for the interaction and collaboration of peoples. The article concludes that a thick cosmopolitanism that emphasises causal responsibility might be a more adequate lens for citizenship education in Colombia.

“A new geography of defense”: The birth of psychological warfare

The fostering of a critically engaged citizenry and robust civil society are championed as cornerstones of democratisation and development, particularly in partially free or unfree democracies. The role, dispositions and practices expected of both citizens and civil society organisations are often contested, demonstrating differing approaches towards and understandings of public participation in political life and the public sphere. This paper explores the social and normative construction of civility as a tool of governmentality. Drawing upon evidence regarding the role, functioning, and challenges facing civil society in efforts to entrench an open public sphere and engaged citizenry in two partial democracies, Uganda and Singapore, we reflect upon the ways in which such efforts respond to – and are shaped by – the developmental state model, and how discourses of in/civility are deployed to constrain more critical interventions and enactments of citizenship and civil society.

Developing a ‘civil’ society in partial democracies: In/civility and a critical public sphere in Uganda and Singapore

The fostering of a critically engaged citizenry and robust civil society are championed as cornerstones of democratisation and development, particularly in partially free or unfree democracies. The role, dispositions and practices expected of both citizens and civil society organisations are often contested, demonstrating differing approaches towards and understandings of public participation in political life and the public sphere. This paper explores the social and normative construction of civility as a tool of governmentality. Drawing upon evidence regarding the role, functioning, and challenges facing civil society in efforts to entrench an open public sphere and engaged citizenry in two partial democracies, Uganda and Singapore, we reflect upon the ways in which such efforts respond to – and are shaped by – the developmental state model, and how discourses of in/civility are deployed to constrain more critical interventions and enactments of citizenship and civil society.

Rhetorical citizenship: studying the discursive crafting and enactment of citizenship

This article argues for the relevance of a rhetorical approach to the study of citizenship, proposing the concept of rhetorical citizenship as a term for a fourth dimension of citizenship and as a scholarly approach to the topic in addition to the dimensions of status, rights, and identity commonly recognized in the literature. We show how this view aligns with current views of the multidi Citizenship Studies mensionality of citizenship, explain our use of the term rhetoric, and illustrate the usefulness of a rhetorical approach in two examples. In close textual readings both examples – one vernacular, one elite – are shown to discursively craft and enact different notions of citizenship vis-a-vis the European refugee crisis. We conclude that a rhetorical perspective on public civic discourse is useful in virtue of its close attention to discursive creativity as well as to textual properties that may significantly, but often implicitly, affect citizens’ understanding of their own role in the polity, and further because it recognizes deep differences as inevitable while valorizing discourse across them.

The Social Psychology of Citizenship: Engagement With Citizenship Studies and Future Research

In this article we review the argument outlined in the opening article in this special thematic section: that the current social psychology of citizenship can be understood as the development of longstanding conceptualisations of the concept within the discipline. These conceptualisations have contributed to the current social psychological study of the constructive, active and collective (but often exclusive) understandings of citizenship in people’s everyday lives, as evidenced by contributions to this thematic section. We consider how this emerging body of work might fit with current citizenship studies and in particular how it may contribute to the current trend towards conceiving citizenship as an active practice embedded in everyday social life. Specifically, we highlight three areas of future research that we think are particularly promising: citizenship and recognition; displays and enactments of citizenship in public space; citizenship and lived coexistence. Although this is far from an exhaustive list of possibilities, we propose that research in these areas could enable the way for social psychology to articulate a distinct, recognisable and valuable contribution to citizenship studies.

Micropolitics of Public Space: On the Contested Limits of Citizenship as a Locational Practice

This article provides a social-psychological account of how public space dynamics may be consequential for the daily construction of citizenship. The article is organised around three interrelated ideas that are illustrated by a case study. First, it is argued that certain social-psychological processes that are typically involved in the construction of citizenship can be re-conceptualised as place-based processes that are located in public space. This interest in the ‘locational’ construction of citizenship implies focusing on membership, belonging, status, rights, entitlements and recognition as emplaced practices rather than as dislocated entities. The second idea relates to the troubled nature of citizenship as a place-related psychological category whose boundaries are hotly contested whenever disputes about controversial behaviour in public spaces surface. Accordingly, ‘the citizen’ is constantly re-shaped as everyday place-discourses and territorial practices in the public domain unfold in problematic ways. Finally, it is argued that such ‘locational’ constructions and enactments of citizenship in public space are usually framed by broader ideological dilemmas that are relevant to the maintenance and change of a given socio-political order. The ultimate purpose of the article is to demonstrate the potential for public space to become a possible site for grounding a social psychology of citizenship.

A Grounded Approach to Citizenship Education: Local Interplays Between Government Institutions, Adult Schools, and Community Events in Sacramento, California

Following a grounded, bottom-up approach to language policy (Blommaert 2009; Canagarajah 2005; McCarty, 2011; Ramanathan, 2005), this paper investigates available resources and discourses of citizenship in Sacramento, California to those situated within the citizenship infrastructure. It analyzes how the discursive framing of local and national educational policies affects prospective citizens and the ways that resources and discourses differ across educational sites. These sites include a government field office, citizenship classes at adult schools and community centers, and a law school-sponsored citizenship fair. This article argues that adult schools and community events introduce their own de facto and de jure policies, in conjunction with top-down governmental policies, that tend to reduce the complexity of naturalization at the expense of full participation. Both top-down and bottom-up educational policies consequently affect prospective citizens’ understanding and enactment of citizenship.

The neoliberal/neurotic citizen and security as discourse

Through the combination of discourse analysis and governmentality and an appeal to contemporary understandings of citizenship, this article examines the deeper processes of subjective replication and of discursive incitement that enable the extension, intensification and normalisation of security. It looks at how elites, affective structures and governmental standards combine to define the parameters of security and citizenship. By insisting on the contingent nature of both neoliberal rationality and neurosis, the article also points to the spaces of resistance that open up in the enactments of citizenship and security.

Kurdish migrant mothers in London enacting citizenship

The article explores the mothering work of a group of Kurdish women in London as enactments of citizenship. Rather than focusing on their integration, it foregrounds the migrant mothers' ability to disrupt hegemonic citizenship narratives and bring into being new political subjects. They co-construct diasporic citizenship, through their mothering work, producing their children's cultural identifications as both British and Kurdish. These identifications are contingent, involving intra-ethnic contestations of legitimate Kurdish culture. Kurdish migrant mothers' cultural work is not simply about making nation state citizens. By giving meaning to cultural continuity and change, the mothers reference multiple levels of belonging (local, national and diasporic) which challenge state boundaries. The article shows that although mothers play a key role in constructing their children's cultural identities and their articulation in ethnic and national terms, they also contest the meaning of ethnic minority cultural practices and group boundaries, potentially disrupting hegemonic narratives of good citizenship as ethno-national.

What's the big deal? Naturalisation and the politics of desire

This article takes the naturalisation process as a vantage point to consider how citizenship constitutes a site of emotional investment not only on the part of applicants and ‘new’ citizens but also on the part of the state. The premise of this article is that naturalisation is more than solely the admission of foreigners to the position and rights of citizenship, and it approaches naturalisation as a state practice that needs to be understood within a politics of desire. The article asks three questions: what makes naturalisation a thinkable and desirable means of acquiring citizenship? Second, what do practices of naturalisation tell us about ‘the state's attachment to particular embodiments of desirable citizens’ (S. Somerville, 2005, Notes toward a queer history of naturalization. American quarterly, 7 (3), 661)? Third, ‘who may desire the state's desire’ (J. Butler, 2002. Is kinship always already heterosexual? Differences, 13 (1), 22)? Using policy documents and auto-ethnographic material, the article examines practices through which the state selects its own objects of desire and produces them as citizens, while it also produces itself as desirable. The article concludes that naturalisation distinguishes desirable from less desirable citizens through fantasies of English proficiency and birthright citizenship. In addition, the staged performance of the citizenship ceremony assures the state of its desirability by subsuming ‘as if’ enactments of citizenship.

Young Portuguese construction of educational citizenship: commitments and conflicts in semi-disadvantaged secondary schools

This paper represents a contribution to ongoing debates in the Journal of Youth Studies concerning young adults, in particular, those that address young adult citizenship and ‘voice’ and which take into account the generational political, economic and cultural processes that both frame and shape their citizenship construction. The potential impact of the enactment of citizenship on the daily lives of young adults is at focus as we address the ways in which they express the attainment and desire for educational citizenship in their current lives, with particular emphasis on participation and the construction of knowledge. Educational citizenship of rights and knowledge is seen as a political and cultural right and as an opportunity. Young Portuguese adults were consulted in their final school year in semi-disadvantaged schools and regions. Consultation was supported on focus group discussion and individual in-depth interviews.

Immigration and the interplay among citizenship, identity and career: The case of Ethiopian immigration to Israel

Migration is a common phenomenon of the globalization era. In this article we explore the interplay of three foundational concepts in the migration experiences of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel: citizenship, identity and career. Through our analysis we examine the multiple layers of being an immigrant citizen. Following immigration, as reflected in empirical studies with members of this community, we have observed tensions between inclusion and exclusion, equality and difference, work and family as well as gender role transformation, family restructuring, and generational differences. These issues are discussed in the context of the development of active citizenship and career. Career development is found to be a core process in the enactment of citizenship, the promotion of a sense of belonging and deeply related to identity formation. Identity as an overarching perspective, with its personal and collective meanings, plays an important role at the intersection between citizenship and career.

Twenty Hanging Dolls and a Lynching: Defacing Dangerousness and Enacting Citizenship in El Alto, Bolivia

The article sets lynching of presumed criminals in the city of El Alto, Bolivia, in relation to both everyday experiences of insecurity about crime and violence and the enactment of neighborliness as a grounded notion of citizenship. Focusing on the experience and management of insecurity and its paradoxical entanglement with the enactments of citizenship and state-citizen relations, the article argues that people's attempts to remain safe constitute a permanent process of making visible and defacing (following Michael Taussig's notion of defacement) dangerousness and criminal subjects vis-à-vis the construction of community and local expressions of citizenship.

Whose European Citizenship in the Stockholm Programme? The Enactment of Citizenship by Third Country Nationals in the EU

AbstractThe Stockholm Programme and the European Commission’s Action Plan implementing it have positioned the freedom, security and justice of ‘European citizens’ at the heart of the EU’s political agenda for the next five years. Yet, who are the ‘citizens’ about whom the Council and the European Commission are so interested? At first sight it would appear as if only those individuals holding the nationality of a Member State would fall within this category. This paper challenges this assumption, however, and argues that as a consequence of litigation by individuals before EU courts and of the growing importance given to the act of mobility in citizenship and immigration law, the personal scope of the freedoms accorded to European citizenship already covers certain categories of third-country nationals (TCNs). Through an examination of selected landmark rulings of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the paper demonstrates how the requirement of being a national of an EU Member State is progressively becoming less important when defining the boundaries of the European citizenry. TCNs already enjoy and benefit from a number of European citizenship-related and citizenship-like freedoms, rights, benefits and general principles, which are subject to protection and scrutiny at the EU level. This development, we argue, is not only an indication of a continuing loss of discretionary power by the nation-state with respect to European citizenship, but may also constitute a clear signal that a new European citizenship of TCNs is in the making in the Union. This citizenship places the freedom to move and non-discrimination on the basis of nationality at the core of its identity.

Making Sense of ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘Thank God for 9/11’: A Thematic Analysis of Milbloggers' Responses to Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church

Since June 2005, the Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) have conducted protests at funerals of U.S. military personnel killed in the War on Terror. Investigating a webring of military blogs, we conduct an analysis of vernacular responses to the WBC's protests. Articulation theory informs our analysis as we characterize the ideological work performed in vernacular responses to the protests. Bloggers' responses demonstrate that the WBC exposes ideological tensions involving freedom of speech and religious expression, enactments of citizenship, injustice in the justice system, and disciplined military bodies out of control.

A discourse theory of citizenship

This essay calls for a reorientation in scholarly approaches to civic engagement from asking questions of what to asking questions of how. I advance a discourse theory of citizenship as a mode of public engagement. Attending to modalities of citizenship recognizes its fluid and quotidian enactment and considers action that is purposeful, potentially uncontrollable and unruly, multiple, and supportive of radical but achievable democratic practices. Citizenship engagement may be approached through potential foci of generativity, risk, commitment, creativity, and sociability. A discourse theory reformulates the relationship between citizenship and citizen, reveals differences in enactments of citizenship, and calls attention to hybrid cases of citizenship.