Forms Of Citizenship Research Articles

Cultural production in peripheral urban spaces: lessons from Barriera, Turin (Italy)

ABSTRACTPractices of cultural production within a peripheral urban neighbourhood can contribute to foster the sense of place, community belonging and local collective action. Starting from a critical perspective on the interconnections between cultural practices and urban regeneration, and developing on the concept of place-making, the paper has two main purposes: to investigate the nature of embeddedness of these practices and explore the ways of self-organization of cultural actors and their relationships with public policies. The case study concerns ‘Barriera di Milano’, a large peripheral area in Turin (Italy), formerly one of the most industrialized zones of the city. Over the past few years, and particularly after the real-estate bubble burst of 2007–2008, in Barriera a lively concentration of initiatives of culture has been taking place, redefining the urban and social space. These initiatives seem to be innovative for many reasons: firstly, while demonstrating a peculiar but significant embeddedness in the neighbourhood, they are mostly self-generated; secondly, the institutional assets, the economic self-sufficiency and the low degree of connection among initiatives support new forms of citizenship and place-making based on a ‘not-for-profit entrepreneurship’.

Communicating law, building peace: the pedagogy of public outreach from war crimes courts

ABSTRACTThere has been a growing interdisciplinary concern with the implications of public outreach processes from war crimes trials for new forms of citizenship in the wake of violent conflict. The enactment of such outreach, through seminars, civil society initiatives and workshops, provides a glimpse of the tensions between different conceptions of justice, belonging and rights in the post-conflict period. Specifically, such events constitute a rare public arena in the more fragmented and securitised domain of international legal practices. This paper focuses on a series of public workshops for survivors of wartime sexual violence carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) 2011–13. Drawing on participant observations and open-ended interviews, we argue that such public outreach programmes can be viewed as a form of pedagogy, where the materials, format and arrangement of the events structure the nature of participation and engagement. In doing so we are making two contributions. First, the discussion advances understandings of public outreach as a form of pedagogy, illustrating how practices of dissent, rejection and resistance animate processes of public outreach. Second, the paper illuminates the role of pedagogy as a governmental instrument, reflecting the micro-situations within which individuals are interpellated into the state.

Participatory theatre for transformative social research

Reflecting on the transformative potential of participatory theatre methods for social research, the article draws on a project with ethnically diverse migrant mothers in London. The research reframes the experiences and practices of socially and ethnically marginalized migrant mothers as active interventions into citizenship. We also challenge recurring public discourses casting migrant mothers as threats to social and cultural cohesion who do not contribute but instead draw on the resources of the welfare state. We highlight how participatory theatre methods create spaces for the participants to enact social and personal conflicts. It also validates migrant mothers’ subjugated knowledges of caring and culture work creating new forms of citizenship. By enacting different versions of collective stories, the theatre sessions therefore become rehearsals for socio-political transformations.

New citizenship in Spain: from social cooperation to self-government

The crisis in Spain has generated new forms of solidarity that have become new ways of being and living the city. Streets and houses have been taken by the population in protests and direct actions. Lack of alternatives and the government’s ‘do-nothing’ policy have pushed people to perform the ‘right to the city’ on their own and in collective ways. The 15M movement, with its assemblies in every public square and park, the ‘mareas’ (waves), which occupied hospitals and schools to create dialogue between parents and teachers and between doctors and patients, and the Platform of Mortgage Victims, the leading force in the struggle against evictions, are three examples of new ways of understanding the city. In the context of these experiments in self-management of the social reproduction of life, proposals for the transformation of government have also emerged, pointing precisely to the strengthening of citizen self-government. The most progressive experiments have taken place at the municipal level through popular electoral platforms that won 2015 elections in many cities. we can state that a new form of citizenship seems to be emerging according to which, citizens understand the city as their own, fight for the use and control of urban infrastructures and seek to institutionalise new forms of people’s control, participation and decision-making.

Urban scenes of citizenship: inventing the possibility of immigrants’ citizenship in Athens

Cities have always offered multiple spatial settings for human acts that question existing order and create new forms of citizenship. Keeping in mind the Arendtian definition of citizenship as a superior ‘right to have rights’, this paper explores the emergence of scenes of citizenship in contemporary Athens, with regard to the public appearance of immigrants as actors that seek (or not) more than the recognition of separate rights. Some key contradictions that are revealed, such as those that concern the boundaries between private and public life, solidarity and disempowerment, sense of belonging and motivation to exclude, illustrate that acts of citizenship depend on the qualities of the urban scenes in which they unfold and that these qualities are in turn shaped by different articulations of power.

American Skin: Bruce Springsteen, Danielle Allen, and the Politics of Interracial Friendship

Arguing that the political theorist Danielle Allen and the rock musician Bruce Springsteen offer similar analyses of the causes of, and solutions to, America’s racial divide, this article employs Springsteen’s music and his efforts to model his relationship with Clarence Clemons as an example for the broader American polity to consider the plausibility of Allen’s claims about interracial friendship as a source of political reconstitution. Detailing the criticism of the friendship model of racial politics set out by Benjamin DeMott, and the more specific criticism of Allen’s formulation offered by Lawrie Balfour, it argues that considering Springsteen’s work as a practical embodiment of Allen’s theory suggests not only that Allen fails to surmount such critiques but also that the problems of Springsteen’s relationship with Clemons indicate further ways in which friendship, as a form of citizenship, is an inadequate solution to the political problems of race that Allen identifies.

Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border

Chinese influence at the northern Nepali borderlands have created cartographic anxieties and new political subjectivities for Himalayan Indigenous communities and Tibetan refugees, who call these mountain border spaces their home. This article discusses the changing dynamics of intercommunity kinship at the scale of the local which are ruptured yet re-imagined to repurpose and intervene state imaginations of borders. What affective bearings do new border dynamics create for citizens - both formal citizens and Tibetan refugees - at the borderlands? Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research conducted between 2016 and 2019 in Nepal, I examine the ways in which intimacy produces affection and familiarity at one end, while at the other engendering notions of disruptions in the everyday. For my respondents, placemaking and memory become active experiences of making do to overcome anxieties of the future.

Patterns of im/mobility, conflict and the re/making of identity narratives

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the interrelationship between patterns of im/mobility on the one hand and the reconstitution of social collective identities and the related emergence or settlement of conflicts on the other. The main arguments are (1) that the im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa, and (2) that these dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, the contribution provides the conceptual background for a special issue that aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Established or emerging dynamics of (non-)integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. Conflict situations in contexts of mobility involve changes in the social understanding and renegotiation, reconstruction or reproduction of group identities and narratives with reference to certain socio-political and historical patterns. The legitimation of rights and access to various forms of citizenship and mobility need to be understood against the backdrop of emerging or established mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups, which trigger or settle conflicts and make social identities to be constantly renegotiated.

ELECTRONIC PETITIONS IN UKRAINE AS AN ELEMENT OF MODERN DEMOCRACY: PERSPECTIVES AND WAYS OF IMPROVEMENT

Urgency of the research. With the development of the information society, the issue of improvement of communication lines between government and citizens, in particular such new form of citizens’ appeals to authorities as an electronic petition, is becoming more relevant. Target setting. According to the Law of Ukraine d.d. 2 of October 1996 “On appeals of citizens” (with amendments), the possibility of submitting of electronic petitions to the government and authorities of local self-government is determined, but it is necessary to identify details and to specify mechanisms for electronic identification of citizens and implementation of these standards. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. The works of foreign researchers K. Deutsch, P. Lazarsfeld, U. Lippmann, Ukrainian researchers A. Semenchenko, I. Klimenko, H. Pocheptsov, V. Tsymbalyuk, E. Romanenko, Yu. Kozlov are devoted to the communication between the citizens and government within the frame of the development of the information society. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. The article is aimed at summarizing of the international experience of application of electronic identification of citizens, improvement of mechanisms for the electronic identification of citizens in Ukraine. The research objective. To substantiate the definition “electronic identification”, to generalize the international experience of the leading countries of the world concerning approaches to electronic identification, to assess the state of implementation of this instrument in Ukraine. The statement of basic materials. The information development of the society requires the improvement of methods and forms of communication with public authorities and authorities of local self-government. In particular, such form of collective appeal as the e-petition is widely used in the world, it is submitted using the latest telecommunications means and prescribes a specific procedure for recipient to respond and confirms its effectiveness as a mechanism of systematic public dialogue. Conclusions. The article reveals the essence of the concept, the categorical and conceptual framework on issues of electronic identification is improved, the status of implementation of this tool in Ukraine is assessed, the ways to improve the functioning mechanisms of the electronic identification in Ukraine are proposed.

Wykorzystanie nowoczesnych technologii w kontekście rozwoju społeczeństwa obywatelskiego w Polsce

The Use of Modern Technology in the Context of Civil Society Development in Poland The progress of civilisation and the simultaneous development of modern technology have affected many areas of life, including public life. This development is accompanied by economic changes and even political or social ones. One of the manifestations of social change as a result of the development of modern technology is the emergence of modern society, referred to in the literature of the subject as information, network, digital, telematic, etc. society. At the level of individual countries, including Poland, it is expected that tools will be implemented and applied based on the achievements of modern technologies in various areas of public life. Namely, the above-mentioned technologies have found widespread use in the case of various forms of civic participation in public life, such as elections, referenda, public consultations and the right to public information. Would the computerisation of various forms of citizens' participation in public life change their nature? Would it make it easier for citizens to participate in public life, encourage them to take an active part and thus quell the so-called crisis of democracy? Can the use of information and telecommunication technologies have a real impact on the development of civil society?

Citizenship as a Reward or Punishment? Factoring Language into the Latin Settlement

AbstractIn the Latin Settlement, which was supposedly initiated in 338 BC, Rome organised many of the incorporated communities into either the civitas or civitas sine suffragio. Livy, and those scholars who have accepted his explanation, claim that the use of these two types of citizenship was influenced by the political and military circumstances of each community’s incorporation. Such an argument posits that Rome judged each community on the basis of its past behaviour and ‘rewarded’ or ‘punished’ it accordingly, using these different forms of citizenship. However, Livy’s anachronistic and inconsistent approach to the Roman franchise undermines this explanation – at least in its simplest form. This paper highlights the inconsistencies in Livy’s account of the Latin Settlement and offers an alternative explanation for the differing grants of citizenship. It is argued that the pre-existing languages and cultures of the different communities need to be taken into account, as does the legal significance of the use of Latin at Rome. In sum, this paper argues that the decision to incorporate a community as a civitas or as a civitas sine suffragio was not straightforwardly based on the political or military circumstances of each community’s incorporation, but also (or rather) involved the recognition of cultural and linguistic differences in each community and the consequent practicalities of the inclusion of each in Rome’s legal and political apparatus.

The Sochi Olympics, Celebration Capitalism, and Homonationalist Pride

In July 2013, the Russian government passed two anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) laws that drew international criticism. Russia’s impending hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games inspired more sustained international attention to these laws than might have otherwise been the case. In this article, we apply the mutually supporting frameworks of queer/trans necropolitics and celebration capitalism to a content analysis of coverage of the Sochi Olympics in the Advocate and Xtra, the leading LGBT publications in the United States and Canada, respectively. We contend that the Advocate and Xtra participated in a homonationalist process of manufacturing consent as the United States, Canada, the West in general, and the Olympic Games were glorified while issues relating to racism and colonialism in Russia, the United States, and Canada were ignored and these geopolitical formations in general were falsely generalized as safe havens for LGBT people. This conclusion is based on two key observations. First, we noted complete silence about racist and ethnic violence in Russia and in the specific site of Sochi in the Advocate and only one (unelaborated) acknowledgment of Sochi as a historical site of ethnic cleansing in Xtra. Second, in spite of the recent expansion of formal citizenship rights for LGBT people, more uniformly in Canada than in the United States, Advocate and Xtra coverage failed to acknowledge the dissonance between American and Canadian governments positioning themselves as LGBT and human rights leaders and the harm these National Security States continue to deliver to racialized, impoverished, and gender and sexual minority populations.

Searching for Digital Citizenship: Fighting Corruption in Banten, Indonesia

The expansion of digital technologies and social media in Indonesia shifts practices of citizenship from a formal institutional level toward a more informal digital space. This paper presents the emerging results of research on digital citizenship in Banten, Indonesia, focusing on how new forms of citizenship are brought into being through digital acts that are defined as speech acts uttered through the use of social media. The paper follows digital acts of citizens in anti-corruption campaigns against the patrimonial and clientelistic regime of Banten’s political dynasty that are predominantly staged on Facebook and other online platforms. These digital acts produce and intensify affective publics through which forms of digital citizenship are enacted in opposition to the corrupt dynasty.

It's complicated, isn't it: Citizenship and ethnic identity in a mobile world

This article explores the experiences of second-generation migrants with a focus on Chinese in Prato (Italy), for whom the relationship between citizenship and identity is tightly linked. Most studies maintain that the link between citizenship and identity is instrumentalist or ambiguous. In contrast, we focus on the affective dimension of citizenship and identity. We argue that citizenship status functions as a key defining concept of identity in Italy, in contrast to countries like Australia, where the notion of ethnicity is more commonly evoked. Several factors have contributed to this situation: the strong essentialist conception of ius sanguinis in Italian citizenship law, the recent history of Italian immigration, the European politics of exclusion and the repudiation of the concept of ethnicity in Italian scholarship as well as popular and political discourse. We conclude that the emphasis on formal citizenship, and the relative absence of alternative identity concepts like ethnicity, limits the possibilities for expressions of mixity and hyphenated identities in contemporary Italian society.

‘I feel I'm Giving Something Back to Society’: Constructing the ‘Active Citizen’ and Responsibilising Foodbank Use

Foodbanks and other forms of charitable welfare provision are fast becoming an established feature of the UK social security system. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic observation in a Trussell Trust foodbank in North East England, this paper explores the relationship between the construction of the ‘active citizen’ and lived experiences of foodbank users and volunteers. Findings show how participants’ experiences and behaviour challenges popular political and policy narratives that individuals are using foodbanks because of poor lifestyle choices. The internalisation or rejection of this narrative is then examined, contrasting the different forms of citizenship that arise. Through the significant work that goes into living on a low income, people both aligned with and challenged the ideas underpinning ‘active citizenship’.

“Transformative looks”: Practicing Citizenship Through Photography

Purpose: The article discusses the meanings of citizenship and citizenship education when formal citizenship is restricted by exploring the potential of photography education and practice as a tool that promotes the exercise of citizenship in the context of non-formal critical adult education. By doing it, this text aims to enhance our understanding on the ways art education can improve the achievement of the goals of citizenship education. Method: This article analyses the experience of the collective and collaborative project: “Con la camara a cuestas: Transformative Looks”, in Bilbao, Spain, with a group of fifteen to twenty migrant women from eight Latin American countries. Findings: Citizenship as a life-long learning process involving individual as well as collective action leading to the promotion of new shared values for more inclusive communities benefits greatly from the use of artistic expressions such as photography. Because of migrant women’s marginalized position as non- formal -citizens, citizenship as participation effectively becomes a fundamental route of influence in the public sphere. Conceptualizing citizenship as struggle and as a critical learning process opens up possibilities for generating new shared ‘habitus’, where ‘recognition’ can be achieved leading to more inclusive societies.

Crime Control Measures, Individual Liberties, and Crime Rates

The balance between crime control methods and individual liberties is always problematic, creating tension, because in order to investigate crime, and adjudicate and punish offenders, it is necessary to make reasonable intrusions into the liberty of citizens. This study uses data from 40 countries to examine the crime control measures (police per capita and conviction rates) that reflect government investments in criminal justice apparatus to control crime and criminals, as well as the use of these crime control measures through government intervention in the lives of its citizens (formal citizen contacts with police, prosecution rate, and detention rate), to examine their impact on crime victimization rates (homicide rates and crimes included in the international crime victim survey). The purpose is to examine whether these government interventions have any impact on crime rates across countries, controlling other independent variables that might help to explain any observed relationships among these variables (such as measures of civil liberties, democracy, human development, available information and communications technologies, political rights, corruption perceptions, education, economic freedom, freedom of the press, and prosperity).

Samorząd terytorialny w Federacji Rosyjskiej

The paper is a contribution to the in-depth research on the Russian local selfgovernment. The Author describes the process of formation and constitutional position of local self-government in the Russian Federation. He emphasizes that the process, at its initial stage at present, is related to the ongoing administrative reforms of the country and the creation of a single and effectively enforced nationwide legal area. He indicates the dilemmas both in the area of the material basis of existence of local self-government and its competences. The Author determines stages of self-government formation. Basing on normative solutions, he presents tasks of the Russian local self-government, its structure and authorities. He pays particular attention to the forms of citizens' direct participation in the management of local affairs.

“Political” Islam in Senegal and Burkina Faso: contrasting approaches to mobilization since the 1990s

This article compares the strategies devised by two Salafi-oriented Islamic associations, the Senegal’s Jamaatou Ibadou Rahmane (JIR) and the Burkina Faso’s Mouvement Sunnite (MS). Drawing on extensive field research conducted between 2002 and 2013, it shows that both organizations have been engaged since the 1970s in a similar legitimacy-building process, using contrasting strategies. The JIR intends to build a more constructive relationship with the State and the brotherhoods, while still continuing to cast a critical eye on these two groups. In Burkina Faso, recurring leadership crises and violent incidents has sapped a great deal of the MS’s energy. It therefore has to regain visibility and legitimacy by maintaining a certain distance from political debates. The comparison shows that political Islam has entered in both countries a transitional phase that took into account the emergence and perhaps even the consolidation of a cultural and religious form of citizenship.

Mestizaje as ethical disposition: indigenous rights in the neoliberal state

ABSTRACTThis article explores the modes of aspiration, skepticism, and suspicion that constitute the inheritance of mestizaje in neoliberal Peru. Drawing on recent controversies regarding the metrics deployed to determine access to indigenous rights, it argues for the need to move away from liberal understandings of mestizaje as a bounded ‘identity’ claim, to consider instead how the politics and discourse of mestizaje shape a more generalized affective politics of skepticism regarding all identity claims. More specifically, I argue that mestizaje acquires particular affective and ethical force in relation to the fiscal and technical norms that underwrite postregulatory government in Peru. What interests me in pursuing this argument is to understand how, in its move away from the forms of citizenship, constitutive rights, and recognition that fueled the liberal state, neoliberalism has simultaneously gained force from the ethos of suspicion that surrounds any claim to an antecedent or foundational (cultural, racial, or ethnic) identity, and forwarded new technologies of governance that render illegible emergent claims to national, territorial, or cultural ‘rights’ or ‘identities’. In this article, I track this intersection of historical idioms of mestizaje and new technologies of government by looking at the technical instruments through which the Peruvian state sets out to reshape the territorial underpinnings of community and indigenous identity, and the implications of such technologies for the implementation of indigenous rights to prior consultation.