Genealogies Of Citizenship Research Articles

The legacy of Being Political

ABSTRACT 2022 marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Engin F. Isin’s Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship, a text which, through its influence on a generation of scholars, has become a, if not the, key text in the field of critical studies of citizenship. By drawing on theoretical traditions and methodologies beyond the usual purview of the field, as well as those subsisting on its margins, Being Political calls into question the nature of citizenship studies, challenging many of the assumptions and fundamental categories and definitions which had come to characterize and delimit the field. The occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Being Political affords us the opportunity to engage with its legacy. The passing of 20 years provides sufficient distance from the time of publication to a) contextualize Being Political – to approach the text as responding to, and working through and against a certain historical, geopolitical and academic context, and identify the ways in which the text continues to respond to changing contexts and questions; b) determine the impact of Being Political, how it has been received within the field of citizenship studies and transformed by various interpretations, and how these interpretations have influenced the direction of citizenship studies; and c) understand Being Political in relation to Isin’s larger project of thinking citizenship and the political, something that he signals in the wake of the book’s publication, but the full meaning of which would not have been available even to him at the time of publication. In other words, this distance allows for the sort of reflection that by carefully engaging with the text itself, contextualizing it and putting it into conversation with other academic traditions, fields, questions and the larger trajectory of Isin’s work, permits us to not only clarify and complicate the text and its interpretations but also to attend to some of the traps that accompany the reception of influential texts.

‘Otherness as a condition of citizenship’: alterity, extimacy and citizenship after orientalism

ABSTRACT From the genealogies of citizenship in Being Political to his more recent explorations of performance and performativity, Engin Isin’s attempts to think citizenship after orientalism have been explicitly guided by a ‘focus on otherness as a condition of citizenship’ (2002, 3). Both within and beyond the field of citizenship studies, Isin’s call to investigate citizenship as alterity has contributed to a radical rethinking of the nature of citizenship, political subjectivity, collective identity, and the relation of self to other. It is the meaning of a ‘focus on otherness as a condition of citizenship’ that is addressed in this article. This is undertaken, first, by examining the place of otherness within Isin’s investigations of citizenship. Second, it is argued that addressing otherness in terms of extimacy, a term which designates both the presence of exteriority in the deepest interiority (intimacy) of the subject, and the ‘resultant nondistinction and identity of the exterior and the intimate or most interior’ (Pavón-Cuéllar 2014, 661), allows us to recognize additional ways in which otherness serves as a condition of citizenship, and, thereby, to further pursue Isin’s aim of understanding the relation of citizenship and otherness beyond logics of exclusion and enclosure. Approaching otherness as a condition of citizenship in terms of extimacy reveals the very scenes in which the categories of citizenship and its others are asserted, reproduced and/or overturned as implicated in and structured by structures of fantasy and desire.

The city and the clock in planetary times: revisiting Isin’s Being Political twenty years on

ABSTRACT This article highlights the profound contribution to Citizenship Studies of Engin Isin’s Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. Over the last twenty years, scholars have drawn on this seminal work to show how those positioned at the margins of citizenship have been central to its transformation. Key to Isin’s approach is the notion of the city as a difference machine – a paradigmatic formulation that captures the social and spatial dimensions of citizenship struggles. Reflecting on this notion twenty years on, I ask how it intersects with an emergent planetary imaginary in which a politics of time, as much as space, is increasingly explicit. I make a case for attention to the clock, alongside and as part of the city, where the clock is understood as a non-exhaustive symbol of the temporalities in and through which subjects become political. I pursue this approach in relation to a specific example: a 2020 case before the High Court of Australia concerning the power of the Australian government to deport Aboriginal persons who were not Australian citizens. The case speaks to complex interconnections between Indigenous politics, planetary politics, and citizenship, in and through which the city and the clock are being reconfigured.

Somers, Margaret R.Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights2008Cambridge University Press 288 pp. $37 (paperback)

Somers, Margaret R.Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights2008Cambridge University Press 288 pp. $37 (paperback)

Book review: Genealogies of citizenship: Markets, statelessness, and the right to have rights

Book review: Genealogies of citizenship: Markets, statelessness, and the right to have rights

Practice of Citizenship: Mozambican Immigration within the City of Johannesburg

With the end of the apartheid regime, and despite the strict immigration policies introduced since 1994, the number of foreign workers in Johannesburg has increased and now constitutes about 7 per cent of the city's population. This paper examines the relationship between migration and urban belonging and inclusion for Mozambican migrants in post-apartheid Johannesburg. If “citizenship is a historical process that exists at any time and place, constituted by strategies and technologies as ways of being political” (Isin, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002: 49), the aim of this study is to delve into the historical construction of this process, questioning the notion of ‘citizenship’ in post-apartheid Johannesburg. In particular, the practices that migrants put in place to gain access to the city are examined. This research is based on interviews conducted in 2009 with Mozambican migrants, and local actors working in the field of migration. Without citizenship, both in theory and practice, migrants in Johannesburg are forced to live detached from the State, seeking invisibility from society and within public space in order to cope with the constant threat of deportation.

Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights. By Margaret Somers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi+338. $86.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsGenealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights. By Margaret Somers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi+338. $86.00.Charles LemertCharles LemertYale University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 117, Number 3November 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/662956 Views: 118Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref For permission to reuse a book review printed in the American Journal of Sociology, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Hiroko Oe, Yasuyuki Yamaoka, Eizo Hideshima How to Support Decision Making of Local Government in Prioritising Policy Menu Responding to Citizens’ Views: An Exploratory Study of Text Mining Approach to Attain Cognitive Map Based on Citizen Survey Data, (May 2016): 202–216.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32877-5_15

Review: Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Review: Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Citizenship Betrayed: Understanding Today’s Threats to Democratic Citizenship

There is much to say and admire about Margaret Somers’ Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights (2008). I shall focus my remarks on two themes that received considerable treatment in this new work – (1) ‘citizenship’ as the right to have rights and (2) social exclusion and the demise of the promise of universal and equal citizenship – and then offer some thoughts on an issue that received comparatively less treatment in the book but happens to be of particular interest to me – (3) the challenge that globalization poses to citizenship and ‘the right to have rights’.

Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to have Rights.

Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to have Rights.

The Right to Tax: Economic Citizenship in the Chad Basin

Roitman's paper explores the concept of ‘economic citizenship’ through an examination of practices in the cross-border territories of the Chad Basin. In doing so, Roitman demonstrates the simultaneous existence of regulated and unlicensed economic activities. Her exploration of the discourse surrounding these economic practices, and the civil disobedience of the Villes Mortes campaign, which brought regulated and unregulated traders together in a refusal to pay tax, reveals a concept of economic citizenship at work. Her analysis reveals the genealogies of citizenship in the Chad Basin, where notions of freedom were marked by the legacies of Islamic conquest as well as of French colonialism.

Book Reviews

Politics & PolicyVolume 33, Issue 2 p. 373-377 Book Reviews First published: 12 November 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2005.tb00648.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Book reviewed in this article: Coletta A. Youngers and Eileen Rosin, eds. 2005. Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The Impact of U. S. Policy. Engin F. Isin. 2002. Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. 2004.The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Volume33, Issue2June 2005Pages 373-377 RelatedInformation

Being geopolitical: comments on Engin Isin's Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship

What is the role of citizenship in a protest? How are civilian rights used as a source of power to craft socio-spatial strategies of dissent? I argue that the growing civilian consciousness of the “power to” (i.e. capacity to act) and of the border as public space is enhancing civil participation and new dissent strategies through which participants consciously and sophisticatedly use their citizenship as a tool, offering different conceptualizations of borders. This paper examines the role of citizenship in the design and performance of dissent focusing on two groups of Israeli activists, Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Using their Israeli citizenship as a source of power, these groups apply different strategies of dissent while challenging the discriminating practices of control in occupied Palestinian territories. These case studies demonstrate a growing civilian consciousness of the mutable nature of borders as designed by state power. Analyzing the ways actors consciously and sophisticatedly use citizenship as a tool in their dissent, which is aimed at supporting indigenous noncitizens, I argue that Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall enact and promote different models of citizenship and understandings of borders, in Israel/Palestine.

Reviews: A Companion to Economic Geography, Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth-Century America, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City, in Amazonia: A Natural History, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship

Reviews: A Companion to Economic Geography, Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth-Century America, Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City, in Amazonia: A Natural History, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship

Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. By Engin F. Isin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. 384p. $62.95 cloth, $24.95 paper

Over the course of the past year, we have had many opportunities to reflect on the nature of citizenship. Defining and contesting citizenship is a high-stakes enterprise, and in light of the current climate, Engin F. Isin's Being Political is a timely intervention into these debates. It is a series of genealogies that describe citizenship as alterity in cities, chronologically spanning urban spaces from the Athenian polis through the present-day cosmopolis. Taking his methodological cue from Michel Foucault, Isin's genealogies seek to break up the continuous narratives of citizenship imagined by the victors of history—that democratic citizenship in the United States, for example, is the direct descendant of Athenian democracy—and reveal the disparate forms that citizenship and its others have taken over time. By exposing these discontinuous narratives of citizenship, Isin demonstrates how the fiction of the unified city serves the interests of dominant groups by suppressing the agonistic character of this space.