Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Citizenship is membership of a self-governing political community. Nowadays the primary locus of our citizenship tends to be the state, but people can also be citizens of substate political communities, such as federal provinces, or of superstate organizations, like the European Union. Citizenship contrasts with membership of other kinds of groups and communities defined by, for example, religion, gender, sexual preference, and ethnicity. Like “justice” in the 1970s, and “community” in the 1980s, “citizenship” has become one of the central organizing concepts for normative political theorizing in recent years. Representatives of all the major schools of political thought-liberals, conservatives, communitarians, socialists, feminists, and republicans-have felt the need to address the “citizenship debates” ( Shafir, 1998 ). Indeed, the interest in citizenship has been so intense that it threatens to take over the field. After all, almost every problem in political theory and political ethics can be redefined as an issue concerning the complex relationships between the individual, society, and the state that are the stuff of citizenship. Moreover, because the term “citizenship” has such positive connotations in political argument, it is often used to dress up arguments that are really about other issues or values. As Daniel Weinstock notes, the rhetorical appeal to citizenship often ... log in or subscribe to read full text