Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

In the early twenty-first century, the concept of citizenship is more contested than ever. As refugees set out to cross the Mediterranean, European nation-states refer to »cultural integrity« and »immigrant inassimilability,« revealing citizenship to be much more than a legal concept. The contributors to this volume take an interdisciplinary approach to considering how cultures of citizenship are being envisioned and interrogated in literary and cultural (con)texts. Through this framework, they attend to the tension between the citizen and its spectral others - a tension determined by how a country defines difference at a given moment.




The Ethics of Citizenship in the 21st Century


Book Description

This collection of essays offers thoughtful discussions of major challenges confronting the theory and practice of citizenship in a globalized, socially fragmented, and multicultural world. The traditional concept of citizenship as a shared ethnic, religious, and/or cultural identity has limited relevance in a multicultural world, and even the connection between citizenship and national belonging has been put in jeopardy by increasing levels of international migration and mobility, not to mention the pervasive influence of a global economy and mass media, whose symbols and values cut across national boundaries. Issues addressed include the ethical and practical value of patriotism in a globalized world, the standing of conscience claims in a morally diverse society, the problem of citizen complicity in national and global injustice, and the prospects for a principled acceptance by practising Muslims of a liberal constitutional order. In spite of the impressive diversity of philosophical traditions represented in this collection, including liberalism, pragmatism, Confucianism, Platonism, Thomism, and Islam, all of the volume’s contributors would agree that the crisis of modern citizenship is a crisis of the ethical values that give shape, form, and meaning to modern social life. This is one of the few edited volumes of its kind to combine penetrating ethical discussion with an impressive breadth of philosophical traditions and approaches. Chapters “What is the use of an Ethical Theory of Citizenship?” and “An Ethical Defense of Citizenship” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Globalization and Identity


Book Description

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, globalization and identity have emerged as the most critical challenges to world peace. This volume of Peace & Policy addresses the overarching question, "What are the effects of globalization in the areas of culture, ethnic diversity, religion, and citizenship, and how does terrorism help groups attain a sense of global identity?"Part I, "Citizenship in a Globalizing World," reexamines globalization in light of the traditions from which human civilizations have evolved. Linda Groff focuses on Samuel R. Huntington's thesis that the Cold War would be followed by a clash of civilizations. Joseph A. Camilleri traces the history of the concept of citizenship and its transformation through the ages to modern times. Kamran Mofid argues that the marketplace is not just an economic sphere but one where economic and business interests must embrace the spiritual assets of the community. Majid Tehranian raises the problem of identity and advocates the assumption of global identity, responsibility, and citizenship. Part II, "Convergence in Global Cultures," explores the complex issues of diversity in religions. Christopher Leeds, Vladimir Korobov, and Bharapt Gupt show how the reconceptualization of the world both geographically and regionally can recreate new sensibilities needed to overcome differences. Part III, "Divergence in Global Conflicts," discusses the multiple dimensions of the globalizing effects of economic expansion and political strife experienced by different cultures at local and regional levels. Audrey Kitigawa and Ade Ogunrinade use Nigeria as an example of political manipulation of religious and ethnic groups to divert attention from the real problems of social and economic marginalization. Fred Riggs looks at how the Web has become a medium in the globalization of religious movements.The authors maintain that continuing efforts for dialogue across cultural and religious boundaries in today's




Flexible Citizenship


Book Description

Ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the transnational practices of Chinese elites, showing how they constitute a dispersed Chinese public, but also how they reinforce the strength of capital and the state.




Conceptualizing Environmental Citizenship for 21st Century Education


Book Description

This Open Access book is about the development of a common understanding of environmental citizenship. It conceptualizes and frames environmental citizenship taking an educational perspective. Organized in four complementary parts, the book first explains the political, economic and societal dimensions of the concept. Next, it examines environmental citizenship as a psychological concept with a specific focus on knowledge, values, beliefs and attitudes. It then explores environmental citizenship within the context of environmental education and education for sustainability. It elaborates responsible environmental behaviour, youth activism and education for sustainability through the lens of environmental citizenship. Finally, it discusses the concept within the context of different educational levels, such as primary and secondary education in formal and non-formal settings. Environmental citizenship is a key factor in sustainability, green and cycle economy, and low-carbon society, and an important aspect in addressing global environmental problems. It has been an influential concept in many different arenas such as economy, policy, philosophy, and organizational marketing. In the field of education, the concept could be better exploited and established, however. Education and, especially, environmental discourses in science education have a great deal to contribute to the adoption and promotion of environmental citizenship.




Latino Immigrants in the United States


Book Description

This timely and important book introduces readers to the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States - Latinos - and their diverse conditions of departure and reception. A central theme of the book is the tension between the fact that Latino categories are most often assigned from above, and how those defined as Latino seek to make sense of and enliven a shared notion of identity from below. Providing a sophisticated introduction to emerging theoretical trends and social formations specific to Latino immigrants, chapters are structured around the topics of Latinidad or the idea of a pan-ethnic Latino identity, pathways to citizenship, cultural citizenship, labor, gender, transnationalism, and globalization. Specific areas of focus include the 2006 marches of the immigrant rights movement and the rise in neoliberal nativism (including both state-sponsored restrictions such as Arizona’s SB1070 and the hate crimes associated with Minutemen vigilantism). The book is a valuable contribution to immigration courses in sociology, history, ethnic studies, American Studies, and Latino Studies. It is one of the first, and certainly the most accessible, to fully take into account the plurality of experiences, identities, and national origins constituting the Latino category.




Citizenship in Motion


Book Description

Anthropological reflections on citizenship focus on themes such as politics, ethnicity and state management. Present day scholarship on citizenship tends to problematise, unsettle and contest often taken-for- granted conventional connotations and associations of citizenship with imagined culturally bounded political communities of rigidly controlled borders. This book, the result of two years of research conducted by South African and Japanese scholars within the framework of a bilateral project on citizenship in the 21st century, contributes to such ongoing efforts at rethinking citizenship globally, and as informed by experiences in Africa and Japan in particular. Central to the essays in this book is the concept of flexible citizenship, predicated on a recognition of the histories of mobility of people and cultures, and of the shaping and reshaping of places and spaces, and ideas of being and belonging in the process. The book elucidates the contingency of political membership, relationship between everyday practices and political membership, and how citizenship is the mechanism for claiming and denying rights to various political communities. ‘Self’ requires ‘others’ to construct itself, a reality that is subject to renegotiation as one continues to encounter others in a world characterised by myriad forms of interconnecting mobilities, both global and local. Citizenship is thus to be understood within a complex of power relationships that include ones formed by laws and economic regimes on a local scale and beyond. Citizenship in Africa, Japan and, indeed, everywhere is best explored productively as lying between the open-ended possibilities and tensions interconnecting the global and local.




Citizenship and Identity


Book Description

This book provides an introduction to themes within citizenship and identity. The authors draw together debates in sociology, political theory and cultural/gender studies to show how the civil, political and social meanings of citizenship have been redefined by postmodernization and globalization.




Aesthetic Citizenship


Book Description

Aesthetic Citizenship is an ethnographic study of the role of theatrical performance in questions regarding immigration, citizenship, and the formation of national identity. Focusing on Paris in the twenty-first century, Emine Fisek analyzes the use of theater by immigrant-rights organizations there and examines the relationship between aesthetic practices and the political personhoods they negotiate. From neighborhood associations and humanitarian alliances to arts organizations both large and small, Fisek traces how theater has emerged as a practice with the perceived capacity to address questions regarding immigrant rights, integration, and experience. In Aesthetic Citizenship, she explores how the stage, one of France’s most evocative cultural spaces, has come to play a role in contemporary questions about immigration, citizenship and national identity. Yet Fişek’s insightful research also illuminates Paris’s broader historical, political, and cultural through-lines that continue to shape the relationship between theater and migration in France. By focusing on how French public discourses on immigration are not only rendered meaningful but also inhabited and modified in the context of activist and arts practice, Aesthetic Citizenship seeks to answer the fundamental question: is theater a representational act or can it also be a transformative one?




Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Questions


Book Description

This book has been written for people who make decisions and bring about change, at all sorts of levels, and in a wide range of disciplines. Researchers and managers have a duty to collaborate with clinicians, to understand and make the most of each others' skills. This necessitates a new paradigm of health service research which is part of a change management culture and change promotion.