A Contested Concept

The purpose of this chapter is to account for what Carr (1991), Dwyer (2004), Koopmans (2005), and others recognize as the contested nature of citizenship. The citizenship debate as it stands in the West is concerned with the relationship between the individual and society in the public sphere: membership of society in the context of political culture and obligation to society in the context of the political citizen (Somers, 1993, Oldfield, 1998, Schwarzmantel, 2003). Accordingly, contemporary citizenship is broadly conceived here in terms of a political belonging, originating in antiquity and manifesting in practical conceptions of citizenship that are prescribed by political ideologies (Heater, 1999). Such ideologies are considered here in terms of the broad traditions of political thought: republican, liberal, and communitarian. However, whilst this chapter will consider the extent to which these ideologies differ, it is not concerned with arguments concerning the validity of one ideology or another but rather, whether, in any form, political ideologies only offer prescriptions for belonging that are particular and partial. Arguably, the overarching social reality in the current global order is an economic one, with the enduring liberal capitalism of the West increasingly shaping the relationship between the individual and society (a commercial sociality) and power and social control validated through commercial media and increasingly residualized into the hands of financial institutions and oligarchs. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.