A feminist challenge to the gendered politics of the public/private divide: on due diligence,domestic violence,and citizenship

This article examines the feminist appropriation of the legal principle of due diligence to politicize acts of violence at the hands of private actors within the private sphere. This move expanded traditional notions of state responsibility for violence against women under international human rights law. Using frame analysis, we focus on the institutionalization of this feminist understanding of due diligence through its discursive incorporation in international human rights policy documents and its mobilization in cases of domestic violence litigated within the UN and the Inter-American and European human rights systems. Through this discursive framing work and its institutionalization, feminists have challenged the gendered politics of the public/private divide to change the terms on which differently positioned women can engage with the state and global governance institutions. We argue that this change can potentially reconfigure women's state-bounded and transnational citizenship. The implications of due diligence as a political and sociological concept require more careful consideration by citizenship and human rights scholars.     

Reproducing the ‘national home’: gendering domopolitics

Walters developed the concept of domopolitics to refer to the ways in which the securitisation of migration contributes to the construction of the UK as a ‘national home’. Domopolitical policies and discourses produce the UK as the ‘national home’ of ‘neoliberal citizens’; they thus serve as tools of neoliberal governmentality, disciplining both citizens and migrants into displaying qualities associated with neoliberal citizenship, especially economic productivity. However, the concept of ‘home’ has a particular genealogy within liberal discourses of citizenship. As Pateman contends, the political ‘public’ sphere of liberal citizenship is constructed in opposition to an apolitical ‘private’ sphere. The public sphere has been coded as the domain of men, while women have been relegated to the private ‘home’. Consequently, women have been deemed responsible for the reproduction of both the private, and the ‘national’ home, a construction which has persisted under neoliberalism. While often superficially gender-neutral, domopolitics actually relies upon, and reinforces, these gendered understandings of neoliberal citizenship. Domopolitical policies and discourses construct migrant women’s reproductive practices as a legitimate and necessary site of state intervention, disciplining migrant women to ensure they ‘correctly’ reproduce the neoliberal ‘national home.’     

Meso‐discourses,state forms and the gendering of liberal‐democratic citizenship

This article builds upon Michel Foucault's fleeting observation that ‘the state consists in the codification of a whole number of power relations’ and that ‘a revolution is a different type of codification of these same relations’ (Held et al., 1983, pp. 312–3). Specifically, the article uses the case of Canada to argue that distinct state forms rest on particular meso‐discourses which inform a logic of governance, historical configurations of the public and private and gendered citizenships. The meso‐discourses of separate spheres, liberal progressivism and performativity (the logics of governance for the laissez‐faire state, the Keynesian welfare state and the neo‐liberal state, respectively) have coded and recoded gendered citizenships, thereby providing women and men with differential access to the public sphere and to citizenship claims. The neo‐liberal state's meso‐discourse of performativity is especially challenging for women and all equity‐seeking groups because it prescribes the ascendency of market relations over political negotiation or ethical considerations, as well as the attrition of social and political citizenship rights. Social citizenship is being eclipsed by market citizenship.     

Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship,experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.     

Spheres of liberty,conflict and power: The public lives of private persons

State‐society relations during the modern period reflect notions of citizenship analogous to Isaiah Berlin's concepts of positive and negative liberty. Positive citizenship, motivated by what Robert O'Brien calls ‘the democratic impulse’, is highly participatory. The politics of seventeenth‐century Protestant social movements constitutes one historical model to which twentieth‐century fundamentalist movements can be compared. Characterized by a shrinkage of the private sphere and an expansion of public life, positive citizenship emphasizes active engagement in establishing and implementing normative standards for individuals and communities, and control of the state for virtuous ends. Negative citizenship concentrates on the protection of individual rights, expanding both the private sphere and a third or meta‐space which evinces qualities of public and private realms simultaneously. The historical model presented is what Jürgen Habermas has called the ‘bourgeois public sphere’, a quasi‐parallel polis from within which critics of state power assert their right to resist and organize their capacity to repel attempts to enforce standards of public virtue however arrived at. These ideal types are compared to different scenarios of state‐society relations to analyze the likely impact on public and private life of rapid globalization.     

Liberalism,Multiculturalism and the Problem of Essentialism1

This article focuses on key themes in the liberal philosophical debate over multiculturalism, as well as the responses of Canadian social and political actors to the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. Since September 11, there has been a renewed popularity of arguments positing a 'clash of civilizations' between Muslim and Christian societies, and a new legitimacy advanced for 'ethnic profiling' in the name of security. The rapidity with which this has happened in Canada is particularly striking because of the country's liberal-democratic and multicultural tradition. The introduction of a national policy of multiculturalism in 1971 provided a new understanding of Canadian citizenship that was more inclusionary of immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities. Multiculturalism has also become a hotly debated ideal among Canadian, American and European political philosophers concerned with addressing the possibilities and limits of liberalism given ethnic diversity, and the limits of ethnic diversity given liberalism. Multiculturalism is typically presented as a 'problem' for liberal politics and ethics. Building on how multiculturalism policy in Canada has provided a more inclusionary discourse around citizenship, a defence of multiculturalism is advanced which rejects the essentialist treatment of 'culture' and 'cultural' groups. It is suggested that the unfolding discussions in Canada since September 11 demonstrate the ongoing tension between cultural essentialism and liberal individual rights. The Canadian experience points to the value of an anti-essentialist multiculturalism in challenging discrimination given that neither liberalism, nor liberal democratic states, are neutral in their allocation of resources and legitimacy among more and less powerful ethnic groups. It is argued that rather than multiculturalism, it is essentialist thinking, imagery and ideas which present the greatest 'problem' to the ethics of liberalism and the politics of liberal democracies like Canada.     

Turning on the Citizen: Modern Citizenship and its Cultural Hazards

How is the citizen 'turned on'? That is, how does one 'switch' from being a private person to being a citizen? This article investigates how several prominent models of politics and citizenship account for this switch. In particular, the role of (cultural) identity in performing the 'switch' is highlighted. In the 'standard' liberal model, the switch from private to public is considered an unproblematic 'mind switch'. In the communitarian model, on the contrary, it is considered impossible: the good citizen must be a good person. In the republican model, identity 'restrictions' can be overcome by actively participating in the context of a culture of democratic deliberation. In the liberal multicultural model, cultural identity counts explicitly, although as a handicap, to be overcome by the support of cultural rights. In the model of identity politics, finally, identity counts positively, as an asset. Although identity thus empowers 'switching', its 'transformative' dimension has unpredictable and often unsettling effects, due to unacknowledged elements in the demand for recognition of identity in politics. Throughout the article, the vicissitudes of 'switching' are illuminated by an analysis of the Clinton-Lewinsky case, showing how president Clinton's 'sexualized identity' affected his ability to switch from private to public affairs--for better or for worse.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

Three cheers for liberal modesty

ABSTRACT

Many liberals have been immodest in postulating that their own progressive, secular liberalism is the only one that can be justified in public reason. In Liberalism’s Religion, I articulate a more modest theory of liberalism and religion. While I personally endorse progressive secular liberalism, I argue that it is only one of the reasonable conceptions of liberal justice. This liberal modesty has profound, hitherto unnoticed implications for (i) the role of religious arguments in the public sphere, (ii) the legitimacy of religious establishment, and (iii) the justifiability of religious exemptions. In this article, I defend these three claims by providing replies to my critics.     

Hard times for citizenship: Women's movements in Chile and Mexico

This article comparatively analyses the cases of Mexico and Chile to understand how women's movements contest the meaning of citizenship in various national contexts. We also assess the consequences that different movement strategies, such as ‘autonomy’ versus ‘double militancy’, have for movements' citizenship goals. To explain the different outcomes in the two cases, we focus on the nature of the democratic transition, the internal coherence of women's movements, the nature of alliances with other civil society actors, the ideological orientation of the newly democratized state, the form of women's agency within the state, and the nature of the neoliberal economic reforms. We argue that a serious problem for women in both Chile and Mexico is the fact that governments themselves are deploying the concept of citizenship as a way to legitimate their social and economic policies. While women's movements seek to broaden the meaning of citizenship to include social rights, neoliberal governments employ the rhetoric of citizen activism to encourage society to provide its own solutions to economic hardship and poverty. While this trend is occurring in both Chile and Mexico, there are some features of the political opportunity structure in Chile that enable organized women to contest the state's more narrow vision of democratic citizenship. In Mexico, on the other hand, the neoliberal economic discourse of the current government is matched by a profoundly conservative ideological rhetoric, thereby reducing the political opportunities for women to forward a gender equality agenda.     

Liberal reformism and democratic citizenship

Although not its sole dimension, the idea of equality of rights and resources is one of the basic tenets of liberalism. Liberal equality introduces a reformist thrift in government by determining that government action should aim to create opportunities for the realization of the civil condition. This is a legal and political condition, thereby citizens enjoy a statute of equal rights. Hence, the liberal idea of reformism proceeds by removing the obstacles to the realization of the civil condition and by providing the legal and the material resources for the exercise of citizenship rights. This interpretation is not self‐evident, especially in times when neoliberalism seems to represent the entire liberal tradition. I shall argue that liberal reformism makes up a vital foundation for democracy. Even more, the own survival of democracy in our times depends on its rooting in liberalism.     

Disconnection and resistance: anti-terrorism and citizenship in the UK

The corroding impacts of anti-terrorism measures on citizenship have been much discussed in recent years. Drawing on qualitative research from the UK, this article argues that citizens do indeed frequently feel that aspects of citizenship – such as rights, duties, identity claims and the ability to participate in the public sphere – have been significantly dampened by developments in this policy area. At the same time, however, participants in our research also articulated a number of strategies through which they or others have sought to resist the logics, exercise and impacts of anti-terrorism powers. These included voicing explicit opposition to particular measures, resisting ‘outsider’ or ‘victim’ subject positions, and a refusal to withdraw from established forms of political engagement. Whilst such resistance should not be overstated, we argue that these strategies emphasise the co-constitutive rather than linear relationship between public policy and citizenship. Anti-terrorism powers do indeed impact upon citizenship claims, for instance in the curtailment of formal rights. Equally, the everyday, lived, experiences and practices of citizenship contribute to, and help shape, the perceptions and understandings of anti-terrorism policy from within the citizenry     

Citizenship,justice and indigenous group‐specific rights—citizenship and indigenous Australia

Indigenous Australians and those supporting the cause of Aboriginal justice have used the language of citizenship rights to demand redress for indigenous peoples’ relative disadvantage. In doing so they make an appeal to rights of full participatory citizenship which have their roots in T.H. Marshall's writings. Liberal political theory, however, has resisted conceptions of citizenship which entail rights of assistance from the state: rights to welfare are more readily conceived of as charitable acts towards those members of a society unable to care for themselves. Unless the assumptions implicit in liberal conceptions of citizenship are challenged, demands for positive citizenship rights may re‐enforce stereotypes of Aboriginal inferiority. Drawing on Will Kymlicka's recent work, this article critically examines liberal conceptions of citizenship, welfare and demands for indigenous group‐specific rights as they may apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizenship.     

Dilemmas of a Multicultural Theory of Citizenship

In his multicultural citizenship Will Kymlicka offers a liberal theory of minority rights. I argue that although his theory is ingenious, it is seriously defective. Since liberalism itself is a specific culture, a liberal theory of multiculturalism is logically incoherent. Kymlicka makes the further mistake of thinking that all cultured communities conceptualise and relate to culture in an identical manner. His discussion of the rights of immigrants rests on a flawed understanding of the nature of immigration, and is highly questionable.     

Return of the Governors: Citizenship and the New Governance of Neighbourhood Disorder in the UK

Liberal processes of urban governance are based around a concept of the citizen as both governor and governed. This duality suggests a dynamic relationship between the individual citizen, fellow citizens and the state in which responsibility for the governance of public life will oscillate between actors. This paper argues that increasingly the rhetoric and policy of neighbourhood governance in the UK represents a return of the direct role of the state as an 'official' presence in the governance of neighbourhood disorder. Such a return is a consequence of the failure of previous appeals to both 'active citizens' and 'communities' to exert informal social control over their local public spheres. This paper provides a critique of such appeals as a response to the continuing crisis of urban citizenship and 'community' in liberal democracies. The paper analyses the implications for urban citizenship theory of two recent UK policy developments, child safety initiatives (commonly referred to as curfews) and neighbourhood warden schemes and places these initiatives in the context of an increasing role for official housing agencies and private interests in neighbourhood governance. The paper suggests a need for urban policy to reflect the diversity of urban identities and to re-establish the links between civil, political and social rights of citizenship.     

‘But this is a park’! The paradox of public space in a Buenos Aires ‘no man's land’

Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork, this paper analyzes the occupation of an abandoned park in the south of Buenos Aires by the city's urban poor, delineating the implications of this incident for notions of citizenship in the context of deeply fragmented social rights. While public space has historically been understood as an expression of the universality of rights bearing membership in a political community, I show how this universalism became the object of struggle during a conflict over the park between the local middle class and squatters, many of which were of immigrant origin. The discourses mobilized by various social groups blurred the distinction between citizenship as a set of legal–formal rights versus a project of normative inclusion. While public space is juridically constructed as universal, particularistic claims to these spaces are imbued with increased legitimacy in a context in which social rights – conceived as a set of provisions guaranteed by the state under a regime of liberal citizenship – are unrealizable. By claiming this space for particularistic uses, squatters drew attention to the contradictions embedded in public space's democratic pretensions in a setting in which putatively universal rights are ignored by the state.     

Alienation and Belonging - Women's Citizenship and Emancipation: Visions for Sudan's Post-Islamist Future

This essay examines Sudanese Islamist debates about the position of women within an Islamic framework, oppositional groups' stances on the nature of a post-Islamist Sudan and women's role in the nation. The author critiques oppositional groups for a lack of vision for a post-Islamist gender egalitarian Sudan and feminism for its lack of clarity about the concept of women's emancipation. The author argues that all groups in Sudan have not extended a visionary approach to women, but have been limited to expressions about "women's rights." Using the concepts of "emancipation," "gender egalitarianism," "citizenship," "alienation," "belonging," and "subject," the author deconstructs segments of crucial political documents such as Islamic decrees, the new Sudanese Constitution (1998), the "Asmara Declaration" of the National Democratic Alliance, and various statements by political parties in exile. Using excerpts from women's narratives, the author attempts to illuminate Sudanese women's self-identification, belonging, and citizenship.     

Women's rights in democratic transitions: A global sequence analysis, 1900–2012

What determines countries’ successful transition to democracy? This article explores the impact of granting civil rights in authoritarian regimes and especially the gendered aspect of this process. It argues that both men's and women's liberal rights are essential conditions for democratisation to take place: providing both women and men rights reduces an inequality that affects half of the population, thus increasing the costs of repression and enabling the formation of women's organising – historically important to spark protests in initial phases of democratisation. This argument is tested empirically using data that cover 173 countries over the years 1900–2012 and contain more nuanced measures than commonly used. Through novel sequence analysis methods, the results suggest that in order to gain electoral democracy a country first needs to furnish civil liberties to both women and men.     

Using Rights to Counter “Gender-Specific” Wrongs

One popular strategy of opposition to practices of female genital cutting (FCG) is rooted in the global feminist movement. Arguing that women’s rights are human rights, global feminists contend that practices of FGC are a culturally specific manifestation of gender-based oppression that violates a number of rights. Many African feminists resist a women’s rights approach. They argue that by focusing on gender as the primary axis of oppression affecting the African communities where FGC occurs, a women’s rights approach has misrepresented African women as passive victims who need to be rescued from African men and has obscured the role of certain international institutions that have perpetuated the oppression of African women. In this paper, I defend these critiques by arguing that the use of a women’s rights framework to combat practices of female genital cutting among African communities has often been practically ineffective and morally inappropriate.