Patriotism,black politics and racial justice in America

Recent decades have seen an upsurge in interest in patriotism among progressive intellectuals and within progressive politics, while recent manifestations of black politics in the era of President Barack Obama have utilized patriotic narratives. We question this turn to patriotism on the grounds that it is a questionable manner in which to pursue racial justice in our post-Civil Rights political landscape. Patriotic appeals to civic virtue always invoke or imply the anti-patriot who lacks that virtue and is therefore less capable of exercising exemplary citizenship. This idea of the anti-patriot, however, easily coalesces with and buttresses the language of cultural pathology used historically to argue that African-Americans are deficient in civic virtue and key for reproducing racial inequality. The idea of the anti-patriot could thus provide another vocabulary for displacing responsibility for addressing racial inequality away from white Americans and onto black Americans. After illuminating this dynamic at work in some of the most successful African-American patriotic thinkers—Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama—we conclude by arguing that those concerned with racial justice should reject patriotism in favor of three alternative traditions in African-American political thought: self-examination, prophecy, and rage.     

Franz Boas: The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual

Franz Boas is among the most important public intellectuals in American history because the authority of his expertise was joined with the purposes to which he applied his citizenship. His contributions to the discipline of anthropology were as towering as anyone has ever made; he also tapped his scholarly credentials to fight for good causes, such as civil rights and civil liberties. His origins as a Jewish immigrant and his political ideals as a cosmopolitan liberal predisposed him to reject the racialism that dominated late-nineteenth-century thought, and to advance an alternative social science that would be unpolluted by condescension towards lesser breeds. So persuasive was his research that a paradigm shift occurred; and buttressed with the authority of scholarship, Boas was decisive in changing public discourse on the often radioactive subject of race. He honored the ideal of the scholar as activist and as social conscience, and virtually no one in modern American history came closer to satisfying that standard.     

Judith N. Shklar and American citizenship

It is claimed that although the European debate about social rights has concentrated on the formation of citizenship, American political and social theory has focused almost exclusively on civil liberties and individual rights. The specific characteristics of American history – the Declaration of Independence, slavery, the Civil War, the persistence of the race issue and the civil rights movement – explain this fundamental difference. This article explores some of the exceptions to this claim in the work of sociologists and political scientists such as W.E. DuBois, Talcott Parsons, Morris Janowitz, Rogers Smith and Michael Schudson, but the contrast between individual rights and social rights remains important. The American tradition is explored primarily through the work of Judith N. Shklar whose approach to cruelty, misfortune and inequality represented a major and innovative approach to what we might call the phenomenological foundation of justice and rights. She emphasised the importance of earning a living to the basic American understanding of dignity and responsibility. The article concludes by speculating that the credit crunch and more importantly the endemic character of unemployment and under-employment in the modern economy radically undermine access to rewarding employment for the majority of the population. These economic and social changes – ‘the financialization of capitalism’ – make the defence of social citizenship more rather than less important.     

Martin Luther King's Civil Disobedience and the American Covenant Tradition

Daniel J. Elazar introduced the covenant idea to political sciencein his four-volume work, The Covenant Tradition in Politics.As he showed, American government and society are indebted tocovenant ways of New England Puritans and their doctrine, "federaltheology". Puritan covenants fostered polities whose framesof government and patterns of civil order established a federalmatrix antecedent to modern American federalism. The moral orientationof covenant has also influenced modern American political thought,as evidenced by the public philosophy articulated by the Rev.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement(1954–1968). In such works as "The Letter from the BirminghamCity Jail," King challenged his contemporaries' ideas aboutlaw and justice, Americans with an opportunity to examine moderncovenant practice.     

Exporting ‘active citizenship’: foreign support for citizenship education in the Arab world

What explains the rise in support for active citizenship programs in the Arab region? How has active citizenship been envisioned and taught with support by foreign states? How do participants understand the usefulness and impact of such programs? In this paper, we examine the contexts in which citizenship programs that embody the political aspirations of foreign states, are implemented. Embedded in local political realities, participants in these programs routinely question the ef?cacy and applicability of training modules focused on active citizenship and civic engagement. We argue that the proliferation of active citizenship programs for civil society organizations in practice serves to both bolster state legitimacy and discourage community leaders and activists from expressing political dissent. By submerging con?icting values, practices, and perspectives while encouraging civic participation based on conformity rather than dissent, active citizenship programs risk fostering a depoliticized civil society that is detached from the local political context.     

How to read Michelle Obama

ABSTRACT

Michelle Obama's role as the first African American First Lady is more than merely symbolic. Her self-representation as a professional woman, mother and spouse is directed towards a wider representativeness that is new in American political discourse. As a descendant of slaves and slave owners whose American ancestry can be traced back to the 1850s, she can lay claim to an African American legacy that the President lacks. As a result, some of her more controversial statements during the presidential campaign about the black family, class mobility and national pride need to be read in the context of an African American literature and historiography that challenges the American creed of equality, liberty and unconditional love of one's country. Michelle Obama's family history, her Princeton undergraduate thesis and her own words in interviews are analysed here in the discursive context of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave-girl, as well as the historiography of the civil rights movement. Such a reading reveals how Michelle Obama's background weaves the legacy of slavery into the American fabric, and shows that a redemptive construction of American history—in which the success of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Obama presidency are taken as fulfilment of the American creed (and of Martin Luther King's dream)—must be refused if a new national self-definition with African America at its heart is to take its place.     

现代美国种族矛盾和冲突述论

美国反种族歧视斗争长期以来一直是该国社会运动的一个重要组成部分。由于美国黑人及其他有色人种在政治、经济等各个方面存在着严重的不平等现象 ,使得他们在政治权利、经济利益上与白人的差距加大。 80年代以来 ,美国的民权运动进一步发展 ,种族斗争的规模超过 70年代 ,并出现了数次具有全国性的暴力行动 ,对美国社会产生了深刻影响。种族歧视长期以来之所以一直得不到解决 ,其根源在于美国社会长期存在的白人种族主义 ,美国政府对这一社会问题措施不力也是问题的症结所在     

Cosmopolitan Democracy and the EU: The Case of Gender

Cosmopolitan democracy is one of the most debated models of transnational democracy. As a result of his prominence in this field, David Held has attracted much of the criticism and approval of this position. The critique and comment aimed at cosmopolitanism in general, and Held's work in particular, has provoked cosmopolitan advocates to respond, restate and develop their arguments. However, despite its considerable merit, this debate remains largely theoretical, and little has been done in terms of studying the realisation of cosmopolitanism in real-world settings. This article contributes towards the debate concerning the possibility of its actual application by mapping the principles of cosmopolitan democracy in relation to the EU polity and the issue of gender equality. It argues that the EU articulates certain cosmopolitan-comparable principles, and by studying areas where they are clearly exhibited, such as the issue of gender, that this helps us to critically evaluate their practicability and enables a response to criticisms levelled at cosmopolitan democracy. This article addresses two specific criticisms. Firstly, in view of the justiciable qualities of EU law, and its ability to give rise to formal individual rights, it is argued that claims regarding the inherently fictitious nature of cosmopolitan rights are unfounded. Secondly, while acknowledging that civic engagement takes a principally legal mode in relation to the issue of gender, this article rejects the claim that cosmopolitan democracy neglects the political aspects of citizenship. However, cosmopolitan scholars must extend their understanding of the relation between rights and the wider aspects of citizenship engagement, if they hope to realise the vision of an active citizenry that remains central to the cosmopolitan project.     

Active Citizenship in the UK: Assessing Institutional Political Strategies and Mechanisms of Civic Engagement

Abstract

Shaping active citizenship, motivating civic engagement, and increasing political participation of minority groups have become some of the key political priorities in the UK since at least the end of the 1980s. Academic research shows that this shift goes hand-in-hand with a review of the integration policies in the country. The ‘politics of integration’ correspond in fact to a policy response to various social problems (such as discrimination, racism, intolerance) that emerged in various areas, and represent a new political discourse regarding active citizenship. This reflects an overall strategy meant to reframe the basis for civic and political engagement and participation in Britain. Our article is thus meant to highlight the dynamics underlying the development of the concept of active citizenship in the UK by looking at the factors that intervene in its shaping and enhancement. We identify political priorities and key mechanisms of participation that enable engagement in the public sphere. This article first considers the development of the specific ‘British discourse’ regarding active citizenship by taking into consideration the political priorities that emerged as part of the New Right discourse in the 1980s and then New Labour after 1997. We then refer to a set of data collected during our field work conducted in the UK between 2010 and 2011 with civil society activists and policy-makers in order to underline the meaning, practices, and feasibility of active citizenship.     

Universalization of particulars: The civic body and gendered citizenship in Iran*

The logic of nation‐state building in the context of modernity is inextricably bound to the founding of politics—both as conceptual and practical possibility—on the basis of a binary dissociation of the public from the private, of rights from needs, of reason from passion. Thus politics in its modern sense becomes tied to a secularized theological‐political notion of responsibility. Further, such binary concepts are implicated in those temporal and spatial metaphors which naturalize the spheres of family and civil society, and distinguish them from the sphere of politics. These distinct spheres are essential to the construction of modern rational subjectivities and liberal citizenship. This essay, which focuses on the case of Iran, introduces the notion of the ‘civic body’ in an attempt to bring clearly into view the connection between sexed corporeality, cultural nationalism and gendered citizenship. Through a theoretical examination of the ‘civic body’ as both a site of political citizenship and a field of racial and sexual codification and recodification, such historical and discursive constructions as modernity, Westernization. ‘Westoxication’, Orientalism, universalization, particularism, masculinity and femininity will be brought into the nexus of analysis. The purpose of this essay is both to engage with the literature in the field of Iranian and Middle Eastern studies and to intervene critically with respect to citizenship as an analytical category.     

Radical civic virtue: women in 19th‐century civil society

This article contests the conservative revisionism that emphasizes the importance of traditional families, pietistic religion, individual moral virtue, and small government for undergirding democratic self‐government. The first part exposes the conservative misreading of American history and political theory. The second part uses the civic engagement of middle‐ and upper‐class women in 19th‐century America to construct a progressive alternative to conservative narratives. It shows that women did not stay home and focus on the family during the 19th century but instead entered civil society to address the problems created by industrialization, formed social reform movements, built institutions to pursue a social justice agenda, and demanded that the government take an active role in solving public problems. Their civic engagement built on and created social capital, grew out of and produced a sense of civic virtue (defined as public‐spiritedness), and resulted in the demand for progressive government.     

What's the Civil in Civil Society? Robert Putnam, Italy and the Republican Tradition

Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work implies a conception of civil society with claims to republican ancestry. However, in four ways, he misses the more 'political' understanding of this Enlightenment category in republican writers, including his hero, Tocqueville. Where Putnam's civic community is spontaneous and voluntaristic, republicans emphasise the creation of civil society from above by state-building and broader political associations. Where his civic spirit is local, republicans stress polity-centred citizenship identification. Where Putnam's 'social capital' is a generalised, all-purpose resource with positive effects, modern republicans such as Tocqueville stress normative ambiguities of civic space and see the associational cradles of modern trust and solidarity as more demanding. Finally, where his civil society is a harmonious, 'functioning' place, republicans often stress conflict between citizens and between citizens and the state. A reconsideration of empirical and theoretical problems in his analysis suggests that a more republican conceptualisation of civil society would have facilitated different questions and more interesting answers.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

Democratic justice: the priority of politics and the ideal of citizenship

In his Democratic justice and the social contract, Weale presents a distinctive contingent practice-dependent model of ‘democratic justice’ that relies heavily on a condition of just social and political relations among equals. Several issues arise from this account. Under which conditions might such just social and political relations be realised? What ideal of equality is required for ‘democratic justice’? What are its implications for the political ideal of citizenship? This paper focuses on these questions as a way to critically reconsider Weale’s model. After presenting Weale’s procedural constructivism, I distinguish his model from an institutional practice-dependent model, one salient example of which is Rawls’s political constructivism. This distinction allows for a formulation of the social and political equality required for justice in each case. The contingent model assumes that an equality of ‘status’ will generate just social practices, yet it fails to recognise that an equality of ‘role’ is also important to ensure citizens’ compliance. The paper ultimately seeks to show that the contingent model is insufficient to ensure that just social practices will become stable.     

Claiming rights in exile: women’s insurgent citizenship practices in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines insurgent citizenship practices employed by activists in the exiled Burmese women’s movement from the 1990s and onwards. Consisting of political exiles, refugees and ethnic insurgents, this movement has successfully used the transnational, transitory space of the borderlands to constitute its participants as political subjects with legitimate claims to rights, citizenship and leadership. Drawing on interviews, this analysis interrogates women’s activism through the lens of insurgent citizenship practices. Thus, how have Burmese women’s activists claimed rights and lived citizenship in exile? Three main strategies are examined: firstly, women activists have positioned themselves as political actors and authorities through involvement in governance and humanitarian aid delivery in refugee camps. Secondly, they have claimed rights and political subjectivity through engagement with international norms, networks and arenas. Thirdly, they have claimed citizenship and political influence in oppositional nation-making projects through engaging with and negotiating ethno-nationalist armed struggles. The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s insurgent citizenship practices, showing how they navigate multiple marginalized subject positions, direct their rights claims towards multiple governing authorities, and enact multiple political communities.     

‘A curious relationship’: Barack Obama,the 1960s and the election of 2008

ABSTRACT

Ward explores the diverse ways in which memories, understandings and misunderstandings of the 1960s were mobilized during the 2008 election cycle. At the time, Barack Obama's campaign and triumph were hailed by many as marking a series of a decisive breaks with the past, notably with the culture wars and fiercely ideological political partisanship unleashed in the late 1960s. Others suggested that Obama represented a new kind of candidate who somehow transcended, or might even heal, the racial divisions in the United States, in a fanciful vogue for ‘post-racialism’ that Ward argues was also connected to popular conceptions of the 1960s and, in particular, to a misreading of the social philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. While some commentators stressed rupture and discontinuity with the past in interpreting Obama's victory, others—friend and foe alike—were keen to stress continuities with the past, often explicitly with a 1960s routinely, if simplistically, parsed into ‘good’ early and ‘bad’ later periods. ThusWard considers Obama's connections to the civil rights and black power movements, as well as to other 1960s organizing traditions, charismatic leaders and conceptions of federal government, arguing that the decade continues to offer an important, if ambiguous touchstone in contemporary American politics and social memory.     

A Strange Drift to the Right: The Civic Historiography of Michael Sandel

Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent strives to contribute to the project of "democratic theory," which aims to bring people together across ideological differences. Sandel wants to revitalize citizenship by uniting religious conservatives and those committed to a more just political economy through an appeal to the American tradition of civic republicanism. However, his project is fundamentally incoherent. First, Sandel's narrative conflates the republican and religious aspects of the American founding, ignoring the fact that civic republican political theory actually developed in direct opposition to the ideal of a Christian polity. Second, his version of civic republicanism deviates from the historic tradition in a way that renders it much more conservative than it actually was and might still be. Third, his reading of American history consistently highlights conservative themes. Consequently, Sandel ultimately undercuts the progressive aspects of his own vision, detracting from rather than contributing to the transideological aspirations of "democratic theory."     

Gender,HipHop and Pop-Islam: the urban identities of Muslim youth in Germany

While many opponents construe the growing presence of Muslim headscarves in Germany as evidence of creeping Islamicization, religious activism can also be interpreted as an attempt on the part of migrant offspring to forge positive ‘hyphenated identities’, rooted in urban culture, material consumption, and specific mosque communities. Islam has become ‘young, chic and cool’ among ethnic minorities, often denied citizenship and opportunity in their country of birth owing to jus sanguinis and/or other complex naturalization requirements. Religiosity, in turn, is slowly giving rise to new types of civic engagement, leading more ethnic youth to pursue German citizenship. Drawing on representative surveys, inter alia, this essay argues that while not problem free, an emerging Pop-Islam movement has provided Muslimas especially with an important platform for breaking with traditional gender roles, building social capital and acquiring the participatory skills necessary to bring ‘civil society’ into their own communities. It moreover infers that national policies banning headscarves in public service professions are increasingly at odds with European Union directives addressing gender equality and religious discrimination.     

Stultifying Politics Today: The “Natural Science” Model in American Political Science—How is it Natural,Science, and a Model?

This article “follows the actors” to examine the high regard for “the natural science model” in contemporary American political science. How this model is accepted as a science remains an ongoing struggle for epistemic control. This conflict shapes ideological and institutional struggles over who dictates to whom how the “study of politics” is conducted in evolving mainstream professional networks as well as civil society at large given the organizational dynamics of the contemporary American research university. These approaches to “studying politics today” also appear to be “stultifying politics today” inasmuch as this putative methodological objectivity exerts a dulling effect on civic discourse, political vision, and active citizenship.     

The cost of belonging: exploring class and citizenship in Soweto's water war

More than a decade since the dawn of democracy, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. Civil and political citizenship may have – rhetorically at least – reduced the stark racial inequality in the relationship between citizen and state evident under apartheid. Some authors suggest a positive correlation between social citizenship and social equality. However, in post-apartheid South Africa, deep socio-economic inequalities continue to mar the democratic content of society. Although rights to welfare and social services are nominally in place and are enshrined in the constitution, scores of poor, black South Africans are unable to claim social citizenship, precisely as a result of their class position. Using, as a lens, community struggles in Soweto against the commodification of water, this article seeks to explore the relationship between citizenship and class. It does this by addressing the relationship between the state and its citizens within the context of service delivery, paying particular attention to the impact of prepaid water meters and to the strategies that were employed by community movements in Soweto's ‘water war’. The key argument is that under the system of capitalism, class inequality will persist regardless of the extent of citizenship.