300074 Sociological theories of citizenship (S) (SoSe 2015)

Course description: Although citizenship is often addressed from a state or legal definition, citizenship as social and political membership is has also become one of the core themes in (political) sociology. It is ultimately addressing the questions of social order and societal integration as well as participation and belonging of members of the political community. “In general (…) citizenship is essentially about the nature of social membership within modern political collectives” (Turner 1993: 3). It is an institution that mediates rights between political subjects and the polity to which they belong (Isin & Nyers, 2014: 1).
The origins and classics in the sociology of citizenship describe the institution of citizenship as modernization, developing from urban social membership toward a national project of the modern democratic welfare state. Yet, over the past decades fundamental changes in society, many of which are associated with the different dynamics of globalization, have eroded key premises, rights, duties, and identities associated with national citizenship. In their discussion of these changes contemporary debates have revealed the often implicit premises that underlie modern (state) membership in the first place, pointed to the exclusions involved as well as to the erosion of and contestation to key underlying principles.
The seminar takes up contemporary debates from three angles. First, addressing identities and institutions of class, gender and ethnicity more recent debates have cast certain doubt on the modern version of social membership and new approaches often advocate a re-formulation of the concept. Second, while to a large extent these debates come from European and North American scholarship, critical discussion on the concept of citizenship also exist as regards other world regions. Formation and transformations as well as contemporary struggles for citizenship in Latin America, Africa and Asia need be seen within broader contexts that often include decolonization, recent process of democratization and political transformation and the serious limits to the exercise of citizenship rights due to institutional, political and economic constraints. Third, since some years, challenges to social membership, its foundations and its institutionalization are also being discussed with a view on various spatial scales where political collectives are now also located. From an exclusive focus on the national scale, debates have moved toward accounts of dynamics below, above, and beyond the state, hence urban, postnational, European and cosmopolitan forms of social membership. Against this background, the seminar divides into four thematic blocks that are dedicated to classical readings, premises and identities, regional perspectives, and spatial scales.

Aims: The seminar covers classical readings and contemporary debates around the concept of citizenship as social membership. Participants will learn, understand, and compare key approaches to citizenship. By the end of the course, participants will be able to identify major differences in the perspectives on citizenship as they relate to different theoretical approaches, but also to varying social and political contexts across time and space. They shall be able to critically evaluate contemporary standpoints articulated in the academic and wider public debates on the state of citizenship, its principles, inclusions and exclusions in the global age.