Citizenship After Orientalism

This collection offers a postcolonial critique of the ostensible superiority or originality of ‘Western’ political theory and one of its fundamental concepts, ‘citizenship’. The chapters analyse the undoing, uncovering, and reinventing of citizenship as a way of investigating citizenship as political subjectivity. If it has now become very difficult to imagine citizenship merely as nationality or membership in the nation-state, this is at least in part because of the anticolonial struggles and the project of reimagining citizenship after orientalism that they precipitated. If it has become difficult to sustain the orientalist assumption, the question arises; how do we investigate citizenship as political subjectivity after orientalism? This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

This edited volume presents a critique of citizenship as exclusively and even originally a European or 'Western' institution. It explores the ways in which we may begin to think differently about citizenship as political subjectivity.

This edited volume presents a critique of citizenship as exclusively and even originally a European or 'Western' institution. It explores the ways in which we may begin to think differently about citizenship as political subjectivity.

This edited volume presents a critique of citizenship as exclusively and even originally a European or 'Western' institution. It explores the ways in which we may begin to think differently about citizenship as political subjectivity.

This collection offers a postcolonial critique of the ostensible superiority or originality of ‘Western’ political theory and one of its fundamental concepts, ‘citizenship’. The chapters analyse the undoing, uncovering, and reinventing of citizenship as a way of investigating citizenship as political subjectivity. If it has now become very difficult to imagine citizenship merely as nationality or membership in the nation-state, this is at least in part because of the anticolonial struggles and the project of reimagining citizenship after orientalism that they precipitated. If it has become difficult to sustain the orientalist assumption, the question arises; how do we investigate citizenship as political subjectivity after orientalism? This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

'The contributions of Woodiwiss, Lister and Sassen are outstanding but not unrepresentative of the many merits of this excellent collection'- The British Journal of Sociology From women's rights, civil rights, and sexual rights for gays and lesbians to disability rights and language rights, we have experienced in the past few decades a major trend in Western nation-states towards new claims for inclusion. This trend has echoed around the world: from the Zapatistas to Chechen and Kurdish nationalists, social and political movements are framing their struggles in the languages of rights and recognition, and hence, of citizenship. Citizenship has thus become an increasingly important axis in the social sciences. Social scientists have been rethinking the role of political agent or subject. Not only are the rights and obligations of citizens being redefined, but also what it means to be a citizen has become an issue of central concern. As the process of globalization produces multiple diasporas, we can expect increasingly complex relationships between homeland and host societies that will make the traditional idea of national citizenship problematic. As societies are forced to manage cultural difference and associated tensions and conflict, there will be changes in the processes by which states allocate citizenship and a differentiation of the category of citizen. This book constitutes the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to the terrain. Drawing on a wealth of interdisciplinary knowledge, and including some of the leading commentators of the day, it is an essential guide to understanding modern citizenship. About the editors: Engin F Isin is Associate Professor of Social Science at York University. His recent works include Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minnesota, 2002) and, with P K Wood, Citizenship and Identity (Sage, 1999). He is the Managing Editor of Citizenship Studies. Bryan S Turner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. He has written widely on the sociology of citizenship in Citizenship and Capitalism (Unwin Hyman, 1986) and Citizenship and Social Theory (Sage, 1993). He is also the author of The Body and Society (Sage, 1996) and Classical Sociology (Sage, 1999), and has been editor of Citizenship Studies since 1997.

A team of first-rate contributors examine closely the issues of citizenship, entrepreneurship, secularism and modernity in modern day Turkey and then draw conclusions for other states in the new global era.

The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World provides crucial insights into the current political, social and cultural crisis in the Middle East and North Africa by analysing histories, concepts, and practices of citizenship and the mechanisms that undermined them.