Model Citizens

Model Citizens of the State: The Jews of Turkey during the Multi-Party Period is about the history of the Turkish Jews from 1950 to present. By using unpublished primary sources as well as secondary sources, the book describes the struggle of Turkish Jews for the application of their constitutional rights, their fight against anti-Semitism and the indifferent attitude of the Turkish establishment to these problems. Finally, it describes Turkish Jewish leadership’s involvement in the lobbying efforts on behalf of the Turkish Republic against the acceptance of resolutions in the U.S. Congress recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

A man stabs an MP at a Meet-the-People Session. But this is not their story. It is the story of the man’s girlfriend, an Indonesian maid who wants to get married and become a Singaporean citizen. It is the story of the MP’s wife, who tries to cope with her husband’s injury and the media spotlight. It is the story of the maid’s employer, who is also struggling with her own tragedy. These three women may mean nothing to each other, but they need one another to survive. The maid, the employer and the MP’s wife. Are they all model citizens? Written by veteran Singaporean playwright Haresh Sharma, Model Citizens won Best Director (Alvin Tan) and Best Actress (Siti Khalijah Zainal) at the 2011 The Straits Times Life!Theatre Awards.

'It has the pace and dynamism of a thriller, the metaphysical curiosity of the best science fiction and some judiciously-planted charges of wry humour' The Herald 'A dazzling novel' Edmund Gordon, award-winning author And how to tell what the best things were? Well, that was easy: the best things were the ones with the most people looking at them. Alastair Buchanan has a comfortable life. It's been a year since he received his very own junior - a clone designed to help him escape the daily grind. So why does Alastair spend his days alone, online, obsessing over his status? When his long-term girlfriend Caitlin can't take it anymore, Alastair does his best to hold it together. But then, a remnant from his past appears and he is forced to confront the level of control that technology has over his life. Elsewhere, an anti-tech terrorist cell dedicated to yanking humanity back to the 1990s is building momentum. And looming over everyone is Kim Larson, inventor of the juniors. But when Kim realises that humanity's future lies in the stars, who will be left to hold him to account? From award-winning author Daniel Shand, Model Citizens explores a surreal world peopled by humans struggling with their dehumanising present. Full of suspense, it asks us what we give up when we exist online, and who we can trust to take care of us. Model Citizens is a subversive and darkly comic story of class, technology, and responsibility, offering a vision of the future that may be closer than we realise.

In the Community-building process, citizens are the most invoked and feared, but at the same time the least known subject. This lack of knowledge nourishes the citizens’ detachment from the European Union and itself emerged in well known cases such as the French and Dutch referenda on the Constitutional Treaty or the public concern towards the EU policy on immigration. This gap is true especially for active citizenship organizations operating in the European policy making, not only in Brussels, but also and above all at national and local levels, and this book is aimed at filling this knowledge gap. The book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book focuses on the way in which the literature on EU governance and citizenship and on participatory democracy deals with citizen activism in public policy making. The second part discusses a number of empirical research projects on civic activism in Europe. This book aims, on the one hand, to bridge the academic debate to more policy oriented debates in which active citizenship organizations and policy makers are involved; and, on the other hand, to bridge theoretical discussion of the nature of the EU with the empirical literature based on the study of civic activism in Europe and at the national level. The distinctiveness of the book is that it tries to overcome both the “methodological nationalism” that affects the research and public debate on the EU, the normative attitude of most part of European studies in favor of an approach aimed at describing phenomena, and the habit of dealing with civic associations in Europe by referring only to the “Brussels Civil Society," making it of interest to both policy makers as well as students and scholars in European Studies, Political Science, Sociology and International Relations. ​

In this remarkable account of imperial citizenship, Sukanya Banerjee investigates the ways that Indians formulated notions of citizenship in the British Empire from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth. Tracing the affective, thematic, and imaginative tropes that underwrote Indian claims to formal equality prior to decolonization, she emphasizes the extralegal life of citizenship: the modes of self-representation it generates even before it is codified and the political claims it triggers because it is deferred. Banerjee theorizes modes of citizenship decoupled from the rights-conferring nation-state; in so doing, she provides a new frame for understanding the colonial subject, who is usually excluded from critical discussions of citizenship. Interpreting autobiography, fiction, election speeches, economic analyses, parliamentary documents, and government correspondence, Banerjee foregrounds the narrative logic sustaining the unprecedented claims to citizenship advanced by racialized colonial subjects. She focuses on the writings of figures such as Dadabhai Naoroji, known as the first Asian to be elected to the British Parliament; Surendranath Banerjea, among the earliest Indians admitted into the Indian Civil Service; Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman to study law in Oxford and the first woman lawyer in India; and Mohandas K. Gandhi, who lived in South Africa for nearly twenty-one years prior to his involvement in Indian nationalist politics. In her analysis of the unexpected registers through which they carved out a language of formal equality, Banerjee draws extensively from discussions in both late-colonial India and Victorian Britain on political economy, indentured labor, female professionalism, and bureaucratic modernity. Signaling the centrality of these discussions to the formulations of citizenship, Becoming Imperial Citizens discloses a vibrant transnational space of political action and subjecthood, and it sheds new light on the complex mutations of the category of citizenship.

This book explores the relationship between sex and belonging in law and popular culture, arguing that contemporary citizenship is sexed, privatized, and self-disciplined. Former sexual outlaws have challenged their exclusion and are being incorporated into citizenship. But as citizenship becomes more sexed, it also becomes privatized and self-disciplined. The author explores these contesting representations of sex and belonging in films, television, and legal decisions. She examines a broad range of subjects, from gay men and lesbians, pornographers and hip hop artists, to women selling vibrators, adulterers, and single mothers on welfare. She observes cultural representations ranging from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to Dr. Phil, Sex in the City to Desperate Housewives. She reviews appellate court cases on sodomy and same-sex marriage, national welfare reform, and obscenity regulation. Finally, the author argues that these representations shape the terms of belonging and governance, producing good (and bad) sexual citizens, based on the degree to which they abide by the codes of privatized and self-disciplined sex.

Increased enviromental awareness, more demands on local governments, a newly invigorated citizen activism, and a decaying and overburdened infrastructure have made taking care of our garbage one of the major policy making challenges facing local communities. Luton uses the case study of Spokane WA to analyze the public administration and socio-political context of solid waste policy making. Luton’s thorough exploration of Spokane’s experience as opens a window onto contemporary issues of solid waste management as well as the complex social and political environment in which public administrators must operate. His integration of systems theory in the analysis adds to the book’s value as a teaching tool for courses on policy making, urban planning, public administration, and the environment. He examines the complex combination of ecological, political, social and relational dynamics that affect such policies, providing insight into inter-governmental public policy making.

Rapid advances and new technologies in the life sciences - such as biotechnologies in health, agricultural and environmental arenas - pose a range of pressing challenges to questions of citizenship. This volume brings together for the first time authors from diverse experiences and analytical traditions, encouraging a conversation between science and technology and development studies around issues of science, citizenship and globalisation. It reflects on the nature of expertise; the framing of knowledge; processes of public engagement; and issues of rights, justice and democracy. A wide variety of pressing issues is explored, such as medical genetics, agricultural biotechnology, occupational health and HIV/AIDS. Drawing upon rich case studies from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, Science and Citizens asks: · Do new perspectives on science, expertise and citizenship emerge from comparing cases across different issues and settings? · What difference does globalisation make? · What does this tell us about approaches to risk, regulation and public participation? · How might the notion of ‘cognitive justice‘ help to further debate and practice?