POG 100: Introduction to Politics and Governance, Section 1/2/3/7

Fall 2007

October 30 2007

October 30 2007

• Citizenship and representation• New Politics, social movements and

resistance• Political systems and political

Participation

Citizens and Citizenship• The concept of citizenship has a long history. Nation states assume a loyal

citizenship or subjects as the basis for their viability.• Greek citizenship is often identified as the earliest form of citizenship but it

was accorded to a fraction of those who lived in Athens and had property, were male and white – only 20% of the population

• The modern concept is based on universal recognition of common equality of humanity but still assumes exclusions along territorial boundaries, etc

• It is embedded in the Lockean idea that the relationships between the people and their government should be consensual and contractual

• This modern concept of citizenship also has its roots in the French revolution and the peoples’ demands for liberty, equality, and fraternity

• Citizenship rights and responsibilities derive from such considerations as birth, naturalizations, etc

• Who is a citizen? Who should be a citizen? Should that change in a multicultural environment with increased migration?

• What is the value of citizenship: for individuals (passport?), for community?

Citizen and Citizenship

• To be a citizen presupposes being part of a specific political community, participation in its economic and social life and the enjoyment of its support in case of need.

• Modern dimension of citizenship denotes a form of social citizenship, which, along with the concept of equality helps define the contours or boundaries of social inclusion/exclusion (Byrne, 1999)

Citizenship• Citizenship, is understood as a:

– relationship between the individual and the state as well as among individuals,

– It is the concrete expression of the fundamental principle of equality among members of the political community

(Jenson & Papillon, 2001).

• Citizenship represents the: – “concrete expression of the principle of equality among

members of the political community”Jenson and Papillon (2000)

Citizenship as a contested concept

• Citizenship transcends the legal definitions that are the basis for determining who votes, who holds what passport and who is protected when in danger abroad

• Three key axes for the debate:– Rights versus responsibilities– Universality versus difference– National versus global

Dimensions of Citizenship• Rights and responsibilities. • Equal access• Belonging or identity.

– These processes are dynamic so neither equal access nor belonging are automatically achieved.

– Societies require agency to foster equality and improve access in the same way they need strategies to ensure meaningful participation in the democratic process and the full exercise of citizenship rights, all which vary over time and place.

– Given the nature of power relations and unequal social relations in societies, various social forces engage in struggles to gain better access for certain categories of citizenship on the one hand, and to the transform oppressive structures, institutional practices and change the boundaries of access on the other.

Rights and responsibilities• Rights and responsibilities are founded in liberal

conceptions of citizenship as guaranteeing political and civil rights in exchange for certain responsibilities such as paying taxes, informed participation and defending the polity when called upon.

• T.H. Marshall (1964) has enumerated a set of rights and responsibilities that have come to define this dimension including Civil rights, Political rights, Social rights

Rights• The right to protection of life and property• The right to protection against disease• The right to free speech• The right to freedom of worship• The right to freedom from false

imprisonment• The right to trial by jury• The right to healthful surroundings• The right to a good education

Responsibilities

• The duty of obedience to law• The duty of paying taxes• The duty of military service• The duty of voting• The duty of office-holding• The duty of jury service• The duty of keeping healthy

Equal Access• The second dimension of citizenship, which corresponds to equal

access to the resources of society, is important because it is fundamental to any claims of equality.

• It is built on the civic recognition that basic levels of material well being are essential to sustaining meaningful access to full citizenship and to fostering participation.

• The degree of access varies within and across political communities, depending on institutional design, and according to the support given by the state and the community to the groups excluded by the social, economic or cultural structures within the society.

• This notion of citizenship invokes the state as guarantor of the principles of equality among members and dignity for the individual or group

• It assumes a modern conception of the state as a positive actor in society

Belonging and Identity• Citizenship defines the boundaries of belonging,

giving specific recognition and status to members to participate and benefit from the political community.

• Citizenship is also a source of, as well as a determinant of identity

• Concepts such as shared history, shared experience, culture and common bond, are central to creating a sense of belonging

• State action to ensure harmony and multicultural expression can also be key to creating a complex, diverse citizenship

Universality and difference• Universality denotes: equality in the eyes of the state• However, formal citizenship rights do not translate into

substantive equality• Universality masks differences that have social

significance in the daily lives of citizens: social class, gender, race, disability, immigrant status, and even regional

• Where these obtain, the separation gives rise to inequality, discrimination, and racism.

• Citizenship is seen as incomplete (Castles, 1994)• Structures of inclusion and exclusion undermine full

citizenship

Global citizenship• Globalization has challenged the conventional wisdom that the

state is the basis for citizenship because it provides the infrastructure for citizenship rights

• Global economic and political institutions (such as IFIs, TNCs) can be said to represent ‘unaccountable power’.

• It blurs the boundaries of citizenship and obscures the: – “lines of responsibility and accountability of national states”

(Held, 1989)• Is citizenship increasingly detached from the nation state?

– Global citizenship and global civil society– Regional citizenship e.g. European Union and European

social citizenship– NAFTA and closer economic relations– the emergence of epistemic communities

Citizenship as a fluid concept

• Citizenship and nationalism (ethnicity and religions as basis for citizenship)

• Mono-cultural and multicultural citizenship• Shared citizenship• Thick and Thin citizenship• Open citizenship• Social inclusion and social exclusion

Social Inclusion and exclusion• Social inclusion implies the fulfillment of the ideals of citizenship, while

social exclusion suggests the failure to achieve full citizenship by some members of society.

• Social exclusion involves exclusion from civil society through legal sanction or other institutional mechanisms. A broader conception of this aspect would include substantive disconnection from civil society because of systemic or institutional forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and religion.

• Secondly, social exclusion refers to the denial of social goods to particular groups or society’s failure to provide for the needs of particular groups - such as accommodation for persons with disability, housing for the homeless, language services for immigrants, or sanctions to deter forms of discrimination.

• Third, there is social exclusion from social production, a denial of opportunity to contribute to or participate actively in society

• And fourth, is economic exclusion from social consumption – involving unequal or lack of access to normal forms of livelihood.

New Politics, social movements and resistance

• Culture • Civil Society• Social Movements• Gender • Race • Environmental politics

New politics• The various forms of exclusion have motivated new forms of

politics aimed at addressing the material and social disadvantages and oppression of identifiable groups and reconstituting citizenship as an inclusive sphere

• New discourses representing new ways of looking at old political questions have emerged as have new forms of organizing and political mobilization

• Feminism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, environmentalism, to name but a few

• These represent new forms of politics, new identities and claims on the state and society’s resources

• They also suggest new ways of social and political organization

Cultural identity• Helps describe differences between states but also among groups in

society • Understood as a shared way of life and common experience• Cultural identity implies a collective experience relating to language,

system of beliefs, customs, norms, dress, conventions, religion etc.• They are transferable from generations to generation • Cultural identities are organic but socially constructed• Cultural roots as a basis for political socialization and mobilization• Cultural studies focus on stratification in society and the unequal

relations of power, experiences of oppression and structures of domination that derive from them

• According to Gramsci (1891-1937), culture is key to understanding the possibility of change, resistance and emancipation as well as the maintenance of hegemony through cultural/knowledge production

Civil Society• Gramsci suggested that it is in the arena of civil society that the struggles

between the dominant cultures and the subordinate cultures are waged• Civil society is a contested, complex concept used to describe the arena,

activities, relationships, practices and mobilizations outside the formal boundaries of the state, but that influence what goes on within the state

• The sphere of citizen organized political and associational activity between the family and the state and involving struggles against the state

• Civil society organizations or community based organizations are some of the associations that emerge in civil society - many local, national and some global

• What is the relationship between civil society and the market in a time when market institutions are as dominant as the state?

• Popular movements, local and transnational social movements emerge in civil society to mobilize and organize political protests

• Women’s movement, anti-war, environmental, race based, disability and gay and lesbian movements are key social movements in modern politics

Social Movements• Debates about social movements involve the very nature of social movements:

- Political: they are ‘political’ and only involve collective political action or can embrace silent resistances – foot dragging, acts of disobedience, etc for instance, - Continuous or discontinuous: whether contemporary social movements are ‘New’ and whether they are materially based…bread and

butter concerns or social. - violent or non-violent: Are they non-violent or can they involve armed struggle? Chiapas in Mexico …the Zapatistas. - Institutional or non-institutional - informal or formal. Non-governmental organizations increasingly bureaucratized and

institutionalized- Scale: Local or global - Are they strictly local and rooted in local struggles

or can they be organized on a global scale, using modern technologies like the internet. The Anti-war rallies that brought millions to the streets in February were largely coordinated via the internet and signal the emergence of a global civil society and perhaps the potential for a global counter-movement.

Gender• While biology determines a person’s sex, social, political and cultural forces determine

their place in society• Biological determinism is the belief that woman’s nature and possibilities are

determined by her biology. Gender is the social construction of masculinity and femininity translating into patriarchy - rule by men or men’s control over the society’s dominant ideas and institutions.

• Gender is a key dimension of the stratification in society and because patriarchy implies systemic gender inequality gender has become an important basis for political socialization and mobilization to address the condition of oppression women experience

• Women’s oppression - a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize or mould people belonging to certain identifiable groups leading to their subordination

• Oppression is manifested in women’s under-representation in arenas of political, economic and cultural power, as well as disproportionate responsibility in social reproduction

• Feminism has emerged as the ideology of analysis of women’s oppression and action against it. Feminist movements are key social movements.

• Feminist political action seeks women’s liberty and control over their bodies and lives

Women’s subordinate position in Politics

• Women constitute 70% of the world’s poor• 2/3 of the world’s illiterate• Occupy only 14% of the world’s management and

administrative jobs• 10% of legislative seats• 6% of national cabinet positions• Work longer hours, many unpaid and most

undervalued• Limited reproductive rights and sexually exploited• Remain vulnerable to all forms of violence, including

sexual, physical, emotional, and use of rape as war

Gendered division of timeNepal Time Input into Village and Domestic work

Activity Men Women• Cooking and Serving 10 90• Cleaning 5 95• Maintenance 7 93• Laundry 10 90• Shopping 54 46• Child Care 16 84• Animal Husbandry 55 45• Gathering and Hunting 60 40• Water Collection 8 92• Food processing 13 87

Race• Race and racialization are bases of oppression and resistance• Race is a difficult concept to define because it is more a social construction

than an essential biological concept. • Race is used to denote arbitrary physical and social traits as a basis for

difference among peoples• The process of racialization involves the construction of racial categories as

real, different but giving them social value as unequal leading to economic, social, and political inequalities in society along racial lines.

• Racialized peoples are historical victims of colonization and oppression. They are more likely to be poor and face discrimination in education, employment, business and political institutions, among others.

• They have responded to this condition by organizing anti-colonial and anti-racism movements

• Indigenous movements have arisen around the world to make territorial claim to their ancestral lands

• Anti-racist action is about emancipation from subordination and exploitaiton

Aboriginal movements• In Canada, Aboriginal peoples - Indians, Metis, Inuit -have been the victims of

cultural genocide and socio-economic and political marginalization• Aboriginal peoples did not get the vote until 1960. While over 4% of Canada’s

population, Aboriginal people are the poorest and most disadvantaged• In the 1960s and 1970s, Aboriginal peoples movements sprung up demanding

their treaty rights be honoured by the Canadian state and Canadian society• The confrontations escalated from legal contests to some of the most dramatic

confrontations with the Canadian state• While there have been confrontation in Burnt-Church, Ipperwash, perhaps the

armed stand off at the Quebec town of Oka in 1990 stands out.• The Oka crisis began with plans by the Town Council of Oka’s plans to

expand a golf course into what the Mohawk of Kenastake claimed to be their ancestral burial grounds.

• It escalated into an armed stand off in which a police officer was killed and the Canadian armed forces deployed

Key themes in Canada-Aboriginal relations

• Socio-economic problems such as the persistence of poverty, high rates of infant mortality, suicides, disease, unemployment, discrimination, woefully inadequate education, inadequate housing on reserves etc.

• Settlement of Native land claims• Aboriginal self government and sovereignty• The paternalistic Indian Act and the Dept. of Indian and

Northern Development Act• These have periodically led to confrontations between

Aboriginal communities and the Canadian state

Oka crisis of 1990

• This crisis represented the most dramatic challenge to politics in Canada. • At issue in the village of Oka (40 kilometers from Montreal) was a struggle

over the ownership of land on which a municipal golf course was to be extended. The Mohawks claimed the land as theirs and argued that it was a sacred burials ground and that the town had no right to extend the gold course on their land. In March 1990, the Mohawks of nearby Kanestake reserve block the road leading to the disputed lands. On July 11, 1990 The Surete du Quebec raided the blockade and in the raid one S.Q. officer was killed.

• The Mohawks from Kahnawake reserve blockaded the Mercier Bridge linking Montreal to the suburbs, in sympathy with their kith and kin at Oka. The blockade generated a considerable backlash and racism directed at the protestors. The federal government decided to send Canadian troops to Oka to confront the Mohawk warriors.

• In effect, the troops were deployed against Canadians and acted as an internal occupying force. The confrontation between the troops and the warriors lasted 78 days and on September 26, after facing constant harassment and intimidation the warriors agreed to a mediated settlement and surrendered

Environmentalism• Key environmental concerns have become a basis for new discourses

and political mobilization– Increased emissions of greenhouse gases leading to global climate

changes– Depletion of non-renewable natural resources– Devastation of rain forests– Pollution of various forms leading to health hazards

• The ideology of environmentalism emerged to address these concerns. It seeks to transform the relationship between human being and nature to ensure a better balance and sustainability

• Environmentalism argues that there are limits to the growth of production and consumption and the size of the world’s population

• Sustainability means maintaining the integrity of the eco-systems to ensure that depletion does not exceed regeneration

• Sustainable development: Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs