Abstract
Subrata Mitra analyses the debate on the flow of liberal ideas of citizenship to non-Western societies through an inquiry into its philosophical and social construction. A flow diagram is developed to capture the dynamic process of citizen making in terms of its underlying parameters, some of which go beyond the realm of everyday politics. Towards this objective, the chapter undertakes a brief survey of the evolution of the formal category of citizens from antiquity to present day, and the inner differentiation of liberal theory of citizenship, in order to cater to its complex empirical nuances and finally, to unite the various strands of citizen making in the form of a tool kit. This neo-institutional model provides the basis for a transdisciplinary analysis of policy making with regard to citizenship.
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Notes
- 1.
Contrast, for example, the status of the Kashmiri or Chechen insurgents from the point of view of the multicultural and liberal approach of Marshall. Is the act of rebellion an assertion of one’s identity evidence of empowerment or an infringement of one’s required loyalty to the state? Neither multiculturalism nor liberal democratic theory can easily accommodate these contradictory aspects of the rebel’s persona and political repertoire.
- 2.
“The concept of citizenship”, Bhargava comments, “once out of fashion among political thinkers, has now re-emerged as a crucial political idea.” Rajeev Bhargava, “Introduction” in Rajeev Bhargava and Helmut Reifeld, eds., Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship, 2005, p. 48. After all, social theory, ever on the lookout for causes to defend, has valiantly risen to the defense of the petit gens, as we see in the works of Tilly, Moore, Hobsbawm, Rawls and Pitkin, to name but a few of the scholars who have responded to the social dislocation caused by the industrial revolution and inroads of the modern state into traditional society.
- 3.
This, Bhargava asserts, “has eventually served to highlight both the significance of citizenship and the limitations of how it had been earlier formulated. Once it was realized that community identities could be conceived in ways that threatened citizenship, democratic theorists began to earnestly re-conceptualize it in order to accommodate rather than exclude community identities.” Ibid.
- 4.
See Spiess (Chap. 3) for the definition and social construction of these categories.
- 5.
A symposium on “The Development of Citizenship in a Transcultural Context,” which brought together the doctoral fellows and research groups which constitute Area A (Governance and Administration) of the Cluster of Excellence, generated very helpful insights for the work of the citizenship research group. The symposium, held in Athens, 7–11 December, 2009, was organized by Professor Thomas Maissen, Director, Project A11 of the cluster.
- 6.
The architectural technique of leaving empty spaces in the memorial building, proudly displaying fragments of the Athenian antiquity, anticipating the return of the “Elgin” marbles is an attempt to draw attention to what I have described as discontinuity above.
- 7.
Kelly, George Armstrong “Who needs a Theory of Citizenship?” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Vol. 108/4 (Fall 1979).
- 8.
Kymlicka, Will and Wayne Norman. “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory”. Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Jan., 1994), pp. 352–381.
- 9.
Interview, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, Feb 23, 2010. Bhargava adds, “[You get a sense of comfort] if … there is no misrecognition, if you are not negatively portrayed in public, if there are no negative stereotypes, if there’s no hate speech, if you are not looked at in a certain way, if you don’t have to face any aggressive posture. I mean…these are bodily comportments, which are extremely important. So, it’s not just enough to live in your neighbourhood and enjoy your rights. In moving around, in conversation, in public life of any kind, you should have a comfort level… I think if you feel estranged then your identification with the entire political, [system], the entire state and community, political community will fall.”
- 10.
Interview, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, December 6, 2008.
- 11.
Interview, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, December 6, 2008.
“It brings up questions of exclusion and inclusion. Everybody cannot be citizens of the same community. We just have to ensure that exclusion and inclusion are just and that nobody is included or excluded on grounds that are irrelevant. So if there is a place where a number of people have lived for centuries, we need to devise a criterion that included everyone as opposed to choosing one feature which has been selected because it is contingently or temporarily salient. Once you settle the question of who is a citizen…there is the whole question of rights that is so important in modern politics.”
- 12.
Interview, Prasanna Nayak, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, February 22, 2010.
- 13.
Interview, Kumud Chaudhury, Agartala, Feb 20, 2010. Kai Peng, Wrangkhal, Kukichi are the communities where the focus on their own language and insurgency are at the most intense.
- 14.
Interview with Mr Kumud Chaudhury, linguist, Agartala, Feb 19, 2010. He also informs that India’s Independence Day is not spontaneously celebrated in Tripura among the tribes because Tripura was an ’independent kingdom’ before 1947!
- 15.
Mr Subhas Talapatra: Senior Advocate Guwahati High Court (Agartala bench) 19. 2. 10 at Agartala. Although he thinks of himself as an Indian citizen, he stresses the ethnic dimension of citizens among the residents of Tripura. First, a section of tribals do not consider themselves to be citizens of India. Second, for the erstwhile East Pakistan/Bengal refugees (his parents’ generation), 80 % of their memories lies in their former place of birth/or residence. ‘Desh kothai’ (where is your country?) is very common in daily interaction and social interaction, marriage making etc. He stresses that ‘our past’ is almost impossible to erase! In northern Tripura, Shylet dialect is well maintained. There are others such as ‘Brahmanberia, Comilla and so on. Ancestry thus is a great hindrance to the development of a common Indian citizenship. Third, the 1980 inter-ethnic riots made the refugees more vulnerable, threatened to cling to their old identity. The Bangladesh War of Liberation (1971) was taken by the refugees as their war. The tribals under the leadership of the TUJS gave the slogan that ‘we are tribals, neither left nor green’. Fourth, regarding ADC-State government rift, he comments that there is very little tribal voice since things are decided by the ‘party’. This is resented by the nascent tribal youths who are educated and Christians and who find little space available for them. Their self-consciousness is targeted against the Bengalis.
- 16.
Interview with Mr N. C. Devbarma (20. 2.10 at Agartala) A retired (2002) director of All-India Radio, Agartala, Feb 20, 2010., a graduate and having a degree in IRPM. He asserts his mother tongue is Kok-Borok, and he is in favor of using the Roman script. Stressing the social and cultural identity aspects of citizenship in Tripura, he stresses the distinction between “Borok” (human beings) and “Wanjei” (outsiders). The Kok-Borok speaking Tripuris had rights (common) over shifting cultivation while the Wanjei did not have those rights. He was at pains to note that the original residents of Tripura have to secure ST certificates from the officials, mostly Bengali who are refugees in Tripura! He stated that citizenship was imposed on the tribals in Tripura.
- 17.
Michael Warner and Benedicte Zimmermann, “Beyond comparison: Histoire Croisee and the challenge of reflexivity”, History and Theory 45 (February 2006), p. 36.
- 18.
Ibid, p. 38.
- 19.
Ibid, pp. 38–39.
- 20.
T.K. Oommen, “Introduction: Conceptualizing the Linkage between Citizenship and National Identity” in Oommen ed., Citizenship and National Identity: From Colonialism to Globalism (New Delhi: Sage; 1997), p. 41. Some of the nodal points in this long march of classical India to the contemporary will be discussed in detail in my essay on the case of India later in this volume. Also see my Politics in India: Structure, Process, Policy (London: Routledge; 2011).
- 21.
See Spiess, Chap. 3.
- 22.
Bhargava, Interview, by Clemens Spiess CSDS, Delhi 20 Dec, 2008.
- 23.
See Subrata K. Mitra, The Puzzle of India’s Governance: Culture, Context and Comparative Theory. 2005. London: Routledge.
- 24.
Interview with Rajeev Bhargava by Clemens Spiess, Delhi CSDS 20.12.2008.
- 25.
Yeatman, Anna. ‘The Subject of Citizenship’. Citizenship Studies 11 (1) 2007 February, pp. 105–115.
- 26.
Young, Iris Marion. “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship”. Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Jan., 1989), pp. 250–274.
- 27.
Those who are in pursuit of a transdisciplinary “theory” of citizenship will do well to heed the advice of the Indian sociologist T. K. Oommen. “Creation of clear concepts is a pre-requisite for theory building. And if concepts and theories are rooted in and isomorphic to the life-world of the people, their potentiality to avoid human misery will also be substantial. I consider this combination as the real task and promise of social science.” Oommen (1997), pp. 49–50.
- 28.
See Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn Mervis, “Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories” Cognitive Psychology 7, 573 (1975). The counterargument against too tight a boundary comes from the apprehension that without clear boundaries a concept will be susceptible to “stretching” as, in that case, “there will be no limit to a concept’s extension.” Hanne Andersen, “Kuhn’s account of family resemblances: A solution to the problem of wide-open textures” in Erkenntnis 52: 313 (2000).
- 29.
By translingual we mean phenomena that exist but have not yet been transferred into any specific language system. Similarly, transcultural would mean phenomena that exist on the part of the existential world but have not been acknowledged in high culture as part of the custom, manner, or ritual.
- 30.
“‘Marshall’s ‘Englishness’ had its time and place, but that has passed.” Martin Bulmer and Anthony Rees, “Citizenship in the twentieth century”, in Martin Bulmer and Anthony Rees, eds., Citizenship today: the contemporary relevance of T. H. Marshall (London: UCL Press; 1996), p. 279. Based on Mann’s contribution to the volume, they argue that a comparative analysis of citizenship, even within the relatively homogeneous European cultural context, requires the reformulation of Marshall’s concept.
References
Andersen, Hanne. 2000. “Kuhn’s Account of Family Resemblances: A Solution to the Problem of Wide-Open Textures.” Erkenntnis 52 (3): 313–337.
Bhargava, Rajeev. “Introduction” Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship, edited by Rajeev Bhargava and Helmut Reifeld. New Delhi: Sage.
Bulmer, Martin and Anthony Rees, eds. 1996a. Citizenship Today: The Contemporary Relevance of T.H. Marshall. London: UCL Press.
Giddens, Anthony 2002. Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping our Lives, Profile Books Limited, London.
Kelly, George Armstrong. 1979. “Who Needs a Theory of Citizenship?” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 108 (4): 21–36.
Kymlicka, Will and Wayne Norman. 1994. “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory.” Ethics 104 (2): 352–381.
Mitra, Subrata K. 2005. The Puzzle of India’s Governance: Culture, Context and Comparative Theory. London: Routledge.
Mitra, Subrata K. 2011. Politics in India: Structure, Process, Policy. London: Routledge.
Oommen, T.K., ed. 1997. Citizenship and National Identity: From Colonialism to Globalism. New Delhi: Sage.
Rosch, Eleanor and Carolyn Mervis. 1975. “Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories.” Cognitive Psychology 7 (4): 573–605.
Yeatman, Anna. 2007. “The Subject of Citizenship.” Citizenship Studies 11 (1): 105–115.
Young, Iris Marion. 1989. “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship.” Ethics 99 (2): 250–274.
Zimmermann, Benedict and Warner, Michael. 2006. “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisee and the challenge of relfelxivity” History and Theory 45
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Mitra, S.K. (2013). Turning Aliens Into Citizens: A “Toolkit” for a Trans-Disciplinary Policy Analysis. In: Mitra, S. (eds) Citizenship as Cultural Flow. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34568-5_4
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