Page 267 - Cultural Theory

Edwards-3516-Ch-13.qxd 5/9/2007 5:57 PM Page 256

••• Nick Stevenson •••

the British national context. Marshall drew attention to the contradiction between
the formations of capitalism and class, and the principle of equality enshrined
within a common citizenship. Such a view of citizenship was hardly surprising, given
that Marshall was writing just before the end of the Second World War, a time where
identity and social conflicts were dominated by class. The setting up of the welfare
state, the possibility of full male employment, the nuclear family, the dominance of
the nation-state and the separation between an elite literary culture and a popular
mass culture all inform his dimensions of citizenship. More recently a number of
writers have sought to rehabilitate notions of citizenship. In this context, citizenship
studies have revived a notion of political community set against the economic reduc-
tionism of the Left and the market individualism of the Right (Ignatieff 1991). From
the 1980s citizenship has provided the focus for a series of debates connecting the
role of new social movements (Stevenson 2001), social welfare (Roche 1992), femi-
nism (Lister 1997) and broader questions of social responsibility and obligation
(Dahrendorf 1994). Current theorizing in citizenship therefore seeks to remoralise
political debates in a way that is critical of rights-based liberalism, New Right market
atomism and Left cynicism (Kymlicka and Norman 1994).
The concern here is not only with a politics of the possible, but also with how
questions of justice might be pursued within less than favourable conditions.
Further, there has also been a growing concern within the literature that notions of
citizenship need to be revised due to the impact of cultural questions. Many have
argued that Marshall’s initial framework poorly appreciates the conflicts of identity
and globalising features that are reshaping the operation of citizenship (Turner 1994;
Isin and Wood 1999). Claims to citizenship are having to operate in a political con-
text Nancy Fraser (1997) has accurately described as post-socialist. Citizenship has
become a progressive force in the face of socialism’s collapse as a credible alternative,
a resurgent economic liberalism, and the enhanced struggle for recognition and dif-
ference on the part of ‘minority’ communities.
Yet how to achieve wide participation in questions of genuinely communal concern
is at the heart of our discussion. As Ruth Lister (1997) argues, Marshall’s liberal idea of
citizenship needs to be supplemented with a more republican emphasis upon partici-
pation within the political process. For Raymond Williams (1962) this was the possi-
bility of achieving a genuinely participative and educative democracy. Cultural
citizenship, as opposed to mainstream understanding of citizenship, should be con-
cerned with both having access to certain rights and the opportunity to get your voice
heard, in the knowledge that you will have the ear of the community. As Cohen and
Arato (1992) argue democracy is maintained through formal institutions and proce-
dures, and through the generation of an active and communicative civil society. Here,
rights of communication and dialogue have a necessary priority over all other social
and economic rights. That is, whereas Marxism has criticised capitalist societies for
instituting mere bourgeois rights and liberalism has sought to remain agnostic in
respect of the lifestyle choices of its citizens, a politics based upon a communicative
civil society takes us in a different direction. Civil society should ‘institutionalise’ the
everyday practice of democratic communication. A politics of ‘cultural’ citizenship is

• 256 •