Page 46 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

CITY

it the danger of losing sight of the fact that ‘levels’ or ‘moments’ are only a heuristic
device and not organizational aspects of an otherwise non-separable ‘whole way of
life’
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Links Base and superstructure, cultural materialism, reductionism, structuralism

Citizenship A form of political identity by which individuals are endowed with social
rights and obligations within political communities. Needless to say, the meaning of
citizenship changes according to the language-game and cultural contexts in which
it is deployed. For example, the classical Liberal conception of citizenship focuses on
the rights and duties of individuals and includes such issues as residency, freedom of
movement, freedom of speech and voting rights. The social democratic usage of the
term adds to this list those collective rights associated with the welfare state, including
the rights to education, relief from poverty, medical services and so forth. Today one
also hears of the cultural rights of identity groups that are said to flow from the claims
of citizenship. Thus it is important to recognize that the scope of citizenship rights
and the habits and routines that are attendant on it are progressively formed over
time and are not universal givens. Indeed, the extension of the scope of citizenship
to cover increasing numbers of persons and the enlargement of the rights with which
it is concerned have commonly been the focus of social and political struggles.
The concept of citizenship has been etymologically linked with notions of
civility, as the proper way to live with others, and civilization, as the habits and
routines of cooperative life. As such, citizenship has been historically restricted to
those considered to be civilized and denied to others, for example slaves. Though
the concept of citizenship was initially connected to the emergence of the city, the
modern usage derives from the workings of the nation-state, within which the
aforementioned rights and obligations obtain. In particular, the modern discourse
of citizenship stresses that with citizenship comes equality. That is, one cannot
legitimately divide citizenship into first and second class varieties, for it is said to
be universal and indivisible. Consequently, the language of citizenship is useful to
the cultural politics of subordinated groups who are seeking greater freedom and
recognition within the bounds of the nation-state.
In the context of the modern democratic tradition, citizenship can be
understood as one aspect of our multiple selves whereby a civic ‘identity of
citizenship’ seeks to hold together a diversity of values and life-worlds within a
democratic framework. The commitment by diverse groups to the procedures of
democracy and to inter-subjectively recognized rights and duties of citizenship in
the social, civil and political domains advances democracy and provides the
conditions for particularistic identity projects. As such, the concept of citizenship
is a mechanism for linking the micro-politics of representation and identity with
the official macro-politics of institutional and cultural rights.
Links Cultural politics, identity politics, Liberalism, nation-state, public sphere

City The growth of the contemporary city is an aspect of the urbanization processes
inherent within modernity and with the associated culture of modernism. Of